Alumni News Archives - Page 70 of 101

FIS Launches Guaranteed Payments Solution for Protection Against Chargebacks

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 29, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FIS, Signifyd

FIS is launching its Guaranteed Payments solution this week that boosts merchants’ ecommerce transaction approval rates and guarantees protection against chargebacks.
FIS is partnering with ecommerce fraud prevention company Signifyd to reduce merchant chargebacks.
“With this solution, customer retention works hand in hand with fraud elimination to unlock incredible revenue growth opportunities,” said Signifyd CEO and Co-founder Raj Ramanand.

Core banking expert FIS is launching a Guaranteed Payments solution this week. The new tool guarantees merchants increased ecommerce transaction approval rates and eliminates the financial liability of chargebacks resulting from fraudulent purchases.

Guaranteed Payments, which is available across the Signifyd Commerce Network and integrated into FIS’ Worldpay platform, facilitates increased merchant approval rates and provides guaranteed chargeback protection. The new technology combines machine learning and transaction intelligence to analyze aspects of a consumer’s purchase, including email address and payment credentials. Leveraging that information, Guaranteed Payments can instantly distinguish legitimate orders from fraudulent orders. The reduced fraud helps merchants optimize revenue and fulfill orders more quickly.

“Guaranteed Payments brings together two powerful sources of transaction intelligence—the Worldpay data stream produced from processing 40 billion orders annually and the Signifyd Commerce Network of thousands of merchants worldwide,” said FIS Chief Product Officer Vicky Bindra. She adds that the new tool can “combine fraud protection with increased approvals to enhance payment optimization and the overall user experience.”

Preventing chargebacks is at the heart of Signifyd’s technology. The California-based company helps identify fraudulent product orders using machine learning algorithms that sift through big data, including user behavior patterns, to reduce merchant chargebacks on fraudulent charges and save money on shipping goods on declined orders. In the event an order turns out to be fraudulent, Signifyd reimburses the merchant for the chargeback.

“Merchants using Signifyd experience a 5 to 9 percent increase in top line conversion on average,” said Signifyd CEO and Co-founder Raj Ramanand. “With this solution, customer retention works hand in hand with fraud elimination to unlock incredible revenue growth opportunities.”

FIS’ Guaranteed Payments is launching at a time when ecommerce activity and the fraud the comes along with it are at an all-time high. While the ecommerce market is predicted to grow 50% in the next two years, so is the fraud that comes along with it. In the past year, nine out of 10 merchants lost revenue due to payment fraud. False positives are hurting merchants, as well. Even though fraud currently accounts for about 1% of online transactions, merchants routinely reject as much as 9% of orders to avoid fraud, missing out on $443 billion in potential revenue.

Photo by RODNAE Productions

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PayPal Adds New Business Credit Card

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 28, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, PayPal

PayPal launched a small business credit card this week.
The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard is PayPal’s first business credit card.
PayPal also offers a range of other tools for small businesses, including working capital tools, business loans, risk management support, and more.

Small businesses in the U.S. have gained yet another credit card option this week with PayPal’s launch of its its first commercial credit card.

The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard, which is issued by WebBank, has no annual fee and offers cardholders 2% cashback on all purchases. The rewards are not subject to earning caps nor do they expire. Additionally, the card comes with free employee cards, does not charge a foreign transaction fee, and integrates with PayPal’s merchant platform to facilitate access to transactions, balances, available credit, and rewards.

Once a business is approved for the card, it can immediately begin spending via a virtual card that is automatically integrated into their PayPal account. Businesses can view their account and spending details via their PayPal Business account.

“As small business owners continue to recover from the challenges of the past two years, having multiple financing options to address their capital needs is more important than ever,” said PayPal Vice President of Global Merchant Lending Bernardo Martinez. “The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard provides merchants greater value, more choice, and the increased flexibility they need to manage their business finances, offering among the best value available on no annual fee business credit cards today. This new solution continues PayPal’s commitment to supporting small businesses and offering options to help manage the day-to-day costs of operating their business.”

Founded in 1998, PayPal has long been an ally to small businesses. In addition to the business credit card, the California-based company also offers a working capital solution that has distributed more than $20 billion, as well as payout capabilities, business loans, payment acceptance tools, risk management support, and more. These products have helped PayPal amass 20 million small business customers in the U.S. And this is no small feat, given the fact that there are only 33 million small businesses in the U.S.

The launch of the The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard comes five years after PayPal launched its credit card for individual users in 2017.

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Location Identity Leader Incognia Secures $15.5 Million to Help Fight Identity Fraud

By David Penn Posted on June 28, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Incognia

Mobile fraud prevention specialist Incognia, which made its Finovate debut in May at FinovateSpring, has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding.
The capital will be used to help fuel the company’s growth; Incognia currently has 200 million mobile users in more than 20 countries worldwide.
Incognia leverages location and motion sensors to create a unique “location footprint” for trusted users that rivals other authentication methods in accuracy.

In a round led by Point72 Ventures, mobile identity company Incognia has secured $15.5 million in Series A funding to help fight identity fraud. The investment will help fuel the Palo Alto, California-based company’s continued growth, building on the 200 million mobile users in more than 20 countries currently protected by Incognia’s technology.

“Today’s authentication and fraud detection solutions aren’t working for the user, or for businesses, and the market is looking for more innovative technologies,” Incognia founder and CEO André Ferraz said. “Incognia is pushing the frontier of identity assurance and authentication to deliver increased security with minimal user friction.”

Incognia leverages location signals and motion sensors on an individual’s mobile device to help combat identity fraud. The technology creates a privacy-first location identity that is unique to each user and acts like a “location fingerprint” that effectively differentiates trusted users from fraudulent ones. The company says that its solution, which can be deployed in industries ranging from fintech and crypto to gaming and social media, is 10x more accurate than FaceID in terms of uniquely identifying users. Further, Incognia notes that the technology has a false acceptance rate of less than 1 in 17 million.

“We’re emerging as the global location identity leader, effectively combating the increasing fraud on mobile around the world,” Ferraz added. “We’re dedicated to enabling our customers to deliver frictionless mobile experiences without compromising security and privacy.”

Incognia made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in May. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its frictionless fraud prevention solution for mobile apps combats identity fraud without bringing additional friction to the authentication process. The technology’s zero-factor authentication requires no action from the user in order to provide a highly accurate risk assessment with low false acceptance rates.

Founded in 2020, Incognia also recently introduced its new location-based liveness spoofing detection solution module. The offering prevents biometric liveness spoofing during the onboarding process. This particular form of fraud is often used by cybercriminals to create “money mule” accounts for money laundering – as innovative fraudsters have turned to liveness spoofing to get around selfie-based liveness detection algorithms. The challenge of liveness spoofing has become even greater with the availability of cheap – or even free – deepfake video technology. Incognia’s location-based liveness spoofing detection module is designed to prevent these deepfake attacks in real-time.

“As fraudsters advance their techniques to trick liveness detection tools, it is critical that there is a solution on the market that can successfully combat the use of deepfakes at onboarding,” Ferraz said.

Photo by Pixabay

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Finovate Newcomer Lokyata Integrates its Credit Decisioning Technology with Infinity Software

By David Penn Posted on June 27, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Lokyata, Startups

Lokyata, a credit decisioning specialist, announced a partnership with Infinity Software.
The integration will make Lokyata’s BankAnalyze solution available to Infinity Software’s financial services customers.
Lokyata, founded in 2017, made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year.

Just over a month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco, California, credit decision solutions provider Lokyata has announced that its real-time, automated credit decisioning tool, BankAnalyze, is now integrated with Infinity Software’s loan management software platform.

Courtesy of the API-enabled integration with Lokyata, Infinity Solutions will give its customers the ability to access key loan decision information. This includes customer-permissioned bank statement analysis such as average monthly net income, minimum balance, average monthly loan payments, and insufficient funds (NSF) notification histories. The integration will also enable lenders to configure both auto-fund and auto-deny rules to bring additional streamlining to the loan decisioning experience.

“At Lokyata, we are always looking to work with innovators in the market and Infinity Software is demonstrating the value of scalable, modern technology in an evolving lending ecosystem,” Lokyata CTO Steve Bireley said. “Increasingly, lenders are looking for ways to responsibly help more consumers gain access to credit, and through tools like BankAnalyze and Infinity Software’s platform, more lenders are successfully meeting that goal.”

With 20 years of experience providing lending solutions and other tools to direct-to-consumer lenders, Infinity Software has helped more than 700 businesses enhance their lending processes. The company uses a configurable loan product engine that gives lenders access to advanced accounting and reporting, as well as a built-in collections suite and access controls. Infinity Software offers a wide range of services to lenders, ranging from website design to optimized loan agreements to automated underwriting waterfalls, as well as a number of additional consumer loan solutions.

“Infinity has worked with hundreds of vendors to meet the needs of lenders in our space,” Infinity Software Director of Products Shannon Lee said. “Lokyata has proven to have a unique product that helps lenders better meet the needs of underserved borrowers and grow their business in a responsible and innovative way.”

Currently headquartered in Washington, D.C., Lokyata made its Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, Lokyata’s Bireley demoed the company’s BankAnalyze solution. The technology assesses the bank statements from a loan applicant and then provides an automated credit decision recommendation based on a combination of a weighted rules and a Lokyata score created in collaboration with the client. The company believes that using borrower-permissioned data is a major boon to the lending process, creating a more accurate, and up-to-date depiction of the borrower’s credit status. Moreover, Lokyata says that this approach “primes” near and subprime borrowers by making it easier for financial institutions to lend to “near prime” borrowers without taking on excessive risk.

Lokyata’s other products include ExcelRate, a lending and lead decision platform, and FraudBlock, a real-time identity verification and fraud intelligence solution for financial transactions. With $1.5 million in funding, Lokyata has scored more than 6.1 million loans impacting more than 240,000 customers. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $1.5 million in funding. Santosh Thiruthi is co-founder and CEO.

Photo by Diana Smykova

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Array and Alkami Technology Team Up to Help Banks Boost Digital Engagement

By David Penn Posted on June 27, 2022
Categories: Alkami Technology, Alumni News, Array, Daily news

Two Finovate alums – Alkami Technology and Array – have teamed up to help financial institutions offer credit and identity solutions to their customers.
The partnership makes three of Array’s signature solutions: My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine, available to a wider range of bank and credit union customers and members.
Alkami made its Finovate debut in 2009 as iThryv. Array won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2021 and again at FinovateSpring 2022.

A new partnership has been forged between digital banking solution provider Alkami Technology and financial enablement platform Array. The collaboration will bring a range of new solutions to Alkami clients that will help their customers and members better monitor their credit, benefit from anti-fraud identity monitoring, and access actionable, credit-based offers.

“Improving the digital-first banking experience is a top priority for banks and credit unions,” Alkami founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Product Officer Stephen Bohanon said. “Our partnership with Array enables banks and credit unions to provide added-value products to account holders, which increases engagement and potentially revenue as well.”

Among the solutions that will be made available to Alkami’s bank and credit union partners are Array’s My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine. My Credit Manager keeps users updated on changes to their credit score, enables them to explore different credit scenarios with a credit score simulator, allows them to conduct debt analysis, as well as see how different factors impact their credit score. With ID Protect, users can take advantage of a number of anti-fraud protections including identity and Dark Web monitoring, alerts, insurance, and restoration services in the event of identity theft. Array’s Offers Engine empowers banks and credit unions to better market their products and services to customers and members using targeted, actionable offers that are based on the individual’s actual credit circumstances.

“Today’s success formula for personal service includes a mix of in-branch experiences and digital tools that add value to account holders every time they log in,” Array co-founder and CEO Martin Toha explained. “Alkami and Array are making it easier than ever to help banks and credit unions deploy a consistent roadmap of innovative digital products for account holders.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, when it debuted at FinovateSpring as “iThryv,” Alkami has grown into a leading digital banking solution provider. The Plano, Texas-based fintech serves both retail and business customers with onboarding, engagement, and account servicing. Clients can enhance their use of the Alkami platform with upgrades and leverage both Alkami’s product suite, as well as integrated, third-party solutions to enhance and customize their experience. Alkami is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker “ALKT,” and has a market capitalization of $1.3 billion.

Winning Best of Show honors in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall last September and again in its return to the Finovate stage last month for FinovateSpring, Array is a financial enablement platform that specializes in embeddable and white label solutions. Founded in 2020, the company enables its clients to boost end customer engagement by providing them with innovative credit and identity solutions that enhance the customer experience.

Array raised an undisclosed amount of funding in June 2021 from Operator Partners and the FIS FinTech Accelerator in Partnership with The Venture Center. The company is based in New York City.

Photo by Pixabay

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Glia Acquires Finn AI for Undisclosed Sum

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 23, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finn.ai, Glia, Mergers & Acquisitions

Digital customer service firm Glia agreed to acquire conversational AI technology company Finn AI.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Glia Co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said that Finn AI is a strong fit for Glia because of its technology, market approach, and company culture.

Digital customer service firm Glia is enhancing its offering with its recent acquisition of conversational AI technology company and fellow Finovate alum Finn AI.

Financial terms of the agreement, which will integrate Finn.ai’s conversational AI solutions into Glia’s customer service platform, were not disclosed. Glia Co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said that Finn AI is a strong fit for Glia because of its technology, market approach, and company culture.

“This marks a new chapter for Virtual Assistants: Verticalization with Scale,” Michaeli said. “Generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ bot providers have largely failed to meet the full potential of conversational AI, leading to the emergence of vendors focusing on specific industry verticals. Until now, none of the financial services bot vendors have been able to achieve widespread adoption on their own.”

Finn AI Co-founder and CEO Jake Tyler said that joining forces with Glia will offer Finn AI scale. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., Finn AI aims to transform customer engagement and increase financial literacy with its AI-powered conversational banking technology. Among the company’s clients are ATB Financial, BECU, United Federal Credit Union, EQ Bank, Civista Bank, and Truist Momentum.

According to the press release, Finn AI and Glia have a lot of shared clients, and Finn AI’s technology is already integrated into Glia. Post-acquisition, the company’s leadership team will take on leadership positions within Glia. As for Finn AI’s Canadian headquarters, Glia plans to use the location to establish a “Conversational AI Center of Excellence.”

Glia was founded in 2012 as SaleMove. The company offers digital communication choices, on-screen collaboration, and AI-enabled assistance tools. Glia, which has taken home 10 Finovate Best of Show awards for its live demos, most recently showcased its tools at FinovateSpring 2021. Finn AI also boasts accolades from the Finovate audience, having taken home two Finovate Best of Show awards for its demos at FinovateAsia 2016 and FinovateFall 2017.

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Payments Solution Provider SumUp Raises $624 Million at a Valuation of $8.5 Billion

By David Penn Posted on June 23, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, SumUp

E-commerce payments enabler SumUp raised $624 million (€590 million) in a combination of equity and debt financing this week.
The funding round was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
This week’s investment gives SumUp a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion).

In a round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities – and featuring participation from funds managed by BlackRock, btov Partners, Centerbridge, Crestline, Fin Capital, and Sentinel Dome Partners – e-commerce payments innovator SumUp has secured an investment of $624 million (€590 million). The funding gives the London-based company a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion). SumUp co-founder Marc-Alexander Christ said in a statement that the capital will “enable us to continue to build out our product ecosystem, expand into new markets, (and) pursue value-adding acquisitions.”

The funding was a 50/50 mix of debt and equity and includes SumUp’s first equity infusion since 2017. The company’s total funding stands at $1.6 billion – most of which is debt financing. SumUp secured €750 million in debt funding in 2021.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Christ called the company’s new valuation “true and fair”. This statement comes months after it was reported that SumUp was seeking an investment that would give the company a significantly higher valuation – to the tune of $21 billion (€20 billion). Christ suggested that the current valuation reflects “the price people put on the company in the worst of markets” and that SumUp’s valuation was unlikely to move any lower in the future.

SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. In the years since, the company has grown to serve more than four million businesses with its payment solutions that range from card readers and point of sale solutions to business accounts and invoicing. The company began this year teaming up with Worldpay from FIS to support its global expansion efforts. SumUp will use Worldpay’s global acquiring services, including authorization, clearing and settlement, dispute management and data insights.

Also this year, SumUp announced a referral deal with Latin American and European e-commerce platform PrestaShop. The partnership gave “hundreds of thousands” of merchants on the PrestaShop platform access to SumUp’s product suite of payment solutions and business tools. Nearly 300,000 websites rely on PrestaShop’s technology, and the company sees its collaboration with SumUp as part of its strategy to enable more merchants to launch and scale their businesses.

“By partnering with PrestaShop, we will continue to expand our support for digital transformation of small businesses, by ensuring their products and services are also available online for their customers,” SumUp Head of Sales and Partnerships James Henry said. “Our partnership will enable merchants with a seamless and secure payment experience for all major credit and debit cards, an important tool in enabling small business success in today’s environment.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp is headquartered in London. Daniel Klein is founder and CEO.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin

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DigiShares Receives Grant from Polymesh Association to Support Tokenization of Securities

By David Penn Posted on June 22, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DigiShares, Polymesh

Two Finovate newcomers – DigiShares and the Polymesh Network – have teamed up to promote the use of tokenization to create and manage securities.
The partnership comes in the form of a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF), a part of the not-for-profit Polymesh Association.
DigiShares is headquartered in Denmark and demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2021; Polymesh is based in Switzerland and demoed its technology a year later at FinovateSpring 2022.

Digishares, a Danish white-label platform for tokenizing real estate, is the first company to receive a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF). The EDF is a creation of the Polymesh Association, which is a part of Polymath, the company behind the Polymesh Network. The Polymesh Network is an institutional-grade, permissioned blockchain for regulated assets that was featured in Polymath’s Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring.

With $10 million in funding, the EDF is designed to financially support companies and projects that can bring value to the Polymesh ecosystem. DigiShares received its grant for integrating Polymesh and expanding the Polymesh ecosystem to DigiShares’ network of clients and partners. Additionally, DigiShares will facilitate the migration of its clients’ current ERC-1400 assets from Ethereum to Polymesh. DigiShares has supported ERC-1400 on Ethereum since 2019 and been an early supporter of Polymesh, as well, having joined the company’s partnership ecosystem back in January of 2021. The integration announced this week will allow issuers to DigiShares’ tokenization platform to create and manage security tokens on Polymesh.

“Polymath has been a long and trusted partner of DigiShares and we are proud to soon support the Polymesh blockchain,” DigiShares CEO Claus Skaaning said. “We believe that Polymesh has long term potential to lead the security token space.”

The grant award announcement arrives weeks after the Polymesh Association introduced its Ecosystem Development Fund, which itself follows the listing of Polymesh’s native token POLYX on Huobi, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world. The fund is a wager that financially backing businesses that can help promote wider adoption of Polymesh will prove an effective way to incentivize companies to build, integrate, and use the institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure.

“The Ecosystem Development Fund delivers two benefits to service providers,” Polymesh Association Head of Tokenization Graeme Moore said. “Successful applicants not only receive funding but they can also attract clients by adding a Polymesh integration to their roadmap.”

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Aalborg, Denmark, DigiShares made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring 2021. At the event, the company demonstrated its white-label tokenization platform for real estate, which adds both automation and liquidity to the property market. The DigiShares platform digitizes and automates both the financing and the corporate management aspects of real estate projects. The platform also provides a bulletin board marketplace that leverages blockchain technology and peer-to-peer trading without counterparty risk.

Among Finovate’s newest alums, Polymath demonstrated its Polymath Token Studio at FinovateSpring last month in San Francisco. The Token Studio is an interface that enables the user to create, issue, and manage blockchain-based securities. “Thanks to blockchain and tokenization we can reduce the costs of creating, issuing, and managing securities by over 90%,” Moore explained from the Finovate stage in May. “Banks, custodians, transfer agents, broker-dealers and these other service providers can give their clients new and fresh experiences, and we can create new securities and new financial instruments that previously weren’t possible.”

Polymath and the Polymesh Network are based in Zug, Switzerland. Vince Kadar is Polymath CEO.

Photo by rovenimages.com

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Product Quality Innovator unitQ Unveils its Impact Analysis Tool

By David Penn Posted on June 21, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, unitQ

Less than a month after its FinovateSpring demo, unitQ has introduced its Impact Analysis tool.
The new offering helps businesses identify both important product quality issues in their app as well as the impact of fixing those issues.
Impact Analysis enables companies to improve their unitQ Scores, which enable businesses to accurately compare their app with rival apps in the same industry.

Product quality platform and Finovate newcomer unitQ recently launched its Impact Analysis tool. The new offering helps businesses recognize and address critical product quality issues and the impact of correcting them.

“With Impact Analysis, teams can learn what impacts fixing an issue might have on KPIs like 1-star reviews, support tickets, brand sentiment, and more – before taking action,” unitQ Product Manager Brett Caplan wrote on the company blog late last week.

UnitQ’s Impact Analysis tool works by automatically identifying user-generated issues that will have the greatest impact on product quality if fixed. These issues – which unitQ calls “Quality Monitors” – not only guide teams toward the most important product quality concerns, but also steer the team away from concerns that may seem significant, but may have a minimal or even adverse impact on an app’s unitQ Score, as well as its rating within its own marketplace (i.e., Apple App Store, Google Play Store, etc.).

The unitQ Score enables companies to compare their app’s quality — based on Apple App and Google Play stores rating and reviews – against that of other apps from the same industry. A companion assessment, the Internal unitQ Score includes everything evaluated in the unitQ Score, but also includes user feedback culled from social media such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as data from customer support and chatbot applications. The new Impact Analysis tool enables companies to see the impact of potential improvements and changes on both scores.

“A unitQ Score closer to 100 indicates a brand has few product quality issues overall,” Caplan explained. “It means that users enjoy the product, the experience is well-designed, easy to use, responsive – and is virtually free of bugs, broken flows, and operational mistakes. Higher scores equal better products, and more satisfied customers.”

The Impact Analysis tool is powered by the machine learning capabilities of the unitQ Monitor, which measures, analyzes, and visualizes the unstructured data of user feedback. The technology translates text from more than 70 languages, normalizes and removes personally-identifiable information (PII), enriches data with sentiment analysis, and appends with product metadata. By turning qualitative feedback into quantitative data, unitQ helps companies discover important insights that enable them to improve product quality.

Headquartered in Burlingame, California, unitQ most recently demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022 in May. The company was co-founded by Christian Wiklund (CEO) and Niklas Lindstrom (CTO) in 2018. Among the company’s customers are firms such as Chime, Current, and fellow Finovate alums Klarna and Nubank.

Photo by Pixabay

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Autobooks Lands $50 Million in Funding to Boost Bank Distribution

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 21, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Autobooks, Daily news, Funding

Autobooks has received $50 million in a Series C funding round led by Macquarie Capital.
The investment more than doubles Autobooks’ total funding raised, boosting it to $98 million.
Autobooks won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateFall 2021.

Payment and accounting platform Autobooks raked in $50 million in a Series C round led by Macquarie Capital with additional support from new and existing investors Baird Capital, Commerce Ventures, Draper Triangle, MissionOG, and TD Bank. The investment more than doubles the Michigan-based company’s total raised, boosting that figure to $98 million.

Autobooks plans to use today’s funding to accelerate distribution into the U.S. banking market.

Autobooks serves more than 60,000 small businesses with a range of tools including digital payment acceptance, online invoicing, online enrollment, accounting, bookkeeping, financial reporting, billpay, and more. The company’s embedded receivables platform for small businesses enables digital invoices, payment acceptance, and automated accounting directly within their mobile banking suite.

To facilitate this, Autobooks integrates its tools with a range of digital banking providers, making its services available to over one third of the U.S. market. Companies that offer Autobooks’ invoicing and payment acceptance tools to their small business clients include Alkami, Bottomline, CSI, FIS, Jack Henry, NCR, and Q2.

In addition to helping small businesses, Autobooks also has the potential to benefit banks. TD Online Accounting, which is a whitelabeled version of Autobooks’ technology, has seen deposits from its 700+ small business clients increase 65%. Simultaneously, the firm has experienced a 2x increase in product usage.

“Businesses are increasingly looking for simple, bundled solutions to get paid and automate their back-office. If the bank can’t offer these services quickly, businesses will (and have) gone elsewhere,” said Autobooks Cofounder and CEO Steve Robert. “To maintain primacy, banks must optimize legacy merchant service programs to include digital payment acceptance tools that feature self-service onboarding. Autobooks makes this possible through our payment facilitation (payfac) model, which can be enabled within days by industry leading partners.”

Autobooks averages more than 10,000 monthly enrollments and has surpassed $40 billion in transaction volume. From 2021 to 2022, the company has experienced 5x revenue growth, 3x employee growth, and 6.5x bank partner growth. Autobooks won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateFall 2021.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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Kofax Acquires e-Invoicing Network Tungsten

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 20, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Kofax, Mergers & Acquisitions

Kofax is acquiring B2B e-invoicing network Tungsten.
The combined companies will offer clients a more holistic e-invoicing approach.
Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed.

Intelligent automation software platform Kofax has acquired B2B e-invoicing network Tungsten for an undisclosed amount. Kofax CEO Reynolds Bish anticipates the acquisition will “provide more comprehensive and higher value invoice processing and accounts payable automation solutions” to the company’s customers.

Founded in 2000, Tungsten facilitates invoice-to-pay processes by digitalizing invoices using automation. Headquartered in London, Tungsten enables suppliers to submit tax compliant e-invoices in 54 countries. The company processes invoices for 60% of the FTSE 100 and 68% of the Fortune 500. Last year, Tungsten processed transactions worth over $270 billion for clients including Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and the U.S. Federal Government.

When combined with Kofax’s invoice processing and AP automation portfolio, the combined companies will offer a more holistic e-invoicing approach to companies across the globe. The cloud-based offering will provide solutions for direct supplier onboarding, e-invoice exchange, interoperability, scanned and OCR paper invoices, machine readable PDF invoices, PDF data extraction, and payment processing.

“Finance procurement leaders are looking beyond traditional invoice OCR and workflow capabilities to modern e-invoicing, supplier management, and value-added services – accelerating how they pay and relate with suppliers,” said Tungsten CEO Paul Cooper. “A full technology suite from Kofax will bring efficiencies to how they work with their suppliers, compliantly invoice, and focus on leveraging data to drive insights while reducing cost.”

Kofax was originally founded in 1985 and leverages robotic process automation (RPA) to automate and enhance business’ workflow. The company’s SaaS solutions automate the processing of over 60 million invoices for more than 11,000 organizations around the world. Two years after Kofax went public in 2013, the company was delisted when it was acquired by Lexmark for $1 billion. In 2017, Kofax was once again acquired, this time by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. Kofax itself has made a total of 12 acquisitions, including Tungsten.

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Anodot Helps Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier Implement Network Monitoring Solution

By David Penn Posted on June 16, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Anodot, Daily news

Business monitoring innovator Anodot and network telemetry and analytics solutions provider BENOCS teamed up to help Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier implement a new network monitoring solution.
The new solution will help companies monitor a wide range of business operations.
Anodot made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in March.

Virginia-based business monitoring company and Finovate newcomer Anodot has helped Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier implement a new and improved network monitoring solution. Deployed in partnership with Anodot and network telemetry and analytics solutions provider BENOCS, the new service monitors network data and recognizes changes in traffic behavior and flow. This helps ensure that only relevant anomaly alerts are issued and received, reducing cost and effort.

“Telco service providers must process an immense amount of data from multiple sources to ensure optimal service across their complex network environments,” Anodot CEO David Drai said. “By monitoring granular performance and fault data in real-time and providing automated insights, Anodot enables communications services providers to identify and resolve issues quicker. Alert noise will now be a thing of the past for Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier.”

Anodot offers a business monitoring platform that leverages machine learning to analyze and correlate key business parameters and provide real-time alerts and forecasts. The company reports that members of the Fortune 500 have used Anodot’s technology to reduce time-to-detection for revenue-critical issues by up to 80%. The platform monitors a wide range of business operations, including front end applications, UX, backend servers, APIs to vendors and providers, payment flows, balances, ledgers, investments, trades, and more.

“Having been a satisfied BENOCS customer for a number of years now, we decided it was time to take the next monitoring step,” Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier VP of Internet & Content Services Carsten Bruns said. “The integration of Anodot’s anomaly detection technology with BENOCS’ comprehensive Flow Analytics has already saved us valuable time in identifying irregularities and rectifying network issues.”

Founded in 2014, Anodot made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year, demonstrating its payments monitoring tool. In the months since then, the company has forged partnerships with telecommunications service provider Altice Portugal, connectivity company Vodafone New Zealand and, most recently, technology intelligence leader Snow Software. Anodot has raised more than $64 million in funding from investors including Alicorn, Redline Capital, and Intel Capital.

Photo by Brett Sayles

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