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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Global financial services company Revolutadded an invoice creation tool for its Revolut Business clients today. The added capability enables businesses to create, send, and reconcile invoices from within the Revolut app.
By using Revolut’s invoice tool, the fintech’s business banking clients are able to send their customers professional-looking invoices with customized branding. The tool also offers customers more payment options, including credit card, bank transfers, and Apple Pay. Once payment is made, the business receives the funds faster– directly into their Revolut Business account.
One of the biggest benefits of Revolut’s invoices is that it helps with heavy lifting on the administrative side of things. For example, businesses can use Revolut to monitor invoices and receive real-time tracking and notifications.
The new development comes on the heels of the company’s rollout of currency forward contracts in the U.K. that enables companies to set their fixed future FX rate online to help manage market risk. It also closely follows the launch of QR code payment capabilities for businesses. Both of these features make Revolut an increasingly robust option for companies seeking a banking option. As a result, the Revolut app is even more sticky for business users.
A collaboration between digital customer service innovator Glia and credit union membership service organization (CUSO) Members Access Processing (MAP) will help credit unions better serve their members via their channel of choice – whether it is messaging, video banking, voice, cobrowsing, or a combination of options.
“Consumers expect every business they interact with to deliver quick, seamless service and support, and their credit unions are no exception,” Glia co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli explained. “By partnering with us and making Digital Member Service a critical part of their digital transformation, MAP will be able to help its financial institution clients boost member satisfaction and loyalty while strengthening their overall competitive positions.”
Glia combines on-screen collaboration and AII-enabled customer assistance to offer a Digital Customer Service solution that enriches web and mobile experiences and improves engagement. The company’s platform not only meets customers on their channel of choice; the solution enables the service representative and customer to transition seamlessly between chat, audio, video, messaging, and phone as needed during the course of the query to ensure that the customer’s needs are met.
“As digital usage continues to rise, it’s a strategic imperative for credit unions to be able to form strong member relationships from within digital channels,” MAP president and CEO Cyndie Martini said. “Glia’s platform allows for credit unions to engage members from where they are in their journey, eliminating the need for disjointed, clunky phone experiences. This ultimately drives efficiencies for the credit union while creating a more cohesive, enjoyable experience for members.”
Most recently demonstrating its Best of Show-winning technology at FinovateSpring earlier this month, Glia has teamed up with more than 150 banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions since its inception in 2012. This year, in addition to its collaboration with MAP, Glia has teamed up with Abe.ai, an AI-powered virtual assistance solution provider from fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee, and partnered with low code digital automation platform provider Newgen Software. Glia began the year with an announcement that Illinois-based BCU, a 294,000+ member credit union with $4.2 billion in assets, has selected its platform to enhance digital engagement with its members.
“Member service has always been one of our primary differentiators, and we recognized the need to evolve our approach to keep up with changing member preferences by extending our exceptional service into digital channels,” BCU SVP of digital strategy and delivery Carey Price said. “With Glia’s platform, we will be able to provide a more modern, convenient experience for members that still allows us to form meaningful relationships digitally. We believe this will be a major competitive advantage moving forward.”
Online payments technology provider Zip has agreed to fully acquire remaining shares of BNPL players Twisto and Spotii. The acquisitions are expected to close for $109 million and $16.3 million, respectively.
By purchasing Czech Republic-based Twisto and United Arab Emirates-based Spotii, Australia-based Zip will grow its global presence. Specifically, the deal enables Zip to extend its BNPL services into the Czech Republic and United Arab Emirates.
This follows Zip’s recent expansion into the U.S. and the U.K. that was made possible after it acquired QuadPay in September of last year for $269 million.
Founded in 2013, Twisto is more than just a BNPL technology provider. The company offers its accountholders one-click payment convenience for online purchases, a unique billpay experience by enabling users to pay by taking a photo of the paper bill, and a touchless in-person payments experience with a special payment bracelet. Additionally, Twisto provides a payment card that charges no interest until the following month and an app that makes it easy for users to track their monthly expenses.
“With Twisto’s existing operations in Central Europe, we are uniquely positioned to tackle the $1.1 trillion European eCommerce market,” said Twisto Founder and Chief Executive Officer Michal Smida. “Being part of Zip’s global platform will allow us to accelerate growth, expand to new markets, win global merchants operating in Europe, leverage global partnerships already in place and broaden our product offering. We share the same ethos – striving relentlessly to deliver the best omnichannel payments experience to both customers and merchants.”
Spotii is relatively new to the BNPL game, having been founded last year by Anuscha Iqbal and Ziyaad Ahmed. Despite this short tenure, the company has already seen impressive traction. Not only has Spotii integrated 650 merchants into its platform, it has also grown its total transaction volume at an average of 90%+ month-on-month since it was founded.
The Twisto and Spotii acquisitions are expected to be finalized in the fourth and third quarters of this year, respectively.
Irish regtech Fenergo has agreed to be acquired by a pair of private equity firms, Astorg of Paris and Bridgepoint of London. The deal, which involved selling a majority take worth $600 million, values Fenergo at $1.1 billion (€900m), and will give the company additional capacity to “make strategic acquisitions and stay ahead of the competition.”
“We are delighted that Astorg and Bridgepoint have chosen to invest in our company, providing us with the financial strength required to pursue our ambitious high-growth strategy,” Fenergo founder and CEO Marc Murphy said. “Both Astorg and Bridgepoint have enormous experience and credibility in our sector, something I am keen to leverage over the coming years. Ultimately, we only exist to serve the needs of our customers. We are looking forward to partnering with them in the next phase of our development.”
Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Dublin, Fenergo made its Finovate debut three years later, demonstrating its innovative client onboarding and account opening management solution. Since then, Fenergo has established itself as a major player in the space, partnering with 32 of the world’s top 50 financial institutions, as well as technology companies like IBM, PwC, and Luxoft. The company says its technology has provided clients with 82% reduction in onboarding times, 34% savings in audit costs, and 7x ROI in four years or less.
Fenergo began the year with the launch of its KYC & Onboarding for Salesforce solution, connecting its client lifecycle management (CLM) technology and regulatory intelligence with Salesforce’s CRM. The integration makes it easier for banks and other financial institutions to enhance the customer experience by providing a more seamless onboarding process.
“In today’s highly challenging business environment, there is no margin for error in delivering exceptional, digital, and joined-up customer experiences,” Murphy explained when the new offering was launched. “Automation is key so that customers can be onboarded without unnecessary manual intervention in the back-end processes. Salesforce is the launchpad for automated onboarding while Fenergo ensures compliance by design through API-powered multi-channel orchestration.”
Fenergo was awarded top honors in the Client Lifecycle Management Solution category at the Ninth Annual WealthBriefing European Awards this month, echoing the recognition the company received at the beginning of the year from Asian Private Banker. So far in 2021, Fenergo has forged partnerships with Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank and Mizuho Americas.
“nCino has a proven track record of helping financial institutions innovate while optimizing their processes,” nCino Director of Strategic Partnerships in APAC Zameer Momin said. “As more and more financial institutions are embarking on their business transformations, we are truly excited to be able to offer the power of KPMG Australia’s banking operations knowledge with nCino’s cloud technology to help create a robust and scalable digital experience.”
nCino’s Bank Operating System leverages the Salesforce platform to offer financial institutions a complete, end-to-end banking solution. nCino’s technology integrates with the institution’s core systems, and combines CRM, onboarding, account opening, loan origination, deposit accounts, credit analysis, ECM, and instant reporting capabilities. nCino notes that its client institutions have experienced a 92% reduction in servicing costs, a 54% reduction in policy exceptions, a 40% decrease in loan closing time, and a 22% increase in efficiency using its cloud-based Bank Operating Systems. These FIs have also experienced a 1.2x increase in account opening completion rates.
KPMG Australia Partner Alex Moreno pointed to the changing nature of the financial services landscape in Australia – including the arrival of both new digital competitors and increased regulation – as reasons for the collaboration with nCino. “Customers are expecting a better experience from their bank,” Moreno said. “Most banks have challenges with operational efficiency and internal time to competency, and secure and responsible lending is in the spotlight. The combination of KPMG’s Banking Operational Excellence Practice and nCino’s Bank Operating System is well positioned to help navigate these challenges.”
Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino was founded in 2012. The company, which went public last July, trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker NCNO and has a valuation of $5.4 billion.
A pair of identity solution providers – Ping Identity and ProofID – have partnered to enhance identity security for U.K.-based Tesco Bank.
The banking division of Tesco, the largest supermarket retailer in the U.K., Tesco Bank deployed both Ping Identity’s PingAccess and PingFederate to secure key applications. With ProofID as the bank’s implementation partner, the integration – which involved creating a single-factor login process deployed across a private AWS cloud – took only 12 weeks. Importantly, the solution “allow(ed) us to consolidate disparate identity data,” said Tesco Bank security architect David McConchie, “laying the foundation for a common customer identity.”
PingAccess is PingIdentity’s centralized cloud identity and access security solution for apps and APIs. The technology provides secure access down to the URL level and can secure APIs by applying policies to disallow specific HTTP transactions to users in untrusted contexts. PingFederate is an enterprise federation server that enables user authentication and single sign-on. The solution functions as a global authentication authority to enable authorized entities to securely access applications from any device.
“We saw how we could use PingAccess and PingFederate to work across web, mobile and API. The ease with which we could deploy across channels was a critical factor, along with the data governance capabilities,” McConchie said. “Ping Identity gives us the flexible authorization capabilities we need to minimize friction and deliver a customer-centric experience.”
A Finovate alum for nearly 10 years, Ping Identity was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Named a Top Workplace by The Denver Post earlier this month, Ping Identity partnered with global logistics provider DB Schenker in April, and launched its new, cloud-based identity verification service, PingOne Verify, in February.
Ping is publicly-traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PING. With a $1.2 billion valuation upon its IPO in September 2019, the company currently has a market capitalization of $1.9 billion. Andre Durand is founder and CEO.
Ally Financial’s Ally Lending announced this week it is now offering financing on buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) platform Sezzle. The new collaboration enables select shoppers to pay for purchases over time using Ally’s installment loans or Sezzle’s BNPL installment offerings.
If a purchase is eligible for an installment loan from Ally, the shopper will see the message “financed by Ally” at checkout. Loans will be available for purchases of up to $40,000 with terms ranging from three to 60 months. This broadens the availability of financing typically available on Sezzle, which currently limits shoppers to four installments paid over the course of six weeks on purchases up to $2,500.
“We’re on a mission to financially empower the next generation,” said Sezzle CEO Charlie Youakim. “With Ally Lending’s personalized, flexible financing solutions now available on our platform, we’re able to offer even more options for consumers to budget their purchases and responsibly pay for what they want and need.”
Today’s news comes during a time when both online shopping and BNPL are on the rise. Over the past year, BNPL increased 17% in Gen Z populations and 21% for millennials.
Sezzle initially went public on the ASX in July of 2019, and now has a market cap of over $777 million, a figure that is almost 5x higher than it was at the start of 2020. The company announced earlier this month it will IPO in the U.S. later this year.
In a round featuring new investors Saints Fund and Eric Benhamou of Benhamou Global Ventures, cross-border transaction monitoring solution provider ThetaRay has raised $31 million in new funding. Led by JVP and BGV Funds, the investment round also featured participation from current investors OurCrowd, Bank Hapoalim, SBT, and others. The funding takes the Israel-based company’s total capital to more than $90 million and will be used to help ThetaRay bring its cloud-based, transaction monitoring solution to new markets.
“We are on the verge of a real revolution in securing the global financial system,” ThetaRay CEO Mark Gazit said. “During this period, when the cross-border payment network has become the lifeblood of the world trade infrastructure, ThetaRay is here to instill certainty and reduce risks in secure, cross-border payments.”
ThetaRay’s announcement comes as the governments of both Nigeria and the Ukraine have implemented ThetaRay’s technology to protect cross-border payments from financial crime. The cross-border payments market, estimated at $25 trillion a year, increasingly has been targeted by financial criminals in the post-COVID environment. Unfortunately, the response to this threat has involved tightened controls and enforcement that have resulted in challenges – from slow service to outright blockages – for many of those businesses and banks that need to make legitimate cross-border payments.
To this end, ThetaRay’s SaaS offering analyzes SWIFT traffic, risk indicators, and data from clients, payers, and payees to spot patterns and anomalies that are indicative of suspicious activity – including money laundering and terrorist financing. The technology leverages a proprietary approach to machine learning called “artificial intuition” which simulates the decision-making aptitude of human instinct and subjectivity. Referred to as the “fourth generation of AI,” artificial intuition is being applied to help financial institutions spot large-scale, more sophisticated cybercrime strategies by analyzing the various parameters of the massive number of individual transactions that may make up a given fraud attempt.
“This revolution will enable many organizations and people around the world to transfer money faster, more securely, and with far fewer fees and stops along the way,” JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit said. “What Swift did to the banking world 25 years ago, ThetaRay will do to the banking world in the next ten years.”
Founded in 2013 and making its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateFall, ThetaRay launched its cloud-based, anti-money laundering (AML) solution for cross-border payments last month. Also in April, the company appointed former Fundtech/Finastra Payments executive Dagan Osovlansky as its new Chief Product Officer. ThetaRay also won the Transaction Security Innovation Award this spring from the FinTech Breakthrough Awards program.
Switzerland-based banking technology provider Temenospartnered with digital assets platform Taurus this week. Through the partnership, Temenos integrated Taurus’ digital asset and blockchain infrastructure with Temenos Transact, the company’s core banking software.
As a result, Temenos’ 3,000 bank and FI clients across the globe will have access to digital assets. Taurus will enable them to integrate and manage any digital asset, traditional securities, and cash.
“Investors are increasingly aware of the performance of cryptocurrencies, which can effectively participate in the diversification of a portfolio,” said Temenos Product Director Alexandre Duret. “Taurus is leading the field in cryptography and blockchain technology. By joining forces, we can help banks to bridge the gap between traditional investments and digital assets.”
With its securities firm license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, Taurus can cover digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, as well as tokenized assets. The company offers three main products: Taurus-CAPITAL for tokenization and lifecycle management, Taurus-PROTECT for hot, warm, and cold digital asset custody, and Taurus-EXPLORER an API-based blockchain connectivity to more than 10 blockchain protocols.
Temenos has added Taurus’ tools to the Temenos Marketplace, a partner ecosystem of 50+ fintech solutions. All tools in the MarketPlace are pre-integrated for fast implementation.
Founded in 1993, Temenos is a public company, listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticker TEMN. The company has a market capitalization of $9.84 billion.
U.S. payments platform PayPal has been slowly inching toward becoming a super app in the past few years. Today’s news that the California-based company has acquired Happy Returns indicates a step further toward that goal.
Terms of the deal are undisclosed.
“The post-purchase experience is something we’ve been looking into, since it’s such a pain point — people want to shop online and return in store, and vice versa,” PayPal SVP of Consumer In-Store and Digital Commerce Frank Keller told CNBC in an interview. “For retailers, we’re providing more comprehensive services beyond payments.”
Happy Returns launched in 2015 to provide box-free, in-person returns for online orders. The company sees the benefits as three-fold– it makes for a better customer experience, it is less expensive for the merchant, and is less wasteful and therefore better for the environment.
Consumers making purchases at one of Happy Returns’ hundreds of brand partners can use the company’s software to make returns at 2,600+ drop-off locations in 1,200+ cities across every U.S. state.
What started as PayPal’s flagship payments platform expanded to encompass the pre-purchase shopping experience when the company acquired Honey in 2019. Today, with the addition of Happy Returns, PayPal adds another element to serve the post-shopping experience to its already robust platform.
This holistic shopping experience is in line with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman’s plan for the company. Schulman recently announced PayPal will roll out a “next-generation” digital wallet that will offer a personalized shopping, financial services, and payments experience.
In a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, online fraud and abuse prevention specialist Arkose Labs has raised $70 million in Series C funding. The San Francisco, California-based company will use the additional capital to support platform development, hire new talent, and fuel global expansion.
This week’s investment takes Arkose Labs’ total capital to $114 million. Also participating in the financing were Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and existing investors M12 and PayPal Ventures.
“With Masa and the team at Softbank, we have a partner who matches our ambition for eradicating fraud online by means of disrupting the economic ROI for bad actors,” Arkose Labs founder and CEO Kevin Gosschalk said. “At Arkose Labs, we are building a portfolio of capabilities that can adapt and respond based on the fraudsters’ techniques to ensure we are maximizing the impact to them whilst minimizing any form of friction to good users.”
A Best of Show winner in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2019, Arkose Labs specializes in defending neobanks, ecommerce companies, payment firms, insurers, and other businesses against a range of cybercrimes including account takeover and both payment and new account fraud. Founded in 2015, Arkose Labs offers an authentication platform that invisibly identifies the context, behavior, and past reputation of a each request, classifying it as Authentic or Inauthentic. Authentic requests are passed on to the enterprise, while Inauthentic requests are remediated by dynamic defenses that generate continuous losses.
This is part of the company’s strategy, articulated by Gosschalk at FinovateSpring, to “break hacker economics by making it more expensive for the bad guys to get in than the data they are getting out.” He added “if you do that, they give up and move on.”
In its funding announcement, Arkose Labs highlighted a number of key milestones the company has met since its last funding – a $22 million Series B round – in March of 2020. These accomplishments include analyzing more than 15 billion online sessions last year, stopping more than four billion attacks; the opening of regional EMEA headquarters in London and a doubling of the company’s workforce. Arkose Labs also announced a number of C-suite hires over the past year, including a new Chief Operating and Financial Officer, a new Chief Product Officer, and a new Chief Security Officer and VP of Information Technology. The company also pledged to make additional hires this year to lead operations in North America, Australia, and Europe.
“With Arkose Labs’ successful expansion in the financial services industry, this signifies a continued digital shift in banking,” Gosschalk said. “(It) requires a customer-centric approach that kicks the bad guys out of online operations, while maintaining the highest levels of convenience and usability that financial services operations require.”
Customer-focused banking tools provider W.UP revealed its latest development today. The Hungary-based company is launchingMoney Stories.
The new embeddable tool enables banks to offer their customers bite-sized snapshots of their financial lives. These easily consumable bits of content combine data analytics with digital storytelling to make it even easier for banks to help users to understand their financial standing in a fast-paced way.
The new tool takes the concept from millennial-friendly mobile apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Each of these social media platforms are notorious for enabling users to quickly publish and view life updates and ideas, share new songs, and even exchange gossip. The micro-content requires little attention from viewers, who are easily distracted and prone to multi-tasking.
Similarly, Money Stories leverages transactional and behavioral analytics to show users daily highlights, weekly and monthly forecasts, and yearly summaries. Overall, these updates take the form of unusually large transactions, double charges, sharp balance drops, recurring transitions, top spending categories, changes in spending or credit card usage, and more. In addition to showing users their historical data, Money Stories can also help users plan for the future by showing options to pay off credit card debt, avoid overdrafts, and more.
All of the graphics appear on a single screen for seven-to-ten seconds, so the user does not need to scroll or set aside much time in their day to understand the analyses.
W.UP is keeping the integration easy for banks. “When all is said and done, the only decision for banks to make remains what product and service offers to slide into the story stream to boost targeting accuracy, conversion, and customer satisfaction levels,” said W.UP Head of Product Gellért Vinnai.
Founded in 2014, W.UP takes PFM to a personalized level by leveraging AI and real-time data. These product offerings have obviously struck a chord in the banking crowd; the company has won Best of Show awards at FinovateEurope 2018, 2019, and most recently for its demo in 2020.
