J’rrive! Arival Bank Launches As a Fully Licensed and Regulated Bank

J’rrive! Arival Bank Launches As a Fully Licensed and Regulated Bank

Arival Bank, which won Best of Show in its FinovateAsia debut in 2018, is now a fully licensed and regulated bank. The company was granted its U.S.-based banking license in Puerto Rico and will leverage its “U.S.-based but internationally friendly” license to work with customers around the world. The license generally allows banks to offer full stack fiat banking services, upon receiving the necessary authorization from the local regulator.

Arival Bank’s primary customers are international technology firms. The bank offers these companies USD-based bank accounts, and supports both domestic and international payments for global technology companies. Arival so far has onboarded more than 100 business customers from more than 25 countries, with the biggest demand coming from firms in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., European Union, and Singapore. Arival has experienced 1.7x month-over-month growth and boasts $13 million in assets under management.

“We’re focused on providing bank accounts to customers who have been labeled as ‘abnormal’ or ‘too risky’ by traditional banks,” Arival Bank COO Jeremy Berger explained in a statement. These firms include everything from international tech startups, digital SMEs, and money service businesses, to crypto exchanges and blockchain startups. “We’ve proudly turned this market of misfits into our niche, and we strongly believe the market demand of the ‘abnormal’ will soon outgrow the demand of the traditional banking clientele,” he said.

Arival’s management team (Director of IT Security Raul Rosado, Head of Finance Vivien Fernandez, CCO Sonia Camacho, Head of Global Compliance Ana Cavallini, Co-Founders Igor Pesin and Jeremy Berger) at the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

In terms of traction, Arival Bank recently was invited to FinCEN’s innovation program to showcase its compliance technology to more than 20 top U.S. regulators. FinCEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that focuses on defending the financial system against criminal and illicit activity, including money laundering. “We’ve built a compliance-first culture and like to think of ourselves as a cutting-edge compliance firm with a banking license,” Berger said. “That’s really our X factor at the end of the day.”

Additionally, Arival Bank has inked a partnership with Railsbank to launch SGD accounts and local payments as part of its borderless account opening offering. The company noted that it may leverage its relationship with Railsbank to expand its services in regions like Europe and Latin America.

“We’ve achieved significant traction since our launch – in large part thanks to our supportive group of visionary investors from our Seed and Pre-A rounds,” Arival Bank co-founder and CFO Igor Pesin said. “They’ve enabled us to invest heavily into key facets of building a digital bank fit for the 21st century: licensing, technology, infrastructure, compliance, and user experience.”

“We’re starting to gear up for our Series A round as we enter a new phase of growth driven by scaling our footprint internationally,” Pesin added. “Being live operationally is somewhat atypical for a licensed digital bank at their Series A round. In other words, our commitment to infrastructure meets our readiness to scale. And we have the license, product, and team to become the go-to digital bank for a new generation of businesses and entrepreneurs.”

Founded in 2018, Arival has 50 employees and hopes to double its workforce by 2022. The company’s investors to date include SeedInvest, Crowdcube, and Polyvalent Capital. Earlier his year, Arival Bank was nominated by Daily Finance as one of the top Fintech Companies in Singapore.


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SumUp Acquires FiveStars to Enter U.S. Market

SumUp Acquires FiveStars to Enter U.S. Market

Just days after relaunching its online store and appointing a new CEO for its European operations, point of sale (POS) technology provider SumUp announced the acquisition of customer loyalty startup Fivestars for $317 million. The purchase marks SumUp’s sixth overall acquisition but its first in the U.S.

“Our global community of merchants has battled through lockdowns and volatility and we’re confident that this acquisition will further energize the U.S.’s recovering small business economy,” said SumUp Co-founder Marc-Alexander Christ. “Now is the time to make sure our presence is as strong in the U.S. as it is in Europe and, by acquiring Fivestars, SumUp will deliver for U.S.-based merchants as it has in other international markets.”

SumUp launched in 2011 and now helps three million merchants across the globe get paid. The company offers card reader, QR code and POS payment technologies, along with management and reporting tools and invoicing capabilities. Lacking in this product lineup, however, are loyalty and rewards offerings. This is where the integration of Fivestars’ technology comes in. Providing small business clients a way to reward their customers and build loyalty will help SumUp compete with other POS technology providers such as Square, Shopify, PayPal and Zettle.

Founded in 2010, Fivestars helps businesses set up a digital rewards program that gives customers points and gifts for their purchases. The technology automatically sends campaigns to welcome new customers, celebrate their birthdays, and bring back customers who haven’t visited recently. Fivestars also offers enterprise loyalty programs for larger franchises; clients include brands such as Play it Again Sports, Super Cuts, and Orange Leaf.

The acquisition will also help SumUp launch operations in a new geographical market. The U.K.-based company will now have access to Fivestars’ 70 million consumer members and 12,000 small businesses; a network which drives $3 billion in sales and 100 million transactions each year. Fivestars’ San-Francisco-based team, along with its CEO, Victor Ho, will remain in their roles and continue to operate Fivestars.

SumUp raised $869 million (€750 million) earlier this year, bringing its total funding to $1.4 billion. The company supports over three million merchant users in 34 markets.

Digital Insurance Platform Sureify Secures $15 Million in Series C Funding

Digital Insurance Platform Sureify Secures $15 Million in Series C Funding

In a round led by Aspen Capital Group, digital insurance platform Sureify has raised $15 million in Series C financing. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to more than $26 million, and will enable Sureify to add to its platform and boost its research and development efforts.

“Ultimately, this funding lets us expand our insurers’ capabilities across digital sales, digital service, and digital engagement,” Sureify CEO Dustin Yoder said. “There is a massive opportunity to continue modernizing the legacy aspects of this industry and this investment in Sureify reinforces that we will help the traditional insurer compete against the emerging digital brands.”

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Sureify made its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateSpring 2014. In the time since, the company gained industry-leading life insurance companies as clients – including Allstate, Principal, State Farm, and Penn Mutual-owned Vantis Life. While a growing number of companies have pursued a direct-to-consumer approach to bringing innovation to the insurance industry, Sureify is among those insurtechs that is dedicated to helping legacy insurers successfully incorporate digital technology to better serve their customers. This includes leveraging personalized sales and service to enable insurers to deepen agent/policyholder relationships and boost ROI.

“Sureify has been on a mission to modernize the life insurance industry for nearly 10 years,” Yoder said. “We’ve now proven both large and small life insurers can digitally transform to compete against the direct-to-consumer entrants and meet the ever-changing consumer expectations year over year.” Yoder noted that Sureify’s technology enables insurance providers to pursue modernization without having to abandon their existing systems, and to do so quickly and without undue expense. “There are no longer questions about if traditional insurers can digitally transform sales, service, or engagement,” Yoder said. “The only real question is when?”

Sureify’s solutions include LifetimeACQUIRE, an omnichannel sales enabling solution that leverages quoting, e-application, and automated underwriting to drive placement rates; LifetimeSERVICE, which offers self-service portals and native apps for in-force customers; and LifetimeENGAGE, which features multi-faceted engagement programs and analytics to foster greater lifetime value of individual policyholders.

This year, Sureify has made a number of key executive changes and additions. The company began 2021 with the appointment of a new president Dan Gordon, who had served as Sureify’s Head of Strategy since 2018. The company brought on Ben Brantley as Chief Technology Officer in June and, last month, announced new Vice President of Product Rob Anagnoson.

BioCatch Unveils Age Analysis Capability to Defend Seniors Against Fraud

BioCatch Unveils Age Analysis Capability to Defend Seniors Against Fraud

Behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch launched its latest fraud-fighting solution this week. Age Analysis is a new account opening protection capability especially designed to help protect older consumers from fraud and other forms of cybercrime.

“We developed Age Analysis with enhancing customer protection and user experience as our guiding principles,” BioCatch Chief Operating Officer Gadi Mazor explained. “At BioCatch, we work closely with our clients to develop the most forward-thinking behavioral solutions to solve the ever-evolving challenges in combating fraud. Age Analysis empowers financial institutions with the behavioral verification protections most needed to address the growing threat of application fraud.”

The new offering, currently deployed by a number of international organizations as well as a “major credit card issuer,” was developed after noting that 40% of confirmed fraudulent credit card applications involved an applicant above the age of 60. BioCatch also discovered that a significant number of these applications ended up in manual review, increasing both the time spent processing the application as well as diminishing the user experience for older applicants.

Age Analysis works by extracting physical, cognitive, and other behavioral characteristics as the user engages in the account opening process. The technology monitors the activity continuously, predicting what BioCatch refers to as the user’s “approximate behavioral age” and compares it to the applicant’s declared age. If there are significant differences between the two, BioCatch adjusts the user’s risk score to reflect the anomaly.

The technology is based on the finding that certain behavioral characteristics involved in data input tend to change as individuals age. These include factors such as mouse click duration, mobile device orientation preferences, and even actions as specific as the time it takes for a user to shift from the CTRL key to a letter key when inputing data. Learn more about how Age Analysis works, and how it has helped increase company’s ability to detect account opening fraud and boost ROI, in BioCatch’s case study, Top Card Issuers Partner with BioCatch to Protect Senior Citizens from Fraud and Saving Millions.

A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateFall 2014, BioCatch was founded in 2011 by Avi Turgemen, Benny Rosenbaum, and Uri Rivner to leverage insights derived from Turgemen’s experience in military intelligence to fight online fraud and other cybercrime. Most recently, the company announced joining Alkami Technology’s Gold Partner Program to bring its behavioral biometric technology to Alkami’s bank and credit union customers. In August, BioCatch teamed up with digital financial solution provider MoData to help the company’s clients in Africa better defend themselves against online fraud.

BioCatch has raised more than $213 million in funding from investors including Barclays and HSBC. The company has offices in both New York City and Tel Aviv, Israel.


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SumUp Enhances Online Store; Adds New European CEO

SumUp Enhances Online Store; Adds New European CEO

London-based digital payments innovator SumUp announced the relaunch of its online store and the appointment of a new CEO for Europe: Michael Schrezenmaier.

The decision to enhance the SumUp Online Store is part of a strategic pivot toward online retail, an industry that grew significantly during the pandemic. “E-commerce has completely changed since we first launched the Online Store,” SumUp Vice President of Growth, Mark Wang said. “This shift has meant that an exponentially growing number of people now prefer to shop online.” The SumUp Online Store was initially launched in May 2020.

Among the new features offered are tools to enable business owners to set up a store in minutes due to a simplified signup process, a theme editor to customize storefronts, and a learning hub to support both new and veteran business owners. The upgraded platform also will no longer charge subscription fees, making it that much accessible to more small businesses.

“At SumUp our mission with the new Online Store is to provide a better platform for small businesses to reach customers anywhere in the world,” Wang added. “We are constantly working to build innovations that empower anyone to become an entrepreneur.”

Moving from platforms to people, SumUp also announced today that it has appointed Michael Schrezenmaier as its new CEO of Europe. Schrezenmaier comes to SumUp after serving as Chief Operating Officer and interim co-CEO for CRM platform Pipedrive and nearly seven years as COO at international dating company Spark Networks.

“SumUp is a company known for its entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to embrace change which, combined with its growth journey and continued upward trajectory, makes this an exciting time to join,” Schrezenmaier said, adding praise for the company’s innovation, “dedication to merchants,” and its leadership in the payment space overall.

Marc-Alexander Christ, co-founder of SumUp underscored the “quirks” and regional differences in Europe – and the unique aspects of the average European’s relationship with money – in explaining why Schrezenmaier was the right pick for the CEO spot. Christ called Schrezenmaier “a prime example of the type of person who will drive the company forward as we look to uphold our strong position in Europe – and deliver for our merchants.”

Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateEurope, SumUp has grown into a global digital commerce enabler and payments company. SumUp supports more than three million merchants around the world and boasts a workforce of 2,600+. The company has raised $1.4 billion in funding, most recently securing $893 million in debt financing in March of this year.


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Interac Acquires Rights to SecureKey Digital ID Services

Interac Acquires Rights to SecureKey Digital ID Services

Two Canadian fintechs have struck a deal this week. Payments network and digital ID provider Interac has agreed to acquire rights to digital ID and authentication provider SecureKey’s digital ID services for Canada.

Interac, which is building a network to help Canadians digitally share and verify their identity credentials, will leverage SecureKey’s digital ID services, along with its operations, technology, and innovation. Ultimately, Interac seeks to accelerate secure online service delivery and offer strong privacy and fraud protections for the digital economy in Canada.

“At Interac, we believe that digital ID is the key to empowering all Canadians to participate equally and safely in the future of the digital economy,” said Interac CEO Mark O’Connell. “Through this acquisition, we are proud to increase our investment in leading identification and authentication capabilities as we work to support businesses and governments across Canada in delivering secure and convenient digital ID experiences for Canadians.”

Both companies will continue to operate as separate entities. Interac will implement Verified.Me, a digital ID verification network built on distributed ledger technology, and Government Sign-In by Verified.Me, a secure sign-in tool to access 280+ government services.

“As the pandemic has made abundantly clear, the way Canadians use their identity documents and how they prioritize accessing services digitally has changed forever,” said Chief Officer of Innovation Labs & New Ventures at Interac Debbie Gamble. “The need to accelerate innovation to provide secure and convenient options for people to transact with their identities is critical.”

This announcement follows Interac’s acquisition of Ottawa-based 2Keys, a company focused on creating secure digital experiences, in 2019.

Founded in 2008, SecureKey has made a couple of key partnerships recently. The company partnered with Onfido in March of 2020 to offer real-time photo ID verification and teamed up with Simplii Financial in May of 2020 to offer Simplii clients with secure access to government services.


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Alloy Earns $1.35 Billion Valuation After Securing Series C Investment

Alloy Earns $1.35 Billion Valuation After Securing Series C Investment

One year to the month after Alloy closed a $40 million Series B round, the identity decisioning platform – and FinDEVr Silicon Valley alum – has secured a Series C investment of $100 million that brings the company’s valuation to $1.35 billion.

“Identity and its associated risk isn’t something businesses should be figuring out, it should just be something they install,” Alloy co-founder and CEO Tommy Nicholas said. “As Alloy grows into a multi-product platform for the full customer identity lifecycle, we can not only help make risk easier to understand, but also further industry innovation by making fintech products easier to build.”

The Series C round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Justin Overdorff and featured participation from current investors Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avid Ventures, and Felicis Ventures. Alloy said that the new capital will enable the firm to “invest” in its team, as well as help expand the company’s product offerings. Over the past year, Alloy’s solution has evolved from a platform that automates onboarding identity decision-making to one that now incorporates transaction monitoring. The company said that it will soon also feature richer data and risk signals to provide FIs with even greater insight into their customers.

Alloy’s API-based platform leverages more than 120 data source products to help companies and banks verify customer identities and monitor transactions. Processing more than 455,000 decisions a day on average, the company’s solution provides both identity verification and risk monitoring functionality in the same place, enabling both developer and product teams to maximize the platform’s resources. The result is a 50% reduction in manual review, and 80% automation rate for new account openings, and an automated customer approval rate of more than 80% for customers such as Novo, Brex, and HMBradley.

Headquartered in New York City and founded in 2015, Alloy was named one of the Best Fintechs to Work for in 2021 by American Banker, and boasts a workforce that is more than 50% female and has ethnic minority representation of nearly 40%. In August, Alloy announced its newest partnership, collaborating with Amerant Bank to automate identity verification in customer onboarding for the $8 billion, Florida-based community bank.

“Providing an exceptional experience for customers, both online and in-person, is at the core of our digital transformation strategy,” Amerant Bank Vice Chairman and CEO Jerry Plush said in a partnership announcement. “With the addition of Alloy, we’ll be able to still meet regulatory requirements, while ensuring a faster and more seamless onboarding and underwriting process that will benefit both customers and Amerant team members.”


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Betterment Raises $160 Million With $1.3 Billion Valuation

Betterment Raises $160 Million With $1.3 Billion Valuation

Wealthtech company Betterment has boosted its total funding to $435 million after closing $160 million in growth capital this week. The funds include $60 million in Series F equity and a $100 million credit facility.

The new round values Betterment at $1.3 billion. The equity portion was led by Treasury with participation from existing investors Kinnevik, Bessemer Venture Partners, Francisco Partners, Menlo Ventures, Anthemis Group, Globespan Capital Partners, Citi Ventures, and The Private Shares Fund. New investors Aflac Ventures and ID8 Investments also participated.

The $100 million credit facility comes from ORIX Corporation USA’s Growth Capital group and Runway Growth Capital.

“We are thrilled to have the support of new and existing investors who believe in our business model and are excited by the opportunity to support our growth,” said Betterment CEO Sarah Levy. “We’re using these funds to further cement our category leadership with rapid innovation on top of our already differentiated product suite and unique, multi-pronged distribution model that serves retail investors, advisors and small businesses.”

More specifically, Betterment will use the funds to support its 401(k) offering for small and medium sized businesses.

Founded in 2010, Betterment manages $32 billion in assets for its nearly 700,000 clients. In addition to offering automated 401(k) and IRA options, the company also provides socially responsible investment options, retirement planning services, a checking account, and a high-yield savings account.

Today’s announcement comes after a flurry of news activity for Betterment, after the company appointed Levy as CEO in December of last year. In March, the company acquired the investment advisory business of WealthSimple, partnered with Zenefits to offer 401(k) plans on the Zenefits platform, rolled out a checking account for shared finances, unveiled a co-pilot tool for advisors, and launched pre-packaged tech stack for RIAs.


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Cross Border Payments Infrastructure Innovator Buckzy Payments Inks Partnership with M2P Solutions

Cross Border Payments Infrastructure Innovator Buckzy Payments Inks Partnership with M2P Solutions

Asia’s largest API infrastructure company, M2P Solutions, will leverage the real-time, cross border payments ecosystem developed by Buckzy Payments to enable its customers to offer better payment services in many of the more underserved corridors in the MENA region. Clients such as banks, exchanges, and money transfer operators (MTOs) will be the partnership’s chief beneficiaries; targeted markets include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

“We are clearly aligned in our mission to improve global banking and transaction settlement services that unlock the borderless banking and global economic opportunities for all,” Managing Director for Buckzy in EMEA Adrian Brown said. “Combining Buckzy’s network with M2P’s API platform delivers an outstanding customer experience and competitive advantage for customers.”

Buckzy’s network enables real-time, cross border payments around the world. The company’s technology gives both businesses and financial institutions the ability to expand their offerings via white-label solutions on a secure platform. Moreover, Buckzy’s ecosystem also empowers these organizations to make collections and receive payments in local currency. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and founded in 2018, Buckzy demonstrated its solution one year later at FinovateFall. At the conference, Buckzy Global CMO Lindsay Mulligan showed how the company’s technology powered instant, on-the-go digital wallet transfers and top ups, as well as multi-currency transfers and instant email money transfers with just a few clicks and without transaction fees.

Business Head of M2P Solutions for MENA, Vaanathi Mohanakrishnan, underscored the importance to the company of opening up these regional opportunities. “A lot of M2P’s strategy hinges on enabling fintechs to deliver solutions leveraging our infrastructure and partner network,” Mohanakrishnan explained. “We are excited to be partnering with Buckzy to deliver frictionless cross border payment experiences to customers in the MENA region.”

Delivering real-time cross-border payments to 47 countries, Buckzy Payments was recently named to the CIX Top 20 Early roster of innovative Canadian technology companies. With offices in the U.S. and India, as well as Toronto, the company has raised $3 million in funding from investors including Dash40 Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Revel Partners.


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Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives

Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives

A new partnership between Finovate alum Signifyd and Capital One will bring the fraud prevention specialist’s Authorization Rate Optimization solution to the bank’s payment ecosystem. The integration will help boost authorization rates and reduce the number of orders on Capital One credit cards that are inaccurately declined due to suspected fraud. This will increase revenue for retailers, as well as enhance customer lifetime value. Capital One will benefit from stronger cardholder loyalty, while cardholders will enjoy a more secure, online shopping experience with less friction.

“We are so pleased to partner with Capital One to solve a strategic issue for the ecommerce world,” Signifyd CEO Ra Ramanand said. “The very largest ecommerce sites globally can work directly with issuers to optimize their auth rates, but what do other merchants do? They come to Signifyd because we can optimize payment acceptance through our deep product integrations across the financial ecosystem.”

Signifyd’s Authorization Rate Optimization technology will be integrated with Capital One’s Enhanced Decisioning Data API. This will give Capital One enhanced data and fraud insights to help establish whether or not a given transaction should be approved or declined at the bank authorization stage. The solution provides identity intelligence across the entire shopper journey, delivering instant insights from the Signifyd Commerce Network at checkout, and helping authorization rates go up and the number of false declines go down.

An increase in false declines are, in some ways, the predicable outcome of the arms race between retailers and fraudsters. As fraud becomes more sophisticated, with more attacks and intrusions taking place earlier in the transaction process, both banks and merchants have found themselves increasingly declining payment at the authorization stage. The Economist reported that up to one in eight e-commerce dollars are currently declined during payment authorization, and the Aite Group reported that 62% of the merchants it surveyed admitted that their false decline rates have gone up in the last two years.

“There is no reason (why) merchants and banks should miss the opportunity to create seamless customer experiences at checkout,” Signifyd General Manager, Payment Solutions Okan Ozaltin said. “Working directly with issuing banks such as Capital One means Signifyd can offer the kind of ecommerce protection that makes life better for merchants and their loyal customers.”

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2013, Signifyd has become a leading, enterprise-grade fraud prevention platform. This year, the company was recognized by G2 in its 2021 Summer Report as a leader in the space as well as being first in market presence. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Signifyd has raised $390 million in funding, including a $205 million Series E round closed in April that was led by Owl Rock Capital. In addition to its partnership with Capital One – itself an alum of Finovate’s developer conference FinDEVr – Signifyd has teamed up in recent months with B2B payments specialist Adflex and, this spring, launched its Return Abuse Prevention Solution, which helps retailers better manage the $43 billion problem of fraudsters who abuse the refund and return system.

“Unfortunately, fraudsters and a subset of consumers are becoming more aggressive and ingenious when it comes to taking advantage of return policies meant to make life easier for shoppers,” Signifyd Vice President of Product Gayathri Somanath said when the solution was introduced. “Return Abuse Prevention relies on Signifyd’s network data, machine learning models and our new Decision Center module to give retailers the tools they need to stay ahead of this increasing, revenue-crushing trend.”


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Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation

Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation

Financial document automation platform Ocrolus pulled in $80 million in Series C funding today. The round was led by Fin VC and included participation from Thomvest Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Oak HC/FT, FinTech Collective, QED Investors, Bullpen Capital, ValueStream Ventures, Laconia, RiverPark Ventures, Invicta Growth, Stage II Capital, and Cross River Bank.

The New York-based company now boasts $127 million in funding and is valued at over $500 million. Ocrolus plans to use the funds to expand U.S. operations and “more aggressively” build products for banking and mortgage lending.

“Our platform helps lenders automate underwriting and intelligently leverage cash flow and income data for credit scoring,” said Ocrolus Co-founder and CEO Sam Bobley. “By enabling lenders to more quickly analyze diverse sources of financial data, Ocrolus levels the playing field for every borrower, providing expanded access to credit at a lower cost.”

Ocrolus was founded in 2014 to create a document processing automation solution that helps lenders classify, capture, detect, and analyze financial documents to make better lending decisions. To accomplish this, the company leverages AI, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop (HITL) optimization. The HITL component serves as Ocrolus’ key ingredient to differentiation because it ensures an enhanced level of accuracy when analyzing data derived from documents.

The company, which won a Best of Show award at FinovateFall last week for its document analysis technology, has benefitted from the recent acceleration of digitization brought on by COVID. In today’s lending environment, FIs need to offer online options to compete. We spoke with Ocrolus’ VP of Solutions Nicole Newlin last year on the effects of this digitalization.

Ocrolus’ client list is as impressive as it is extensive, including firms such as Brex, Enova, Lending Club, PayPal, Plaid, and SoFi. Accommodating for a recent uptick in demand, the company added more than 75 employees this year and plans to boost its hiring efforts next year, focusing specifically on machine learning and data science professionals.


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Extend Teams Up with Amex to Bring Virtual Card Solution to SMEs

Extend Teams Up with Amex to Bring Virtual Card Solution to SMEs

A new partnership between American Express and New York City-based fintech Extend will give small businesses in the U.S. new options when it comes to using and deploying virtual cards. Specifically, U.S. companies with eligible American Express Business Cards will be able to use Extend’s technology to enroll and create virtual cards in as little as five minutes.

American Express EVP for Global Commercial Services Dean Henry highlighted the increased use of virtual cards during the pandemic – and the continued interest companies have in using the technology to facilitate contactless payments. “With today’s announcement, our Business Cards can work even harder for our Card Members through this quick and easy virtual Card option,” Henry explained. “This gives our Card Members enhanced flexibility and control across their day-to-day business spending, including for B2B purchases and enabling their employees to pay for expenses.”

The statistics on virtual card use by businesses support Henry’s assessment. A study conducted by American Express indicated that 39% of U.S. businesses expect to increase their use of virtual cards over the next 12 months. With regard to the specific benefits available via the new offering from Extend and American Express, there are at least seven – not including touchless payment ability – worth highlighting. These advantages include fast onboarding, flexibility and ease of use, spending controls due to the use of tokenization, better security and protection against fraud, streamlined expense reporting, automated card issuance, and the ability to earn rewards.

The two companies also noted in their partnership announcement that they planned to offer additional features and expand functionality in the future. Among the new functionalities anticipated is the ability to add American Express virtual cards to mobile wallets to facilitate in-store transactions.

“This market is rapidly growing as businesses realize just how versatile and effective virtual Cards can be,” Extend CEO Andrew Jamison said, “whether it’s managing subscription payments, equipping employees with secure company cards, or developing custom payment solutions with our APIs.”

Founded in 2017, Extend made its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateSpring in San Francisco, California. That same year, the Manhattan-based company raised $11 million in Series A funding in a round led by Point72 Ventures and the FinTech Collective, giving the firm a total capital of $14 million. More recently, the virtual card platform company forged partnerships with Mastercard and TSYS in the fall of 2020, and with City National Bank in January of this year.

American Express joined the Finovate alum club via its 2015 presentation at our developers conference FinDEVr Silicon Valley. At the event, members of the company’s engineering team discussed the evolving role of B2B payments in the e-commerce ecosystem, and how American Express was “bringing commercial payments to the cloud.”


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