Alumni News

Veem Teams Up with Visa, Q2 to Bring Digital Money Management and AR/AP Innovations to SMEs

Veem Teams Up with Visa, Q2 to Bring Digital Money Management and AR/AP Innovations to SMEs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Q2, Veem, VISA


From a collaboration with Visa to a partnership with Q2, new Finovate alum Veem, which made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall, continues to offer the kind of solutions to help make business payments easy, efficient, and affordable.

In fact, within one month of the company’s first-ever demo on the Finovate stage – a presentation of Veem’s Partner Connect product – the San Francisco, California-based company inked two major deals with some of the most innovative companies in financial services and digital banking.

Veem’s partnership with Visa, announced in the first half of October, will give the company’s 400,000+ customers access to a new SMB Visa card program, as well as digital money movement capabilities courtesy of Visa’s real-time push payments platform, Visa Direct. The agreement will enable Veem customers to generate and issue virtual Visa payment cards that can be used to cover business costs ranging from payments to suppliers to more general business expenses. The virtual card program, along with Veem’s spend management tools, also provides reconciliation and other financial benefits to help customers further digitize and streamline their operations. Access to Visa Direct will give Veem’s U.S. clients the ability to send money directly to both bank accounts and eligible Visa cards in more than 160 currencies.

“Visa is renowned for having broad network acceptance both domestically and internationally,” Veem CEO Marwan Forzley said. “Our collaboration helps Veem expand digital payment options for our customers, as we continue to build the next generation global solution for businesses.”

Veem also last month announced that it was teaming up with digital banking innovator Q2. The partnership is geared toward taking the friction out of the accounts payable/accounts receivable process for SMEs by making Veem’s AP/AR automation platform available to the 450+ financial institutions and 1.5 million businesses on Q2’s digital banking platform.

“This partnership with Veem gives our Financial institutions the ability to deliver Veem’s modern payment services to SMB customers with agility and reliability,” Q2 Innovation Studio Managing Director Johnny Ola said. “Businesses are looking for embedded solutions that act as a one-stop-shop to conduct all their day-to-day transactions. With our integration with Veem, we are excited to give our financial institution customers the option to offer small businesses innovative technology solutions.”

The two collaborations were only part of a very busy autumn for Veem, which was founded n 2014. Also last month, the company appointed Jeff Revoy as Chief Growth Officer and Travis Green as Vice President of Product Management. Revoy brings 20 years of CEO, President, and C-level experience at a number of public and VC-backed firms. Previous to his joining Veem, Revoy was Chief Operating Officer for SpaceIQ, a real estate workplace management software company he founded in 2016 that was acquired by WeWork in the summer of 2019.

In September, Veem secured $31 million in strategic funding in a round led by Truist Ventures. The company said in a statement that the capital will help it develop a robust channel partner program to broaden the company’s geographic footprint. The investment takes the company’s total equity funding to just over $100 million.

“This funding round marks an important milestone for the company, putting us in an ideal position to build out our channel partner program and prepare for Veem’s next stage of global growth,” Forzley said when the investment was announced. “Our channel partner network serves as our vehicle to better commercialize our product offering and further expand upon our market development efforts.”

As Veem’s FinovateFall debut showed, the development of its channel partner program has already borne fruit. At the conference, Veem’s Revoy and Connor Grilo demonstrated a new minimal code integration – Partner Connect – that enables banks to offer their clients an all-in-one, global payments platform designed for small and mid-sized businesses that keeps the bank’s branding at the forefront. The solution is integrated with the major accounting platforms so that, with a couple of clicks, users can reconcile what they are sending out from or receiving in Veem with their accounting software.

“There’s no back and forth, there’s no trying to keep two separate systems,” Revoy said from the Finovate stage. “All of this is automated and designed in a way so that, as a business owner, it can be fast, it can save you time, hopefully it will save you money, and will save you a lot of headaches, because everything is tied together.”

Photo by Ariadne Barroso from Pexels

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Moven Teams up with Apex Edge to Bring Bill Negotiation to Financial Wellness

Moven Teams up with Apex Edge to Bring Bill Negotiation to Financial Wellness
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Moven

Partner-enablement platform ApexEdge will bring new savings opportunities to Moven’s financial wellness platform courtesy of a partnership announced this week.

“We’re excited to help the financial services industry find new ways to help consumers save, while living within their means,” Moven CRO Bryan Clagett said. “Banks and credit unions particularly, can differentiate by offering services that have immediate impact to consumers’ bottom line, while supporting their brand ambitions of acting as a financial advocate.”

ApexEdge uses actionable intelligence to spot and secure savings opportunities for consumers. Via its BillShark bill negotiation service, ApexEdge enables management and negotiation of a wide range of monthly bills including cable television, Internet, wireless, home security. The company says that it has provided more than 350,000 customers with a savings success rate of 85% and an average savings of $295. The partnership with ApexEdge only enhances the value that Moven offers its clients. The technology helps move financial wellness beyond turning data into actionable insights to tangibly saving customers money via cost savings not traditionally available through banks and credit unions.

“It is exciting to play a role in the financial wellness movement that the retail banking industry is embracing,” ApexEdge CEO Steven McKean said. “By partnering with innovative companies like Moven, banks and credit unions have access to the tools and technology to affect real, meaningful positive change in the daily lives of their customers and members.”

Moven’s bank-in-a-box solution enables banks and fintechs to launch a fully functional digital challenger bank in 90 days. The company’s platform uses both proprietary bank and third-party data to give institutions the ability to offer real-time insights for their digital banking customers. The platform’s features – such as Spend Meter, Savings Stash, and Spend by Category – further help customers get a more holistic view of their finances. The technology leverages open APIs and SDKs to provide scalability, optimize speed to market, and ensure an integration and launch that is both customizable and quick.

Moven founder Brett King joined Q2 VP of Strategic Solutions Rahm McDaniel in a demonstration of CorePro, the core processing platform behind Moven’s digital bank-in-a-box, at FinovateSpring 2021 in May. The technology is geared toward enabling community and regional banks, as well as credit unions, to compete with the digital-native offerings from challenger and neobanks.

Winner of Best Embedded Finance Solution at this year’s 2021 Finovate Awards, ApexEdge was founded in 2020. Earlier this fall, the company announced that a new, financial wellness mobile app Upwise, offered by MetLife, would offer Billshark bill negotiation services among its initial suite of capabilities.

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OurCrowd Raises $25 Million to Democratize Access to VC Funds

OurCrowd Raises $25 Million to Democratize Access to VC Funds
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, OurCrowd

Venture investing platform OurCrowd announced today it landed $25 million in funding. The convertible equity investment comes from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, a subsidiary of Softbank Group that specializes in growth capital and social impact investments.

Since it launched in 2013, OurCrowd’s platform has helped 140,000 accredited investors from more than 195 countries invest in over 280 companies and 30 funds. OurCrowd will use today’s round to build its investor base and more quickly identify high-potential, tech-enabled private companies.

“We are excited to be working with SoftBank Investment Advisers, one of the world’s largest technology-focused investors,” said CEO Jon Medved. “As a strategic investor with a global reach and a network of market-leading technology companies, they will be a pivotal partner in helping OurCrowd realize our vision of democratizing access to venture capital.”

Today’s deal also involves a strategic partnership between OurCrowd and SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA). Softbank will consider investment opportunities via OurCrowd’s VC platform and the two will work together to evaluate market trends.

“Softbank has been investing ahead of major technology trends for over 40 years and we believe there is huge, embedded potential in the private markets ecosystem,” said Head of SBIA Operations in Israel Yossi Cohen. “In OurCrowd, we have an investment partner with the networks and pedigree to help promising Israeli startups to potentially emerge as international tech champions.”

2021 has been a good year of growth for OurCrowd. The Israel-based company saw new registered subscribers increase from 25,000 last year to 75,000 so far this year– a 300% boost. This uplift is fueled by OurCrowd’s ability to curate a diverse portfolio of startups that are poised for both growth and success. More than 50 companies in OurCrowd’s portfolio have made profitable exits, including Lemonade, Beyond Meat, Kenna, Argus, and Wave.

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Mastercard Launches Touch Card to Support Visually Impaired Consumers

Mastercard Launches Touch Card to Support Visually Impaired Consumers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Diversity in Fintech, MasterCard

Mastercard introduced its latest innovation to help ensure that visually impaired and partially sighted consumers can use its spending and credit solutions as readily as any other cardholder. The company’s Touch Card, announced this week, enables the visually impaired to easily determine whether the Mastercard they are holding is a credit, debit, or prepaid card thanks to a few simple design elements to the physical card itself.

At a time when payment cards are becoming sleeker, eschewing the boldly embossed letters and numbers that have distinguished these cards for decades, the new Touch Card features a new design that, while not bucking the trend toward flatter, thiner cards, provides the kind of tactile cues that visually impaired consumers can use to select and use the right card. With a series of notches on the side of the card – a round notch for credit cards; a broad, square-shaped notch for debit cards; and a triangular notch for prepaid cards – Mastercard’s new Touch Card is another example of what Mastercard Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Raja Rajamannar called innovation “driven by the impulse to include.”

“The Touch Card will provide a greater sense of security, inclusivity, and independence to the 2.2 billion people around the world with visual impairments,” Rajamannar said. “For the visually impaired, identifying their payment cards is a real struggle. This tactile solution allows consumers to correctly orient the card and know which payment card they are using.”

The new cards have been endorsed by The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the U.K. and by VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired in the U.S. Co-designed by augmented identity specialist IDEMIA, Mastercard’s Touch Card works with bot point-of-scale terminals and ATMs, meaning that the new solution can be readily deployed at scale.

“With one in seven people experiencing some form of disability,” Rajamannar said, “designing these products with accessibility in mind gives them equal opportunity to benefit from the ease and security of a digital world. No one should be left behind.”

It is worth mentioning that the Touch Card is only one of Mastercard’s initiatives to empower those with visual impairments. The company includes its signature melody, which signifies that card transactions have been completed successfully at the checkout counter, among these efforts.

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Fundica Teams Up with Digital Commerce Bank to Help Businesses Find Funding

Fundica Teams Up with Digital Commerce Bank to Help Businesses Find Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Fundica

One month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York, AI-powered funding search engine Fundica has partnered with Digital Commerce Bank. The Bank will host Fundica’s online funding search solution on its website for free, making it easier for businesses to search for and secure information on a wide variety of funding sources, including grants, tax credits, government loans, loan guarantees, and accelerators and incubators.

Users of the search engine can personalize results quickly and choose from among 35+ different search criteria. The solution is updated in real time, helping ensure that companies and business owners have access to the most up-to-date, accurate information on funding opportunities that are relevant to them.

“Digital Commerce Bank is proud to offer Fundica’s funding search technology as part of our commitment to support and promote business in Canada,” Digital Commerce Bank President and CEO Jeffrey Smith said. A privately held, Schedule 1 Canadian chartered bank headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Digital Commerce Bank offers payment and banking experiences, as well as card services, digital wallets, and loan origination and management tools.

The institution is regulated by OSFI (the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions of Canada), is a member of Payments Canada, and is a principle member of Interac, Visa, and Mastercard. Digital Commerce Bank changed its name from DirectCash Bank in November of last year in a move Smith said would allow the institution to “unify (its) branding, technology, and offering. The firm reported total assets of $94 million (C$117 million) this summer.

“We are delighted to partner with an innovative group like DCBank who shares our mutual commitment to make finding and applying for funding easier for entrepreneurs across Canada,” Fundica President and co-founder Mike Lee said.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Fundica leverages machine learning, crowdsourcing, web crawlers, and its own data science team to offer business owners and entrepreneurs dynamic, relevant funding data. In addition to Fundica’s funding search engine for businesses, the company’s white label and API-based solutions enhance the ability of its partners to help its customers better navigate the funding landscape. Companies have successfully leveraged Fundica’s technology to drive traffic to their websites and capture leads in search of funding, better engage customers with a “one-stop-shop” for current and relevant funding information, as well as generate data-driven insights.

In addition to its online white label service, Fundica also offers two other licensed services: AdvisorPro and Automated Funding Alerts. AdvisorPro is designed for financial advisors to use the Fundica database directly to better serve their clients. Automated Funding Alerts service sends funding opportunities to a mailing list of businesses provided by the subscribing firm. For its role in playing “matchmaker” between businesses and funding entities, Fundica has earned the nickname “the eHarmony of the funding world.”

“Fundica is the most useful tool entrepreneurs can use when it comes to funding,” former, eight-year Intuit Canada President and CEO Jeff Cates said. “Having their white-label solution on our website increased signups to Intuit’s products tremendously.”

An award-winning innovator that has earned recognition from the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation, Startup Canada, and CFO Canada, Fundica also organizes and runs the Fundica Roadshow. The annual event is held in cities across both Canada and the U.S., and is geared toward helping business owners understand the range of funding opportunities available to them, as well as help make connections between entrepreneurs seeking funding and the funding sources themselves.

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Marqeta Partners with Amount to Help Banks Enter the BNPL Space

Marqeta Partners with Amount to Help Banks Enter the BNPL Space
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqueta

Payment processor Marqeta teamed up with buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Amount this week. The two are working together to help banks compete in the BNPL arena. The partnership will integrate Amount’s BNPL solution and Marqeta’s instant virtual card issuance tools to help banks launch their own BNPL offering and virtual card.

“With escalating consumer expectations for simple, digital experiences at every step, banks must compete or continue to lose market share to digital challengers who offer a more flexible way for their customers to pay,” said Amount CEO Adam Hughes. “We continue to develop and expand our platform to give banks the agility and tools they need to create high-value interactions at the point of sale. As a leader in modern payments and innovation, Marqeta shares our vision and is the ideal partner to bring best-in-class solutions to banks.”

Banks have traditionally been left out of BNPL spending, since they lack the tools to provide such offerings to their customers. However, Amount takes a modular approach to BNPL that integrates with legacy platforms. The configurable nature of Amount’s tools gives banks flexibility to provide customers split pay or installment payments across multiple channels and payment vehicles.

“This partnership creates a pathway for banks to become more agile and meet customer demand for more flexible ways to pay, including BNPL,” said Marqeta Chief Revenue Officer Darren Mowry.

The new offering comes at a good time; consumer interest in BNPL has been steadily increasing in the past two years. And according to Juniper Research, money spent using BNPL tools is expected to nearly quadruple between 2021 and 2026, amounting to a 274% increase.

Amount was founded in 2019 and has since raised $243 million. The company’s BNPL technology aims to help traditional FIs compete with the rising wave of challenger banks by helping banks go digital in a matter of months. Amount’s white-labeled products help banks with omnichannel digital account opening, fraud prevention, identity verification, loans, deposits, and credit cards. The Chicago-based company is planning to add home equity, auto, and small business loans to its retail banking suite.

Marqeta is a modern card issuing platform that offers banks and fintechs the tools to create customized payment card programs. The company was founded in 2010 and went public earlier this year in an IPO that raised $1.2 billion on the NASDAQ exchange. Marqeta trades under the ticker MQ and has a market capitalization of $16.8 billion.

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Envestnet Makes Strategic Investment in YieldX

Envestnet Makes Strategic Investment in YieldX
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Envestnet, Funding

Investment solutions provider Envestnet announced it has made a strategic investment in fixed income investing platform YieldX this week. Illinois-based Envestnet was the lead investor in YieldX’s most recent, Series A funding round.

The round, which totaled $18 million, brings YieldX’s total funding to $36 million. YieldX will use the money to scale its quant, engineering, and analytics teams and to expand its API suite. Specifically, YieldX aims to further personalize its offerings, add new data and integrations, expand existing ESG customization, and execute its go-to-market strategy.

Through the newly formed partnership, Envestnet will distribute YieldX’s products to its nearly 108,000 advisors and 6,000+ enterprise customers. The tie-up will help Envestnet clients offer their end consumers better fixed-income investment outcomes.

“We are fully vested in enhancing our ecosystem to intelligently connect financial lives, and we believe income and protection solutions are critical to helping make financial wellness a reality,” said Envestnet Chief Strategy Officer Rich Aneser. “Through our strategic partnership with YieldX, and investing to expand its capabilities, we are able to bring more income related solutions to market for helping advisors meet a critical client need.”

Founded in 2019, YieldX offers tools for fintechs, wealth managers, broker dealers, and asset managers. Company Cofounder and CEO Adam Green called the partnership a “powerful way to level the fixed income playing field for Envestnet’s broad network of advisors and end investors with solutions that simplify the traditional complexities of sourcing and trading fixed income assets.”

Envestnet was founded in 1999 and has since made 13 acquisitions, including its most notorious buy, Yodlee, in 2015. The company’s purchase of data aggregation firm Yodlee broadened its offerings from advisor technology and launched it into the world of open finance. Envestnet is a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ENV and has a market capitalization of $4.66 billion.

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Klarna Adds Online Trip Planning with Inspirock Acquisition

Klarna Adds Online Trip Planning with Inspirock Acquisition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna, Mergers & Acquisitions

Does COVID have you dreaming up your long-awaited vacation? Consumer payment services firm Klarna’s latest acquisition may be of help.

The Sweden-based company snapped up Inspirock, an online trip planning service, for an undisclosed amount. Klarna CEO and Co-Founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski described the addition of travel planning “a natural extension of the benefits Klarna brings to payments and shopping.”

Founded in 2012, Inspirock leverages AI to help its customers explore a destination’s offerings and create personalized itineraries utilizing local expertise. On an annual basis, the California-based company sees 25+ million customers each year.

The integration will allow Klarna’s 90 million customers to use the Klarna app to pay for a trip in installments. In addition to the payment aspect, Klarna will also help users plan for their trip. Inspirock matches travelers’ preferences with over 230 million data points to optimize their travel itinerary and discover hidden gems.

“For customers, this makes the whole journey from inspiration to planning and preparing for a trip simpler, less stressful, and more fun, while enabling our retail partners to better reach and engage with their audiences by offering more personalized content,” said Siemiatkowski.

Combining travel planning with its existing payment capabilities inches Klarna towards becoming more like a super app. Founded in 2005 and with $3.7 billion in funding, Klarna offers buy now, pay later options to help users avoid credit cards while enjoying payment flexibility. Klarna also offers a shopping app to provide users with a holistic shopping experience– from payments to shipment tracking– and a rewards club it describes as the “vibeyest community in shopping.”

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Currencycloud Taps Plaid to Streamline Account Funding

Currencycloud Taps Plaid to Streamline Account Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Currency Cloud, Daily news, Plaid

Global payments platform Currencycloud has teamed up with open finance network Plaid this week. Through the collaboration, the two will offer a joint solution to make it easy for U.K. banks and fintechs to operate in multiple currencies.

The overall objective of the partnership is to reduce friction for Currencycloud customers. Currencycloud will embed Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services (PIS) into its app, allowing customers to pull money directly into their account from any bank without ever leaving the app.

The rollout will begin with customers using the Currencycloud Direct white-label solution, and will later roll out to the entire Currencycloud platform.

“The internet has made business more borderless than ever before, but it is incredibly difficult to move money across countries. Accepting, settling, and converting payments is complicated, expensive, and can take time,” said Plaid Head of European Partnerships Farid Sedjelmaci. “Combining Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services with Currencycloud’s all-inclusive platform for foreign exchange provides a smooth payment experience that obscures all of the complications with online global money movement.”

Prior to the partnership, the only way customers using Currencycloud Direct could top up their account was to leave the app, log into their bank app, and submit the payment. Embedding Plaid’s PIS reduces this friction, streamlining the account funding process.

Currencycloud was founded in 2012 and has since processed more than $100 billion to over 180 countries. The U.K.-based company works with FIs and fintechs including Visa, Dwolla, and Mambu to help them provide cross-border infrastructure solutions to their clients.

Plaid helps 11,000+ FIs offer their customers access to third party financial services via a suite of APIs to connect consumers, financial institutions, and developers. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

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Zopa Raises $304 Million Ahead of IPO

Zopa Raises $304 Million Ahead of IPO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Funding, Zopa

Peer-to-peer lending platform and digital bank Zopa landed $304 million (£220 million) this week. The investment marks Zopa’s largest round to-date, and brings the U.K.-based company’s total funding to $792 million.

According to TechCrunch, today’s funding, which follows a $28 million investment received earlier this year, gives Zopa a post-money valuation of $1 billion (£750 million).

Softbank Vision Fund 2 led the round, which saw contributions from existing investors including Silverstripe, Northzone and Augmentum. Zopa anticipates the cash will help bring its banking tools to more U.K. consumers.

Zopa is on track to hit profitability by early next year. If it does, it will be one of the fastest digital banks in the U.K. to do so. Additionally, if Zopa continues on this path of success, the company is likely to IPO at the end of next year.

Founded in 2004, Zopa debuted its peer-to-peer lending platform at FinovateSpring 2008. The company has since evolved as a player in the challenger banking space. Zopa’s differentiator from competitors, however, is that it is not a fully-fleged bank. The company does not offer a checking account or payment card. Instead, it focuses on savings, loans, and credit-building tools.

Zopa received its banking license in June of 2020. Since transitioning from its flagship peer-to-peer lending model, Zopa has reached $931 million (£675 million) in customer deposits for its savings accounts, has issued 150,000 credit cards, and is now a top 10 credit card issuer in the U.K. based on new customers.

The company’s lending products have also seen success. So far this year, Zopa has disbursed over $8.3 billion (£6 billion) in loans. The company lends over $138 million (£100 million) each year in car loans.

Zopa has formed two recent partnerships that centralize on helping users build and access credit. Its partnership with ClearScore helps provide a pre-approved credit card to Zopa customers who have been declined credit, and its integration with CreditLadder enables renters to build credit by reporting their rental payments.

As for what’s next, Zopa says it is “focused on building a sustainable, profitable business model” that benefits both customers and shareholders.

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More Than $1.1 Billion Raised by 14 Alums Q3 2021

More Than $1.1 Billion Raised by 14 Alums Q3 2021
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, David's column, Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding

For the third Q3 in a row, Finovate alums have raised at least $1 billion in equity funding. This year’s third quarter is consistent with both the amounts raised ($1.1 billion) and the number of alums securing investment (14) from the same quarter last year.

Interestingly, August continues to be a strong month for alum funding during the third quarter; for a third consecutive year, August investment has exceeded that of both July and September for our Finovate alums.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q3 2020: More than $1.2 billion raised by 14 alums
  • Q3 2019: More than $1 billion raised by 21 alums
  • Q3 2018: More than $400 million raised by 19 alums
  • Q3 2017: More than $1 billion raised by 31 alums
  • Q3 2016: More than $500 million raised by 30 alums

The third quarter of 2021 also saw one company, DriveWealth, become far and away the biggest recipient of investment dollars, topping the second biggest fundraiser by 3x. Three companies, M1 Finance, Alloy, and AuthenticID, secured triple-digit investments of at least $100 million.

The top ten equity investments, in a quarter with fourteen total alum fundraisings, represented the lion’s share of Q3’s investment total. Approximately 90% of the quarter’s total funding was represented by Q3’s top ten investments.

Top Ten Equity Investments for Q3 2021

  • DriveWealth: $450 million
  • M1 Finance: $150 million
  • Alloy: $100 million
  • AuthenticID: $100 million
  • Ocrolus: $80 million
  • Paystand: $50 million
  • Sezzle: $30 million
  • Dwolla: $21 million
  • Moneyhub: $18 million
  • Capitalise.com: $13.8 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q3 2021.

July 2021: More than $469 million raised by seven alums

August 2021: More than $476 million raised by five alums

September 2021: More than $180 million raised by two alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the third quarter of 2021, 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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Pagaya and SoFi Team Up to Broaden Access to Financial Services for Borrowers

Pagaya and SoFi Team Up to Broaden Access to Financial Services for Borrowers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SoFi

A newly announced collaboration between AI-powered credit and analysis technology company Pagaya and personal financial services innovator SoFi will help more eligible consumers find and secure financing. The partnership will enable SoFi members to leverage Pagaya’s AI network to access a wider range of financial solutions in what Pagaya said is the largest deployment of its technology in the fintech space to date.

“We are excited to leverage SoFi’s sophisticated tech platform, strong brand, and consumer appeal to originate loans through Pagaya’s AI network,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said, “extending its business to a broader audience, so more people can access credit and achieve their financial goals.”

Pagaya’s technology and infrastructure enables financial institutions, including lenders and fintechs, to offer their customers access to financial products beyond those available via traditional credit models. Using both AI and machine learning, Pagaya lowers risk for lenders and helps them make better credit decisions. The goal is to provide a better, more positive experience for borrowers, and higher conversion rates for loan providers, as well as improving the overall credit ecosystem.

“As Pagaya grows, it is imperative that we partner with companies that share our vision of providing increased efficiency through our AI network for lenders and access for its customers,” Pagaya CEO and co-founder Gal Krubiner said. “Working with a company such as SoFi, we are able to apply our artificial intelligence in a way to not only help SoFi extend capital to more people, but do so in a way to create less risk for our partner. This creates a symbiotic, win-win-win ecosystem across all parties.”

Founded in 2016 and maintaining offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Los Angeles, Pagaya became a public company earlier this fall in a $9 billion SPAC merger with EJF Acquisition Corporation. Earlier this month, Pagaya appointed former JP Morgan CMO Leslie Gillin to the post of Chief Growth Officer. Gillin arrives at a time when the company is looking to expand into new markets including personal and auto loans, credit cards, point-of-sale financing, single-family residencies, and more.

SoFi is an alum of our developers conference FinDEVrNewYork in 2017, which the company participated in with financial data platform Quovo. In the years since, SoFi has grown into a digital financial services giant with more than $50 billion in funded loans, and more than two million members who have paid off a total of more than $22 billion in debt. Additionally, the company recently has launched solutions such as SoFi Money and SoFi Invest which offer cash management (including early payday) and brokerage services, in a major expansion beyond its roots as online loan financing and refinancing innovator.

SoFi is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker SOFI and has a market capitalization of more than $16 billion. SoFi is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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