Meniga Enables Carbon Footprinting for Iceland’s Islandsbanki

Meniga Enables Carbon Footprinting for Iceland’s Islandsbanki

Interested in activism that’s truly “global” in its appeal? Then the news that Meniga has partnered with Íslandsbanki, one of the largest banks in Iceland, to launch its new green banking solution, Carbon Insight, should be music to your ears.

“With more and more people around the world growing anxious about the consequences of climate change, the need for solutions and initiatives that empower people to take action to help protect our planet has become a business imperative,” Meniga CEO and co-founder Georg Ludviksson said.

Carbon Insight enables users to estimate and track how their spending decision impacts the environment via their carbon footprint. This footprint is derived via the Meniga Carbon Index, which was developed by a team of data scientists who leveraged environment research into the carbon emissions of various products and services. Carbon Insight works by multiplying spending transaction amounts by a “carbon intensity value” to give the user a reasonable carbon footprint estimate. This information can be used to help inform the user to which activities are potentially more environmentally impactful.

“We have seen great enthusiasm for our Carbon Insight product over the past few months, from banks and other key financial players, which is an encouraging sign from our industry that more green initiatives are still to come,” Ludviksson said.

As part of the partnership with Meniga, Íslandsbanki has agreed to integrate Carbon Insight into its digital banking solution. The Icelandic bank sees the new offering as a way to increase customer engagement and build on its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy.

“Consumers are increasingly interested in improving their carbon footprint and having a positive impact on the environment,” Birna Einarsdóttir, Íslandsbanki CEO said. “Meniga’s Carbon Insight solution will enable Íslandsbanki’s customers to estimate the carbon footprint of their private consumption, identify carbon intensive purchases, and ultimately reduce their carbon footprint while saving money at the same time.”

Founded in 2009, Meniga most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2019. Last fall, the company launched in the U.S. and, that summer, announced a $9.4 million fundraising that took the firm’s total funding to more than $43 million.


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Plaid Releases Income Verification Tool

Plaid Releases Income Verification Tool

Banking technology player Plaid announced Plaid Income this week, the company’s new income verification tool.

Income offers a secure and fast way to help consumers prove their salary in order to qualify for and secure loans, rent apartments, lease vehicles, and more. Lenders benefit from this data by being able to make better-informed risk decisions, issue pre-approvals or approvals faster, and allocate fewer resources to manually reviewing documents. 

Plaid places consumers in control of their own data by offering them the option to choose whether to share their data. With Income, they can opt to share their salary information by connecting to their employer account, payroll provider account, or by verifying their salary using documents such as paystubs, W2s, and some 1099s.

To help users connect directly with their payroll provider, Plaid supports real-time payroll authentication for over 250,000 of the largest employers in the U.S. The company is also developing credential-less authentication capabilities with leading payroll providers, including ADP.

The new Income tool is part of the Plaid for Payroll suite, which also includes the company’s Deposit Switch offering launched earlier this year.

Plaid’s income verification tool is similar to an offering from its competitor Finicity, which launched its Verification of Income and Employment solution in 2019. Among Finicity’s clients are Freddie Mac, Quicken Loans, and Experian.

Interestingly, Finicity was acquired by Mastercard late last year, just days after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block Visa’s ability to acquire innovative fintech.


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Klarna Scores Big in New Billion Dollar Funding Round

Klarna Scores Big in New Billion Dollar Funding Round

Europe’s most valuable fintech startup just got a lot more valuable.

Klarna announced on Monday that it has raised $1 billion in new funding and earned a lofty valuation of $31 billion. The company, which set out to raise $500 million in the just-ended round, credited investor demand for the exceptional amount raised. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski also cited strong growth in the U.S. as a reason why investor dollars are flocking toward his company.

“What definitely has accelerated and changed is the success in the U.S. market,” Siemiatkowski said. “Investors are seeing Klarna getting ahead of its competitors. I think that has changed the perspective and changed the view on our valuation.”

According to Siemiatkowski, investors are seeing Klarna as the king of an e-commerce wave that is making Buy Now Pay Later a mainstream financing approach. The reverse layaway strategy of enabling consumers to receive goods and services now and pay for them in equal installments over time has made BNPL the hottest new thing in online shopping. Klarna, which was founded in 2005 and made its Finovate debut seven years later, has been a pioneer in “after delivery payment” and other forms of consumer financing for years. This week’s financing is, in part, a recognition of this fact and a bet that, amid rising competition, Klarna will come out on top.

Right now, both Siemiatkowski and Klarna’s backers seem equally eager to take on legacy consumer financing options as well as Klarna’s BNPL rivals. Pointing out how the buy now pay later approach is fairer insofar as it makes the same offer to all consumers, Siemiatkowski adds, “There’s a number of investors out there that agree with us. They see that this credit card industry is actually at its core flawed and needs some innovation.”

In addition to using the new capital for acquisitions, the company is more interested in synergies that will “help people save time and money” than it is in purchasing rivals. That said, Siemiatkowski does have a few novel uses for at least some of the company’s new funding: Klarna will donate approximately $10 million to organizations that are dedicated to fighting climate change.

More than 30 current and new investors participated in Klarna’s latest fundraising, including Silver Lake, Sequoia Capital, BlackRock, and HMI Capital. Other investors included Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and individual investor, rapper Snoop Dogg.

Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna claims 90 million users and 250,000 merchant partners around the world. The company is optimistic about its growth in the U.S., saying they expect it to overtake Germany as its biggest market by the end of this year. The company has inked partnerships with 20 of the top 100 brands in the U.S., and said it gained a million new customers a month in the States in the final quarter of last year.


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Subaio Lands $5.9 Million from Ex-Mastercard President

Subaio Lands $5.9 Million from Ex-Mastercard President

Subscription management startup Subaio landed $5.9 million (€4 million) this week. The investment comes from newly established venture firm, Global PayTech Ventures, which ex-Mastercard President Javier Perez launched after stepping down from Mastercard at the start of this year.

Founded in 2016, Subaio has received two previous funding rounds. The first came from Nordea in 2018 and the second was from startup accelerator Plug and Play last year. Both rounds were undisclosed.

“There is a massive market demand within the payments ecosystem and the team has deep technical expertise and a great product that solves a problem for banks and consumers alike,” said Perez. “That is why they have a European market leading position within the subscription management space, and we will invest both capital, our payment expertise and network of global contacts to realize the company’s full potential.”

Subaio’s value proposition fits well into today’s economy, where the average consumer has between eight and 11 subscriptions. That’s because Subaio enables banks to help their consumers view, manage, and cancel their subscriptions with one easy-to-use interface.

Eight bank clients, including Nordea, ABN AMRO, and Lunar, are currently leveraging Subaio’s subscription management technology.

Subaio CEO and Co-founder, Thomas Laursen, sees today’s funding as a vote of confidence for the technology. “The fintech sector is flush with funding,” said Laursen. “Thus, raising capital is not about how much you raise, but who you raise it from. It was imperative for us to receive a smart money investment that can propel us to the next level. Partnering up with a capacity such as Javier Perez and his team at GPT with their unique insight into the paytech industry is about getting knowledge and network into our company.”

Cloud Banking Technology Innovator Alkami Eyes IPO in 2021

Cloud Banking Technology Innovator Alkami Eyes IPO in 2021

Who needs a SPAC to go public? According to Reuters, cloud-based digital banking technology provider Alkami is looking to enter the public markets the old-fashioned way: with an IPO.

The Reuters report cites sources who requested anonymity, and neither Alkami nor Goldman Sachs – who has been reportedly engaged to lead IPO preparations – have commented on any specific IPO plans Alkami might have. Sources say that an initial public offering could earn the company a valuation of $3 billion and give the state of Texas its next fintech unicorn.

Alkami has raised more than $385 million in funding from investors including D1 Capital Partners, General Atlantic, and MissionOG. The company secured $140 million in its last round in September, and acquired fellow Finovate alum ACH Alert a month later.

“Alkami continues to be the go-to partner for FIs wanting to accelerate their digital strategies, plans and results,” company CEO Mike Hansen said when the acquisition was announced. “Together with ACH Alert, we expect to continue to create and deliver winning digital solutions to our clients and their consumer and business digital users.”

Founded as iThryv and making its Finovate debut under that name in 2009, Alkami has grown into a digital banking technology innovator with more than 160 clients, 10+ million users, and $130 million in annually recurring revenue. The company’s platform provides a complete digital banking solution with user onboarding, engagement, and account servicing functionality for both retail and business customers. Users can take advantage of both Alkami’s products as well as third-party services and solutions courtesy of more than 230 integrations.

Named to the 2020 CB Insights Fintech 250 last fall, Alkami recently added a number of women to leadership positions within and around the company. This included inviting financial services veterans Merline Saintil (formerly of Intuit) and Barbara Yastine (formerly of Ally Bank) to join its Board of Directors and hiring former Hewlett Packard Enterprise executive Allison Cerra as Alkami’s new Chief Marketing Officer.

Mortgagetech Innovator BeSmartee Announces Strategic Growth Investment

Mortgagetech Innovator BeSmartee Announces Strategic Growth Investment

Digital mortgage software provider BeSmartee has secured a strategic growth investment from Boston-based venture and growth stage investment firm M33 Growth. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a statement, the company said the capital will help accelerate growth of the Huntington Beach, California-based fintech, as well as power further product innovation.

Calling 2020 a “pivotal year for the mortgage industry,” BeSmartee CEO and co-founder Tim Nguyen underscored the value of a platform like BeSmartee’s in “driv(ing) higher volumes for and ROI to” customers. “We believe that M33’s investment and knowledge will help us to bring our product to more customers and continue to build out our capabilities,” he said.

BeSmartee enables banks, credit unions, and non-bank lenders to deliver a complete digital mortgage experience for their customers. The company offers a white-labeled, mortgage POS that helps lenders go to market faster (zero to POS in 30 days) and better compete with tech-savvy fintechs and marketplace banks. BeSmartee’s technology has been particularly helpful to bank and non-bank lenders alike during the COVID crisis, as lenders have moved “with greater urgency” to embrace digital mortgage options. BeSmartee has referred to this demand for POS platforms as “exponential.”

A Finovate alum since 2017, BeSmartee began this year teaming up with NOVA Home Loans, a Tucson, Arizona-based mortgage banker. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had achieved a 100% customer retention rate in 2020, a 91% customer conversion rate, and growth of 50% in its customer base. “We deepened our integrations with LOS partners, pricing engines, and document providers, along with numerous other integrations to deliver a better experience to our customer base,” BeSmartee Operations Manager Rick Johnston said. “The suite of new tools rapidly increased the rate of loan officer adoption and, in turn, skyrocketed lender ROI.”

Apex Clearing Chooses SPAC to Go Public

Apex Clearing Chooses SPAC to Go Public

Apex Clearing Holdings, a digital clearing and custody engine, announced formal plans to publicly list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “APX.”

The Texas-based company is eschewing the traditional IPO route to a public launch, and instead pursuing the listing via a merger with Northern Star Investment Corporation, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The deal values Apex at $4.7 billion.

Apex is the sixth fintech to use a SPAC to go public in the past few months, joining SoFi, BankMobile, Payoneer, MoneyLion, and OppFi.

“We are in the first inning of the digital revolution in financial services, and our merger with Northern Star will provide Apex with the resources and flexibility to accelerate our growth, scale our platform, and expand our offerings and market share alongside our clients,” said Apex Clearing CEO William Capuzzi.

Capuzzi, along with Apex President Tricia Rothschild, will continue to serve the company in their current roles. Northern Star Chairwoman and CEO Joanna Coles will join the combined company’s Board of Directors.

Apex was founded in 2012 and helps online brokerages, traditional wealth managers, wealthtechs, professional traders, and consumer brands with account opening and funding, execution of trades, digital asset movements, trade settlement, and the safekeeping of customer assets.

Apex has provided custody for $14 billion in new assets year-to-date and currently serves 200+ clients representing more than 13 million customer accounts. The company has already recorded impressive growth so far this year, seeing 3.2 million customer accounts and more than one million new crypto accounts opened in the past two months.


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Low Code Platform OutSystems Scores $150 Million in New Funding

Low Code Platform OutSystems Scores $150 Million in New Funding

In a round co-led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global, low code application development platform OutSystems has raised $150 million in new capital. The funding gives the company a valuation of $9.5 billion, and will help fuel investment in its R&D and go-to-market strategies.

In a statement, OutSystems CEO and founder Paulo Rosado highlighted the challenges businesses face when it comes to keeping pace with innovation in an increasingly digital and software-run world. “Developers are a scarce resource in business today, and the complexities of traditional software development exacerbate the challenges most organizations face when tackling their digital transformation agenda,” Rosado said.

“By fundamentally changing the way software is built, OutSystems makes it possible for every organization to compete, innovate and grow with the developers they already have,” Rosado explained. “We’re focused on helping customers succeed with their most challenging digital transformation initiatives, and today’s announcement is an acknowledgment of our progress on that journey.”

OutSystems gives businesses the ability to deploy and manage critical applications at speed – from enhancing the customer experience to streamlining and automating processes to modernizing legacy systems. OutSystems leverages a visually-based, model-driven development approach to enable institutions to build differentiation into their solution, maximize the development talent on hand, and accelerate the process of concept iteration to uncover new viable ideas.

OutSystems ended 2020 with a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS and began this year working with Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) and U.K.-based law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn. OutSystems helped YBS develop and build a new online mortgage calculator that has helped increase conversions by 54%, and worked with Shepherd and Wedderburn to create client-facing, “Smarter Working” applications.

“OutSystems matched our vision for reusable architecture, robust application lifecycle management, and a visual approach that would allow developers to focus more on delivering business value instead of coding,” Shepherd and Wedderburn Head of Technology Steve Dalgleish said. “It has given us the speed and agility to deliver effective process and technology solutions – both internally and for our clients – including complex, large scale, high-profile projects.”

An alum of our developers conference, OutSystems presented “Low-Code: The Next Evolution in App Dev Platforms (Oh, and 5xFaster)” at FinDEVrNewYork in 2017. In their presentation, the company showed how it helped take a European retail bank, BPI, through a major digital transformation including solutions for mobile banking, internet banking, branch, and contact center.

With headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts and Lisbon, Portugal, OutSystems has customers in 87 countries around the world and partnerships with 350 corporations including AWS, Deloitte, and fellow Finovate alum Infosys.


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Blockchain.com Secures $120 Million in Funding

Blockchain.com Secures $120 Million in Funding

Cryptocurrency wallet provider Blockchain.com has picked up $120 million in funding. The Series A round featured participation from a sizable number of investors, including Access Industries, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and GV (Google Ventures) – among others. Blockchain.com’s total capital now stands at $190 million, and gives the London, U.K.-based firm a valuation of $3 billion.

In a blog post discussing the strategic financing, Blockchain.com CEO and co-founder Peter Smith highlighted the “immense optimism” toward cryptocurrencies displayed by a growing number of “serious, institutional investors.” He noted that the presence of major macro investors such as Louis Bacon’s Moore Strategic Ventures and Kyle Bass in Blockchain.com’s recent funding, and said it was “further proof that institutions are taking a serious look at their crypto strategy.”

And at Blockchain.com’s crypto strategy, as well. Smith noted that when the company began its Series A in 2014 – the same year it debuted at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley – the company was powering “just over” two million bitcoin wallets. Today Blockchain.com powers more than 67 million wallets, representing more than $620 billion in transactions. Since 2012, Smith wrote “28% of all Bitcoin transactions … have occurred via Blockchain.com.”

Founded in 2011, Blockchain.com began by offering a blockchain information service, Explorer, and soon after introduced an open source bitcoin wallet to make it easier for investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. The company also unveiled Blockchain APIs that helped give a generation of bitcoin businesses the ability to provide services ranging from bitcoin wallet building to transaction verification.

Blockchain currently supports a cryptocurrency exchange, as well as an “exponentially growing” institutional business of digital asset trading, lending, and custody. Smith added that while the wallet remains “at the core” of Blockchain.com’s business, “our Institutional business is now significant enough to cover the entire operating cost of the business globally” in addition to providing further operating profits.


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Small Banks Can Now Use Kasasa to Offer Bitcoin Wallet

Small Banks Can Now Use Kasasa to Offer Bitcoin Wallet

Cryptocurrencies have dominated the fintech headlines this week- from Mastercard agreeing to allow merchants to accept payments in cryptocurrencies to BNY Mellon’s announcement that it will begin custody of cryptocurrencies.

Today, after bitcoin reached an all-time high of over $48,000, marketing services company Kasasa unveiled plans to help its bank and credit union clients provide bitcoin wallets to their consumers.

The new capabilities will be powered by a partnership with New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), a technology and financial services firm dedicated to Bitcoin. The collaboration will help Kasasa’s bank clients stay ahead of the rapidly growing bitcoin adoption.

“Clearly, Bitcoin is here to stay, and consumers are demanding that Bitcoin offerings be made through their trusted financial institutions,” said Kasasa CIO John Waupsh. “With this new partnership, we’re looking across the product and services that Kasasa currently offers, as well as future product and service ideas. With NYDIG we can evaluate new offerings such as a buy-sell-hold wallet while also incorporating Bitcoin into our core rewards business.”

This partnership will be a major selling point for Kasasa, especially as consumer interest in cryptocurrencies rise. According to NYDIG, more than 22% of U.S. adults over the age of 18 own Bitcoin today.

This interest, combined with the creation of formal regulation like the OCC’s recent ruling that banks may use stablecoins for payment facilitation, is bringing cyrptocurrencies into the forefront of banks’ agendas. With today’s partnership, Kasasa is better positioned to help small financial institutions compete with larger players when it comes to cryptocurrencies.


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Credit Karma Announces Integration with TurboTax

Credit Karma Announces Integration with TurboTax

An integration between two of Intuit’s top acquisitions, consumer financial technology platform Credit Karma and TurboTax tax management software, will help put the former’s new U.S. checking account – Credit Karma Money Spend – in the hands of more consumers.

The integration will provide a seamless process for getting refunds to eligible taxpayers when they file their taxes with TurboTax – and then turn those taxpayers into Credit Karma checking accountholders. Filers on TurboTax will have the ability to open a Credit Karma Money Spend account and have their refund sent directly to that new checking account. Users then can access the full Credit Karma Money experience – for example, setting up direct deposit and adding debit cards to their digital wallets – from within TurboTax. The checking account’s Instant Karma feature also encourages users to make payments with their Credit Karma Money Spend accounts by offering monetary rewards for actions like on-time credit card bill payments and automating direct deposits.

“We believe consumers should have a checking account that helps them make financial progress, which is why we created Credit Karma Money Spend,” Credit Karma founder and CEO Kenneth Lin explained. “We’re starting 2021 off by leveraging our relationship with Intuit to bring Credit Karma Money to millions of tax filers this tax season.” Lin referred to tax refunds as “the biggest paychecks” many Americans receive, and added that getting taxpayers the refunds they are owed and helping them put that money to work “(maximizing) their day-to-day spending and billpay” is a critical role the new integration will play.

Acquired by Intuit in a deal just completed in December, Credit Karma is among Finovate’s earliest alums, demonstrating its consumer credit score monitoring platform back in 2008. Now with more than 110 million members in the United States, Canada, and the U.K., Credit Karma offers a wide range of financial wellness solutions for individuals including identity monitoring, credit cards and loan shopping, insurance, high-yield savings accounts and, most recently, its new checking accounts backed by bank partner MVB Bank.

The integration news comes in the wake of a flurry of recent criticism that Credit Karma’s credit scores varied from what users were expecting when engaging with credit card companies or prospective lenders. The differences have since been explained – Credit Karma uses a credit score model, VantageScore 3.0, that not only examines factors other than those traditionally considered for FICO scores, but also can weigh like factors differently. But the issue may reflect a growing trend of popular annoyance with some of the ways fintechs are able to provide the services they do. This “Robinhood Syndrome” is a challenge that is only likely to grow as more customers – with varied expectations and financial sophistication – continue to migrate to fintech platforms.


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Moody’s to Acquire Cortera

Moody’s to Acquire Cortera

Data analytics firm Moody’s announced plans to acquire data insights company Cortera this week. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of this year, are undisclosed.

Moody’s anticipates the purchase will enhance its risk assessment capabilities. The move will also significantly extend Moody’s coverage in the SME market– the segment that serves as Cortera’s focus.

“Cortera plays an important role in helping businesses understand each other,” said President of Moody’s Analytics Stephen Tulenko. “Our customers will be able to leverage Cortera’s extensive information on small businesses with Moody’s proprietary analytic tools to make better decisions.”

Cortera was founded in 1993 and provides credit data and workflow solutions on North America-based public and private organizations. The Florida-based company maintains a database of credit information on more than 36 million businesses across the continent.

Cortera sources this data from thousands of resources and scrubs it using AI. As a result, the company is able to provide analytics, reports, and monitoring services to help inform businesses’ decisions.

Specifically, the acquisition will augment Moody’s Orbis database of private company information and enhance its KYC, commercial lending, and supply chain solutions.

Moody’s was founded in 1900 and provides data, analytical solutions, and insights to help businesses identify opportunities and manage risk. The company employs more than 11,000 people across 40+ countries. Headquartered in New York City, Moody’s is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker MCO. The company has a market capitalization of $52 billion.


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