Alumni profile

iProov Snags New CIO from Santander

iProov Snags New CIO from Santander
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, iProov
  • Biometric cybersecurity company iProov appointed Miguel Traquina as Chief Information Officer.
  • Traquina comes to iProov from Santander U.K., where he served as Chief Information Officer for Operations and Economic Crime.
  • The appointment was made possible by the $70 million investment iProov received earlier this year, which the company set aside to “rapidly build on its leadership in the United States.”

When it comes to C-level hires, there may be plenty of fish in the sea, but only a select few make the best catch. Biometric cybersecurity company iProov announced today it snagged a good one, landing Miguel Traquina as Chief Information Officer.

“I am delighted to welcome Miguel to iProov, as we further grow our business,” said iProov CEO Andrew Bud. “The scale and scope of our technology activities are expanding rapidly. Miguel’s extensive experience with financial technology for a major bank complements and extends our team’s outstanding capabilities, enabling us to innovate and operate on more fronts globally.”

Traquina comes to iProov from Santander U.K., where he served as Chief Information Officer for Operations and Economic Crime. He has also spent time working at Accenture, where he was responsible for financial services projects in Europe and Latin America.

Launched in 2013, iProov helps governments, banks, and businesses securely verify the identity of their customers. The company’s differentiating technologies include Liveness Assurance and Genuine Presence Assurance, which help organizations protect against spoof attacks, digital injection attacks, and deepfakes by ensuring that the online customer is the right person, a real person, and is authenticating right now. Among iProov’s clients are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.K. Home Office, the U.K. National Health Service, GovTech Singapore, Rabobank, and ING.

Bringing Traquina on board is made possible by the $70 million private equity investment iProov closed in January. The company allocated the funds to “rapidly build on its leadership in the United States” as well as expand its international customer base, and grow its global partner network.

Photo by Wynand van Poortvliet on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FintechOS Unveils Accelerators to Enhance SME Mobile Onboarding and Lending

FintechOS Unveils Accelerators to Enhance SME Mobile Onboarding and Lending
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, FintechOS
  • FintechOS has launched a pair of accelerators – for mobile lending and mobile onboarding – to enable institutions to support small businesses.
  • The new offerings are built for speed, enabling companies to lower account opening times to less than 15 minutes.
  • Headquartered in London and founded in 2017, FintechOS made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall in New York.

Digital banking and insurance solution provider FintechOS unveiled a pair of new accelerators to help financial institutions better serve their SME clients. The offerings, announced this week, support SME mobile lending and onboarding, and enable institutions to reduce the amount of time required to open a current/checking account to less than 15 minutes.

Calling SMEs “the backbone of the global economy”, FintechOS CEO and co-founder Teo Blidarus decried the “lending gap” that has kept many small businesses from being able to secure the critical funding they need in order to grow. “Our high productivity fintech infrastructure, digital and core financial technology blocks combine here with a low-code approach to help institutions close the gap by rolling out tailored financial services experiences at speed.”

FintechOS’ accelerator for mobile onboarding gives financial institutions the ability to implement a modern UX. This will enable them to readily configure both design and content, as well as journey sequence and product logic. The accelerator for mobile lending allows SMEs to access the financing solutions they need in minutes with an out-of-the-box loan origination journey that can be easily configured and requires no technical expertise. Both accelerators embrace a mobile-centric approach that allows small businesses to use their device of choice for both onboarding and financing, which will help lower abandonment risk during the account opening and lending process.

The launch of FintechOS’ account onboarding and mobile lending accelerators comes just days after the company announced a collaboration with digital transformation consultancy Tesselate Group. Together, the two companies will work to bring innovative lending solutions and strategic planning to financial institutions. The partnership will focus on product verticals including digital journey accelerators, ecosystem connectors, and lean core components.

“We’re on a mission to enable companies to build innovative financial services and products at the speed the market requires,” FintechOS VP of Ecosystem Todi Pruteanu said. “Our ecosystem is fundamental to achieving this objective, and FintechOS is investing significantly to build an industry-leading partner infrastructure.”

In February, FintechOS forged a global partnership agreement with fellow Finovate alum Onfido. The pact integrates Onfido’s identity verification solution into FintechOS’ customer onboarding, lending, and claims management journeys. Two of FintechOS’ customer-centric platforms for banks and insurers – Lighthouse and Northstar – feature Onfido’s identity verification and liveness technology.

Among Finovate’s newer alums, FintechOS demoed its technology on the Finovate stage for the first time in September at FinovateFall. At the conference, FintechOS’ Paula Costea and Steve Rooney demonstrated Sunglow, the company’s “super app for banking.” Sunglow enables consumers to finance and book vacations in a seamless, end-to-end customer experience that factors in every component of the lending and booking processes.

Photo by Pixabay

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Glia Joins Fintech Unicorn Club After $45 Million Funding Round

Glia Joins Fintech Unicorn Club After $45 Million Funding Round
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, Glia
  • Glia recently raised a $45 million Series D investment round.
  • The round values the company at over $1 billion, making it a fintech unicorn.
  • Glia said the funds “will be heavily allocated toward research and development.”

Digital customer service tools provider Glia is now valued at over $1 billion, making it fintech’s newest unicorn. The company announced earlier this week it closed a $45 million Series D investment, bringing its total funding to $152 million.

Insight Partners led the round, which saw contributions from existing investor Wildcat Capital Management and new investor RingCentral Ventures. Glia will “heavily allocate” the funds into research and development, investing in advanced AI, analytics, messaging, voice, and video capabilities. The company, which has offices in New York and Estonia, also plans to boost international expansion.

“The future of customer service is digital, and those that have yet to take steps to modernize their support and engagement strategies are already behind,” said Glia Co-Founder and CEO Dan Michaeli. “We’re thrilled by our investors’ confidence reflected in the round’s valuation, recognizing that we’ve only scratched the surface of what Glia can accomplish. Our rapid growth and successful relationships with financial services companies of all types demonstrates the urgent need for Digital Customer Service. As we build upon a decade of innovation, this capital will further extend our reach and help even more businesses across the globe reimagine how they connect with customers digitally.”

Glia was founded in 2012 as SaleMove. The company seeks to reinvent how businesses support their customers in a digital world– an imperative tool in today’s digital-first economy. Specifically, Glia offers digital communication choices, on-screen collaboration, and AI-enabled assistance tools. The company has 250 clients across the globe, including banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions.

Glia has won 10 Best of Show Awards– an impressive feat. Check out the company’s latest award-winning demo from spring of last year.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Onfido Brings its Identity Verification and Authentication Technology to Tesco Bank

Onfido Brings its Identity Verification and Authentication Technology to Tesco Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Onfido
  • Identity verification specialist Onfido has teamed up with U.K.-based retail bank Tesco Bank to enhance security of Tesco’s Clubcard Pay+ new account opening process.
  • Tesco made its Clubcard Pay+ offering available to all of its 20 million Clubcard members, following a phased launch that began in March of last year.
  • Onfido made its Finovate debut in 2018.

A new partnership between global identity verification and authentication provider Onfido and Tesco Bank will help secure the application process for Tesco’s Clubcard Pay+ customers. The security upgrade comes as the bank makes the new offering available to all 20 million Clubcard members, following a successful phased launch of Clubcard Pay+ that began a year ago with a limited number of customers and Tesco colleagues.

With Clubcard Pay+, Clubcard members will be able to pay with their Clubcard and earn extra Tesco Clubcard points wherever they shop. Using the Tesco Bank mobile app, users can add funds to their Clubcard Pay+ account from any U.K. bank account as well as ringfence their grocery spend. Additional features of Clubcard Pay+ include the ability to round up purchases to the nearest pound and transfer the difference to their Round Up savings account.

Courtesy of its partnership with Onfido, Tesco will enable customers to apply for the new offering directly from the Tesco Bank mobile app. All that is required is that applicants take a photo of their government-issued ID and a selfie. Onfido’s technology ensures first that the identity document is genuine, and then matches the image on the document with the image on the selfie. This establishes both that the person presenting the ID is the actual owner of the document and that the individual is physically present. The technology helps customers establish their identity anywhere and at any time, easing and accelerating the account opening process.

“By combining decades of banking experience with advanced biometrics and AI technology, Tesco Bank is now able to accelerate the account opening process for new Clubcard Pay+ customers,” Onfido CEO Mike Tuchen explained. “The innovative technology provided by Onfido underpins a seamless and secure application experience that protects customers and provides them with a streamlined access to Clubcard Pay+.”

Founded in 1997, Tesco Bank is the product of a joint venture between the Royal Bank of Scotland and U.K.-based supermarket giant Tesco. With more than five million customer accounts and £5.7 billion in customer deposits, Tesco Bank offers a wide range of banking and insurance solutions for the retail market. In addition to its new Clubcard Pay+ offering, the institution began 2022 with major changes to its C-suite, appointing new interim Chief Risk Officer Debbie Walker and new interim Chief Insurance Officer, Tesco Bank and interim CEO, Tesco Underwriting Gary Duggan.

London-based Onfido entered 2022 in the wake of what the company referred to as a “breakthrough” 2021. The company grew revenues by 90% year-over-year to more than $100 million and reached year-over-year growth of 134% in the U.S. Further, the company expanded its workforce by 50% to 600 employees to better accommodate increased demand for its services, this includes reaching 150 million in digital identity checks.

“Our strong year reflects the continued shift towards the critical adoption of digital environments where businesses are adapting to meet their users online,” Tuchen said earlier this year. He pointed to the $56 billion in identity theft losses consumers endured in 2020, adding “a fast, simple, and secure online journey is imperative when it comes to building customer trust, which is why we are continuing to invest in our workforce, technology, research, and development.”

Onfido has raised more than $188 million in funding from investors including TPG Growth, Augmentum Fintech, and Salesforce Ventures.

Photo by Antonio Janeski from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Irish Postal Services Provider Taps Tink to Offer Money Management Tools

Irish Postal Services Provider Taps Tink to Offer Money Management Tools
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Tink
  • Open banking platform Tink partnered with Irish postal services provider An Post.
  • Tink will provide data and analytics that fuel An Post’s Money Manager app.
  • The new partnership serves as an inroad for Tink into the Irish market.

Visa-owned open banking platform Tink formed a new partnership this week that will bring its open banking capabilities to users of Irish postal services provider An Post.

An Post, which offers not only parcel and mail logistics but also financial services, operates a network of 920 post offices for its 1.5 million weekly customers. An Post offers many of the major services typical of high street banks, including current accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, loans, and a currency card that allows users to purchase and top up 16 currencies.

Leveraging Tink for data and analytics, An Post now delivers a Money Manager app that helps users track their income and spending, set budgets, and receive insights about how they can better manage their funds.

“The partnership with Tink is the next step in our transformation journey, to firmly position ourselves as a challenger to the banks in Ireland, and to give customers access to simple money management tools that will enable them to build their financial confidence,” said An Post Financial Services Director John Rice. “As the leading open banking platform in Europe, Tink was a clear choice of partner for us to provide the data and analytics that sit at the core of our Money Manager app.”

For Sweden-based Tink, the partnership with An Post serves as an important inroad into the Irish market. “An Post is in the perfect position to help simplify money management for its customers through the power of open banking technology,” said Tink UK & IE Banking Lead Tasha Chouhan.

More than 10,000 developers use Tink’s tools to help financial services firms leverage the power of open banking via a suite of open banking tools including income verification, payment tools, risk insights, and more. Tink currently serves 18 markets from its 13 offices and integrates with more than 3,400 banks and financial institutions reaching over 250 million end customers across Europe.

Founded in 2012, Tink is a two-time Finovate Best of Show Award winner, and most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019. The company acquired FinTecSystems earlier this year, a move that expanded Tink’s reach into the DACH region with a range of new customers including N26, DKB, Santander, Solarisbank, and Check24.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Virgin Money Partners with HooYu to Boost Success of Customer Onboarding Process

Virgin Money Partners with HooYu to Boost Success of Customer Onboarding Process
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, HooYu

If making a great first impression is important, then Virgin Money’s decision to partner with customer onboarding and KYC technology specialist HooYu should make a pretty good impression of its own.

“Our smart digital tools put our customers in control and the HooYu journey helps our customers to successfully pass KYC where traditional name and address checks fail,” Virgin Money Head of Digital Customer Experience Linda Robertson said. “We chose to work with a regtech partner like HooYu because their platform enables us to easily build a range of digital onboarding journeys that are simple for our new customers to complete.”

A two-time FinovateEurope alum, HooYu combines a variety of KYC tools and technologies to ensure the success of the customer onboarding journey. This includes giving companies confidence that their customers are who they say they are. HooYu’s identity verification service leverages selfie capture, liveness detection, ID document capture and validation, facial biometrics, address proofing, and geolocation in a seamless process that reduces abandonment and increases conversions. Features such as dynamic customer prompts, white label customization, and flexible customer journeys help reduce friction and streamline the account opening experience.

Calling the emphasis on the digital customer experience an “obsession” with banks like Virgin Money,” HooYu Marketing Director David Pope said it was HooYu’s role to help these institutions “refine their new account journeys and achieve the origination goals.”

Virgin Money serves 6.5 million customers in the U.K. A full-service digital bank, the institution offers current, savings, and business accounts; credit cards and insurance; mortgages and personal loans; as well as pensions and investments. Originally launched as Virgin Direct in 1995, the company secured its banking license 2010 and rebranded as Virgin Money two years later.

“It’s our job to help banks like Virgin Money to orchestrate KYC services and easily configure and deploy with a great customer journey,” Pope said.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, U.K., HooYu began the year by leveraging open banking to support identity and affordability checks. The new offering, Bank Connect, enables users to establish their identity or affordability by logging into their bank account during the KYC process. With the user’s consent, Bank Connect provides identity, account overview, transaction, and card data. This information is analyzed, scored, and presented in a HooYu report. HooYu deletes all the user’s Bank Connect data once the client has reviewed the results of the report.

The technology is currently being rolled out to gaming operators, who benefit from the insights into customer affordability and use the information to make more accurate customer risk assessments. In fact, one month after announcing Bank Connect, HooYu introduced new partner MrQ, one of the U.K.’s growing number of online casinos.

Want to meet companies like FinovateEurope alum HooYu? Check out our FinovateEurope 2022 Sneak Peek series and learn more about the companies demoing their latest technologies next month at FinovateEurope in London, March 22 and 23.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

From Equipment Financing to Product Quality, African American Executives Take the Finovate Stage

From Equipment Financing to Product Quality, African American Executives Take the Finovate Stage
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Diversity in Fintech

As part of our commemoration of African American History Month, our Alumni Profile feature for this week showcases two African Americans who represented their companies at Finovate events in 2021.

Nathan Gibbons

Nathan Gibbons is Chief Operating Officer of Innovation Finance USA, the company behind QuickFi, a fully digital mobile, self-service business equipment financing platform. QuickFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia during the summer of 2021 and returned to the Finovate stage later that year for FinovateFall.

“Businesses acquire new equipment as they grow, and most equipment is financed by banks or manufacturer finance companies through leases and loans, similar to the way that automobiles are financed by consumers,” Gibbons explained at the beginning of QuickFi’s demo last year. “In fact, roughly a trillion dollars of business equipment is financed each year in the U.S.”

“Unfortunately, the equipment financing process is lengthy, opaque, and takes days or weeks to complete. And this is a real problem. Because there are literally millions of businesses whose growth and success is stifled by a slow, antiquated, equipment financing process.”

Previous to joining Innovation Finance, Gibbons was an executive with First American Equipment Finance, serving as Vice President for five years and as Project Manager for six. Educated at the University of Rochester, where he earned a B.A. in Spanish, Gibbons received his MBA from the University’s Simon Business School. He is both a Certified Lease and Finance Professional (CLFP) and a Certified DISC Behavioral Analyst. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association and the CLFP Foundation.

Headquartered in Fairport, New York, and founded in 2018, QuickFi has partnered with companies like Johnson Controls, SANY America, and Juniper Networks. The company was recognized last November by the 2021 Asset Finance Connect UK Conference and Awards by Asset Finance International. The following month, QuickFi was named a 2021 Pan Finance Award winner in the Innovative Commercial Financial Platform, USA category.

Anthony Heckman

Anthony Heckman is Head of Business Development and Growth for and founding member of unitQ, a product quality monitoring platform that enables fintechs and other companies to pursue a data-driven approach to product quality and enhancement. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York last September.

“We’ve built a world-class, machine learning platform. And today, I’m going to show you how we help some of the best companies in the world – companies like Chime, BRD, Truebill, and Pinterest — fix the right quality issues faster,” Heckman said last year at FinovateFall. “And by doing so, (we help them) improve product quality, (and) important metrics like retention and app store ratings. We’re cutting ‘time to fix’ for some of the best engineering organizations in the world so they can win in hyper-competitive markets like fintech.”

A graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received his Bachelors degree, Heckman earned his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is mentor with Defy of Northern California, an organization that helps current and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth develop the skills they need to pursue legal business opportunities and careers. Heckman is also a board member of Safe & Sound, an organization that works to prevent child abuse.

Based in Burlingame, California and founded in 2017, unitQ raised $30 million in Series B funding last fall in a round led by Accel. With partners including Chime, HelloFresh, NerdWallet and, most recently, PagerDuty, unitQ gives product managers a single, platform with which to observe and benchmark user feedback and product quality signals. Earlier this month, the company unveiled its February 2022 unitQ Scorecard of the highest-ranking apps with the best product quality across a range of different industries.

Photo by nappy from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

American Express Launches Digital Checking Account to Compete with Challenger Banks

American Express Launches Digital Checking Account to Compete with Challenger Banks
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, American Express, Daily news
  • American Express is launching a new, digital checking account called Amex Rewards Checking
  • The Amex Rewards Checking account will offer a 0.50% high-yield APY on account balances, along with other membership rewards
  • The new checking account is only open to primary American Express credit cardholders and is limited to individual users.

Financial services giant American Express is expanding its horizons into the crowded world of digital checking. The company is launching Amex Rewards Checking, an all-digital consumer checking account, for eligible U.S. card members.

As an incumbent player, American Express has multiple advantages over the many smaller digital challenger upstarts that have launched in the past two years. That’s because not only does the New York-based firm have credibility and a pre-existing large customer base, it also comes with a reputation for its rewards and perks.

“Our Members want more banking products and services from us,” said American Express Executive Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Banking Eva Reda. “And they want more from their checking account, without giving up the benefits that are important to them. That’s why we built Amex Rewards Checking to deliver more value for Members with the powerful and trusted backing of American Express. It’s digital checking without compromises.”

The checking account product will be a draw to Millennial and Gen Z users, who look for banking products with incentives and rewards. In fact, according to a study from Amex, 35% of consumers rank rewards and offers at the top when considering opening a new account. Given this, Amex packed competitive features into its new checking account. Accountholders can:

  • Earn 0.50% high-yield APY on their account balance, which is 10x higher than the national rate
  • Gain one Membership Rewards point for every $2 spent on eligible debit card purchases. Users can redeem these points for deposits into their Amex checking account
  • Pay no monthly maintenance fees or minimum balance fees
  • Receive purchase protection for accidental damage or theft on eligible purchases
  • Access Amex’s customer care providers 24/7 via phone or chat
  • Receive fraud protection and monitoring
  • Make fee-free ATM withdrawals at 37,000 MoneyPass ATM locations

The new Rewards Checking account is only open to primary American Express credit cardholders who have had their account for more than three months. Currently, the new checking account is limited to individuals and cannot accommodate joint accounts.

The new Amex Rewards Checking is American Express’ first checking account for retail customers. The financial services giant has offered small business checking for a little over a year now. The company acquired Kabbage in 2020 for $850 million and leveraged the purchase to launch a small business checking offering in 2021. That said, it’s worth noting that Amex’s new debit card is not available to its small business checking customers.

American Express, which presented at our developers conference in 2015, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AXP. The company saw $36 billion in revenue in 2020 and has a market capitalization of $149 billion. Stephen Squeri is CEO.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

TickSmith Raises $20 Million in New Funding for its Enterprise Data Web Store

TickSmith Raises $20 Million in New Funding for its Enterprise Data Web Store
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, TickSmith

Canadian fintech TickSmith is ringing in the new year with $20 million in Series A funding. The company will use the additional capital to support marketing of its Data Web Store, a B2B SaaS platform that enables organizations and institutions to generate new revenue streams based on their data.

“Data monetization is no longer limited to large enterprises,” TickSmith CEO Francis Wenzel said. “Selling data should be as simple as selling products in an e-commerce store, and data sellers of all sizes can now benefit from the same tools that power the largest, most robust data marketplaces in the world.”

The Series A was led by Investissement Québec, and featured participation from Fonds de solidarité FTQ, CME Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Anges Québec, Anges Québec Capital, and Illuminate Financial Management. The investment gives the company a total capital of $26.8 million, according to Crunchbase.

Founded in 2012, headquartered in Montreal, Québec, and making its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateFall 2014, TickSmith offers a platform that gives firms the technology they need to prepare, manage, package, and monetize data via private marketplaces. With customers in industries ranging from financial institutions and data providers to exchanges and brokerages, TickSmith helps organizations take advantage of a new world of data types – including alternative data and unstructured data.

The company’s technology also empowers them to enhance and refine existing data, enabling them to offer granular, micro-data services. This, as TickSmith Head of Product Nicolas Doyen, explained in a recent blog post, is allowing data providers to “(offer) more control to the ultimate consumers of their information services.” He added that this “modern approach to the data buying process” not only gives more control to the end-user, but also can help reduce the costs of data by “circumventing the data packaging approach used by traditional data suppliers.”

TickSmith ended 2021 with a collaboration with international cryptocurrency and digital asset technology company BlockFills. Earlier this month, TickSmith announced that IPOhub will use TickSmith’s Data Web Store platform to distribute and securely commercialize SME data from more than 3,000 companies and more than 100 different sources. A pan European investment information platform headquartered in Estonia and founded in 2017, IPOhub is also collaborating with TickSmith and market data specialist EOSE to help take IPOhub data on growth company IPOs to market.

“TickSmith’s technology is making it easy for us to offer our customers a personalized e-commerce data shopping experience with our very own data web store that showcases IPO and European SME data,” IPOhub CEO Silver Laus explained. “Their platform provides an end-to-end data monetization experience and helps us open up an entirely new channel to deliver data to our customers in just a few clicks.”

Photo by igovar from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

SpyCloud Unveils its Identity Risk Engine

SpyCloud Unveils its Identity Risk Engine
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, SpyCloud

FinovateFall Best of Show winner SpyCloud has launched its latest solution to combat online fraud. The SpyCloud Identity Risk Engine, unveiled this week, analyzes billions of data recaptured from the dark web to help businesses and financial institutions make faster, more accurate, real-time fraud mitigation decisions.

What’s unique about SpyCloud’s approach to fighting fraud is the company’s focus on identifying credentials that have been exposed during data breaches and are actively being traded in the criminal underground. These exposed credentials are sold to fraudsters on the black market or used by the hackers themselves to steal confidential information, access secure systems, or commit fraud. Because many of these sources of stolen credentials cannot be readily accessed by automated software tools or web crawlers, SpyCloud uses a combination of technical innovation and human intelligence to find and recapture data from online criminal communities. The company also gives businesses and financial institutions access to the kind of authentication systems that will help defend them against cyberattacks that leverage stolen credentials such as account takeover (ATO), identity fraud, and new account fraud.

With the release of its SpyCloud Identity Risk Engine, SpyCloud gives businesses in financial and ecommerce services actionable, predictive fraud risk assessments based on breach data and stolen credentials that have been recaptured from the dark web. The technology combats difficult-to-detect challenges including data harvested by malware and the use of synthetic identities. SpyCloud Identity Risk Engine also gives businesses insight into which customers have the highest risk of account takeover due to risk factors such as exposed credentials or weak password protocols.

Businesses place the Identity Risk Engine at their most critical points of potential fraud (i.e., at account opening, login, transactions, etc.). From there, all that is required is an API query using an email address or phone number. SpyCloud then scans billions of recaptured data points to deliver a risk score that enables businesses to make more accurate fraud decisions. SpyCloud has recaptured more than 145 billion breached assets, more than 30 billion email addresses, and more than 25 billion total passwords. The company’s technology collects 50+ breach sources every week.

Winner of Built In Austin’s Best Places to Work for a second year in a row, SpyCloud was founded in 2016 and made its Finovate debut one year later. The company was featured in Fast Company’s inaugural Next Big Things in Tech roster last fall and, in October, SpyCloud announced a partnership with Houston, Texas-based identity and access management solution provider Identity Automation to help schools fight ransomware threats.

“Preventing ransomware is possible by negating the top attack vector: credentials that have been exposed in data breaches,” SpyCloud SVP of Business Development Cassio Mello explained. “This service gives schools early identification of compromised accounts, enabling them to take action quickly and prevent cyber attacks that leverage recently-breached identity data.”

SpyCloud has raised $58.5 million in funding from investors including Centana Growth Partners, Microsoft’s Venture Fund M12, March Capital, and Silverton Partners. Ted Ross is co-founder and CEO.

Photo by Anthony from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

BeSmartee Pursues Opportunities in Commercial Lending with FlashSpread Acquisition

BeSmartee Pursues Opportunities in Commercial Lending with FlashSpread Acquisition
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, BeSmartee, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions

With its acquisition of financial analysis as a service company FlashSpread, digital mortgage platform BeSmartee’s ability to deliver a complete, digital lending experience just got that much more complete.

“We are excited to welcome FlashSpread and Ariel Trybuch to the BeSmartee family,” CEO and co-founder of BeSmartee Tim Nguyen said in a statement. “This is an acquisition that not only brings new clients, technologies, and talents to BeSmartee, but one that also sparks further innovation into all lending verticals, including mortgages, consumer, and commercial.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Glendale, California, FlashSpread specializes in instant tax spreading for commercial lenders and fintechs. The company’s proprietary algorithms enable lenders to convert scanned tax returns into customized and comprehensive financial reports with the click of a button. The technology brings significant efficiencies to the commercial loan process – from origination to servicing – and empowers lenders to make accurate, data-driven credit decisions quickly.

Via its acquisition of FlashSpread, BeSmartee will be able to accelerate its growth strategy, prioritizing increased automation as it expands into the commercial lending space. FlashSpread is integrated with some of the largest loan origination systems in the commercial lending industry, with more than 100 financial institutions relying on its technology to automate manual processes. Post-acquisition, FlashSpread will continue independently to serve customers as a “BeSmartee Company” with FlashSpread founder and CEO Ariel Trybuch taking on the role of General Manager.

“This partnership will provide the resources necessary to support the hyper-growth FlashSpread is currently experiencing, as well as allow us to provide our customers with an even higher level of customer support, rapidly introduce new features and functionality, and expand our ever-growing library of supported document types,” Trybuch said. The company will continue growing its document library to support a broader range of financial statements, as well as launch a no-code reporting module to offer instant custom reports, and unveil an ongoing credit monitoring tool.

BeSmartee’s acquisition announcement comes just days after the company reported a partnership with Freddie Mac. The Huntington Beach-based fintech will integrate Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting system, Loan Product Advisor, improving workflows for lenders by automating risk assessment, and both asset and income data review. The integration will also improve lenders’ ability to make smart business decisions, leveraging actionable insights from Loan Product Advisor’s rich data visualization features.

Photo by Kat Smith from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Tink Completes Acquisition of FinTecSystems

Tink Completes Acquisition of FinTecSystems
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Tink

Visa-owned open banking platform Tink has finalized its purchase of FinTecSystems. The acquisition, which was initiated prior to Visa purchasing Tink, was first announced in May of last year. The integration of the two companies combines Tink’s open banking platform and FinTecSystems’ product suite to offer a more complete solution when partnering for open banking technology.

Additionally, FinTecSystems brings Tink new customers including N26, DKB, Santander, Solarisbank, and Check24. The Germany-based open banking firm will help Sweden-based Tink build on its growth strategy and expand into the DACH region, where FinTecSystems is currently powering over 150 banks and fintechs.

“Germany is a key market for Tink, and we are excited to have acquired an innovative leader with a strong reputation for the quality of its bank connectivity and payments services,” said Tink Co-founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén. “We have followed FinTecSystems for many years and are impressed by what they have achieved. Through this acquisition, we are taking a big step into the DACH region, and we look forward to supporting the FinTecSystems’ team to further accelerate their growth.”

FinTecSystems was founded in 2014 and facilitates data analytics, digital account checks, account aggregation, and open banking payments. The company connects to more than 99% of the banks in the DACH region, and in Germany specifically, three in every four online credit decisions involve FinTecSystems’ technology.

FinTecSystems’ 78 employees have joined Tink’s team, which now sits at almost 600 employees. FinTecSystems will continue to function as an independent, regulated company in Germany.

Today’s deal comes two years after Tink landed $103 million (€85 million) in a funding round that boosted its total raised to $308 million. The acquisition also comes after Tink itself was bought out by Visa in June of 2021 for $2.1 billion (€1.8 billion).

Tink, whose open banking platform is used by more than 10,000 developers, was founded in 2012 and currently serves 18 markets from its 13 offices. The company is a two-time Finovate Best of Show Award winner, and most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019.

FinovateEurope 2022 is right around the corner. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22 to March 23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook