Alumni profile

Finovate Global Hong Kong: Chekk Brings Digital Identity Tech to Bain Capital – and Raises Capital of its Own

Finovate Global Hong Kong: Chekk Brings Digital Identity Tech to Bain Capital – and Raises Capital of its Own
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Chekk, Funding

It’s been nearly five years since Hong Kong-based Chekk made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia. The company, co-founded by CEO Pascal Nizri, is a B2B2C digital identity ecosystem that shifts ownership of personal data from businesses to individuals as part of its strategy to provide better, more seamless identity verification services.

“We all know how reluctant Internet users have become to share personal data online,” Chekk co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Benjamin Petit said from the Finovate stage during his company’s demo. “On the other side regulators are forcing banks and financial service providers to collect an increasing amount of data for compliance reasons. And this done during lengthy and painful KYCs that are costly for banks.”

Via a mobile app, Chekk empowers individuals to own their own personal data and control how much of their data they share. At the same time, businesses get access to a secure online or API-based platform that enables them to make data requests and conduct other customer interactions – from onboarding due diligence and ID verification to secure messaging for chats and statements – seamlessly.

Chekk’s SaaS solutions help the company’s retail, private, and corporate customers manage a range of digital identity and data portability challenges and operations. These include multi-language AML checks, including Arabic, Russian, and Chinese, as well as identity verification for more than 200 countries, biometric digital signatures, tools to create and maintain digital forms, a secure encrypted data wallet, and global connectivity to more than 400 million business data sources.

Bain Capital is the latest financial institution to choose Chekk as its partner when it comes to digital identity verification. With $155 billion in assets, the Boston-based alternative investment firm announced in July that it will leverage Chekk’s technology to provide KYB verification for businesses, merchants, and third parties, as well as KYC for individual customers.

The Bain partnership news comes in the wake of Chekk’s announcement of a significant investment (described as “multi-million dollar”) in a round led by HSBC Alternatives, a wing of HSBC Asset Management. The funding builds on previous funding from investors such as SOSV and LeFonds, a pair of venture capital firms, as well as individual investor David Gurle, founder of Symphony Communications Services.

“Thanks to its founders’ hands-on experience, Chekk is building a suite of services that extends well beyond compliance-driven KYC/KYB and puts commercial relationships at the core of its value proposition,” HSBC Asset Management Head of Venture and Growth Investments Remi Bourrette said. “This resonates with our fintech fund’s themes of improving access to financial services while managing the risks arising from criminal activities.

Have we arrived at a reckoning for Hong Kong-based fintech? While the clamp down on Big Tech in China has gotten most of the attention from international technology analysts and observers, the impact on fintech developments in Hong Kong have been relatively overlooked. A recent survey conducted by Google and financial consultancy Quinlan & Associates suggests that the fintech industry in Hong Kong could be in for challenging times.

Specifically, the survey revealed that 60% of the 120+ C-suite executives from early- and late-stage private fintechs contacted felt that Hong Kong was “relatively uncompetitive compared to other fintech hubs.” Among the reasons cited were the city’s regulatory environment, which was viewed as “costly, complex, and time-consuming,” as well as a “talent gap” that had been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. This talent gap extends beyond technical and product innovation roles to include sales and marketing talent, as well.

Hong Kong has been responsive to these challenges, according to a report from South China Morning Post. The city’s central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, unveiled a four-year plan in June – the Greater Bay Fintech Talent Initiative – that included a pledge to “groom all-round fintech talent” and to provide greater funding assistance for fintech projects. The initiative will feature the support of 20 financial institutions including HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Hong Kong’s stock exchange. Tech giant Ant Group will also participate in the initiative — the only tech-based company to take part.

“While nurturing local fintech talent has been one of Ant Group’s key missions for years,” Ant Group EVP for strategy development and government affairs Jennifer Tan said, “it’s the group’s honor to join partners from various aspects in cultivating tech talent through the Greater Bay Fintech Talent Initiative.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Azerbaijan-based fintech SmilePay announced partnerships with a pair of major food retailers.
  • German neobank Vivid secured an investment license from the Dutch Financial Supervisory Authority AFM.
  • Hungarian National Bank turned to Grape Solutions to provide IT services per a new 60-month framework agreement.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Arnie Chou

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Card Transaction Data Provider Facteus Earns Plaudits for Pulse

Card Transaction Data Provider Facteus Earns Plaudits for Pulse
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Facteus

A year ago, an Oregon-based fintech called Facteus made its debut at FinovateFall 2021.

“Finovate was started with the idea of showcasing new and exciting innovation in financial services,” Facteus VP Steve Shaw said as he began his company’s demo. “And we’ve seen a lot of great ideas in technology over the past couple of days.”

“But what’s that one thing that ties all of this innovation together and really makes it work?” he asked. “It’s the data behind all this innovation. If you don’t have access to the right data, a lot of this innovation is just for show.”

Founded in 2010, Facteus leverages a massive debit and credit card transaction data set to offer hedge funds, researchers, marketing professionals and others unique insights into the consumer economy. With more than eight years of historical data and 42 billion transactions processed – representing $1.3 trillion in consumer spending – Facteus provides insights into consumer segments, such as youth and the underbanked, whose financial behavior is often overlooked or underappreciated by other data sets.

At FinovateFall 2021, Facteus demoed its MIMIC synthetic data engine, which leverages machine learning to create an artificial copy of sensitive data, removing personally identifiable information (PII). The synthetic copy can be used for analytics, machine learning and AI, segmentation activities, and other data operations, but cannot be reverse engineered back to the original transaction or organization.

“Data is really the fuel for all the innovation we are seeing,” Shaw said. “We truly believe that and we have examples to show that synthetic data is really the key to unlocking the value of your sensitive data.”

Facteus began this year teaming up with 1010data to provide enhanced transaction data insights and analytics to companies in the investment, retail, and consumer brands businesses. As part of the strategic agreement, Facteus acquired 101data’s Equity Intelligence business, enhancing its ability to provide transaction data insights and analysis to the investment services industry. In return, 1010data gained access to Facteus’ U.S. Consumer Payments data panels to help its retail and consumer brand clients.

“Facteus data provides deep insights into the drivers behind consumer spending behavior and business trends not available in other transactional data panels,” Facetus CEO Chris Marsh said. “(Facteus offers) enhanced company analysis and investment strategies for 1010data clients and the investment services industry as a whole.”

By spring, Facteus was in the fintech headlines again, this time announcing an investment of $10 million from Curql Fund, the investment arm for more than 75 credit unions in the U.S. The company said it would use the funding to support the growth of its analytics and insights platform Quantamatics, as well as fuel continued innovation on its platform and expand into new industry verticals. The company’s investment from Curql Fund also gives Facteus access to the significant data assets of Curql Collective owners, representing tens of millions of new consumer debit and credit cards.

In May, the Beaverton-based company launched Pulse, a new consumer transaction data solution it called the most comprehensive in the alternative data industry. With Pulse, Facteus is able to capture up to 5% of all U.S. consumer spending, more than 500 tickers and 1,000+ private companies, and deliver accurate company KPI forecasts with the industry’s lowest forecast errors. A month later, Facteus’ Pulse earned its first official vote of confidence: topping the latest rankings in predictive accuracy in the KPIs of more than 65 public consumer companies.

“This accomplishment is a testament to our commitment to directly acquiring transaction datasets to build the most holistic and stable view of consumer spending across income cohorts and demographics,” Facteus Head of Product and Strategy Lorn Davis said.

Photo by Amina Filkins

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Jack Henry Acquires Payrailz for an Undisclosed Amount

Jack Henry Acquires Payrailz for an Undisclosed Amount
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Jack Henry, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Jack Henry Acquired payments-as-a-service startup Payrailz.
  • Jack Henry anticipates the acquisition will enhance its payments-as-a-service strategy and offer its 8,000 clients the ability to enable embedded finance.
  • Financial details were not disclosed.

Core banking provider Jack Henry & Associates has agreed to acquire digital payments startup Payrailz. Financial details of the acquisition, which is expected to close at the end of this month, have not been disclosed.

Jack Henry anticipates the acquisition will support banks and credit unions by enhancing its payments-as-a-service (PaaS) strategy and offering its 8,000 clients the ability to enable embedded finance. Jack Henry currently has a virtual payments hub that consolidates money transfer tools which support numerous payment channels and types. Payrailz’s technology complements this hub by adding consumer and commercial bill pay; real-time person-to-person (P2P), account-to-account (A2A), business-to-customer (B2C) payments; and more.

“We are excited about the opportunity to add these next-generation solutions to our payments capabilities,” said Jack Henry President and COO Greg Adelson. “Our company is engaged in technology modernization that is supporting banks and credit unions with innovative solutions that enable them to respond to business opportunities and challenges, and to improve the financial health of their accountholders. Considering the importance of modern digital and payments strategies to financial institutions, we plan to acquire Payrailz as a strategic addition to our payments ecosystem, which enables our clients to simplify the complexity of payments, modernize their existing payment channels, and remain at the center of their account holders’ payment experiences.”

Payrailz consumer and commercial digital payment solutions help banks compete with third party players with its PaaS offering. The company was founded in 2016 and had since raised $24 million. Earlier this year, Payrailz integrated with Q2’s digital banking platform to enable Q2 clients to provide P2P payment services.

Founded in 1976, Jack Henry most recently presented at FinovateFall 2015 where the company showcased the Banno solution after acquiring Banno in 2014. Among Jack Henry’s other fintech acquisitions are Geezeo, iPay Technologies, and Stackfolio.

Photo by Albin Berlin

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Matching Passions and Maximizing Engagement with Pinkaloo’s Modern Giving Technology

Matching Passions and Maximizing Engagement with Pinkaloo’s Modern Giving Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pinkaloo

Last week, we looked at Finovate alums that are leveraging their technologies to help employers help their employees achieve financial wellness and greater financial inclusion. Today we are highlighting a Finovate alum – and Best of Show winner – that is using its innovation to facilitate charitable giving in the workplace.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkaloo made its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demonstrated Modern Giving, its white-label charitable giving platform. The technology gives individuals a centralized account to use for their charitable giving, learn about other charities that match their values, and collaborate on philanthropic efforts with others. Modern Giving enables businesses to maximize engagement with their employees and customers, helping promote and drive charitable giving in their communities.

“Pinkaloo’s white-label Modern Giving offers an opportunity to attract new banking customers and members, as well as more deeply connect with your current customers around an area that they are deeply, deeply passionate about and truly care about strongly,” Pinkaloo founder and CEO Gideon Taub told our FinovateFall audience. “At the same time, your banking institution can make more money and hit your KPIs while directly powering the charitable giving of your customers and members.”

Left to right: Pinkaloo’s Daniel Gardner (COO) and Gideon Taub (CEO & Founder) delivering the company’s Best of Show winning demo at FinovateFall 2019.

The company’s demonstration was impressive enough to earn Pinkaloo a Best of Show award in its first Finovate appearance. And it looks as if our Finovate audience was not the only one paying attention to Pinkaloo’s achievements. Less than two years after its award-winning appearance on the Finovate stage, the company announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Ren (formerly RenPSG), a leading independent philanthropic solutions provider. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Ren supports more than $20 billion in assets. The firm partners with financial services companies, nonprofits, and community organizations to offer online access for donors, advisors, and employees to manage a variety of planned gifts ranging from charitable trusts to endowments and private foundations.

“Today’s philanthropic ecosystem demands ongoing innovation in how we recruit, engage, and retain donors – all while also giving donors the best possible experience,” Taub said when the deal was announced. “Donors want to be involved and drive change via small and large contributions alike. They need a robust platform to do just that – and a RenPSG-Pinkaloo team uniquely answers that demand.”

The future of the Pinkaloo brand, post-acquisition, remains to be seen. Techincal.ly quoted Taub in March 2021 as indicating that a “new shared brand will emerge from our combined company” as the two entities “integrate and innovate.” With employees around the country, Pinkaloo said it will retain its “Baltimore presence” as its leadership and team are integrated into Ren. Taub praised Ren for “respecting and welcoming our ideas and processes,” adding that the alignment of visions between the two companies “makes for an easy transition.”

Pinkaloo was a finalist in the Reimagine Charitable Giving Challenge sponsored by the Better Giving Studio (BGS) of Giving By All, an initiative of the Philanthropic Partnerships team of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Previous to its acquisition by Ren, Pinkaloo had raised $1.8 million in funding from investors including Squadra Ventures, C5 Accelerate, TEDCO, Baltimore Angels, and PeaceTech Accelerator.

Photo by tyler hendy

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands

MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, MoEngage

Insights-led customer engagement platform MoEngage made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Three years later, the company returned to the Finovate stage for FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At this year’s conference, MoEngage demonstrated its full-stack solution featuring customer analytics, automated cross-channel engagement, and AI-driven personalization.

“71% of banking customers expect to receive personalized digital offers yet banks fail to do so because they have data silos,” MoEngage Senior Director Saket Toshniwal said during his demo at FinovateEurope in March. “We are here to solve that (problem), leveraging MoEngage.”

Founded in 2014, MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels including mobile, email, SMS, web, on-site and in-app messaging, and more. The MoEngage platform leverages AI-powered automation and optimization to enable brands to analyze behavior and serve consumers with personalized communications at every stage of engagement.

“Using MoEngage technology to create effective campaigns based on customers insight will increase your engagement, increase retention, and definitely increase your revenue,” Toshniwal said.

And while MoEngage’s return to the Finovate stage was certainly a big deal for the company, we’re willing to bet that the $77 million raised at the end of May represents an even bigger deal for the San Francisco, California-based firm. The Series E round, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital, represents the third round of funding raised by MoEngage in the past year. The company secured $23.5 million in July 2021 and another $30 million in December of that year.

Also participating in the round were existing investors Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternative Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India. MoEngage said in a statement that it would use the new capital to deepen its presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as fuel its expansion into new markets in Latin America and Australia. The investment also will give MoEngage the ability to pursue strategic acquisitions that would extend the platform’s capabilities and bring greater value to users.

“Our rapid growth and the leadership position is a validation that consumer brands today are moving beyond campaign-centric tools and adopting an insights-led multi-channel approach to customer engagement,” MoEngage CEO and co-founder Raviteja Dodda said when the Series E was announced. “We now have over 1,200 customers in 35 countries and more than 650 employees across our offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany, UAE, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.”

Photo by Rodolfo Clix

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Zeta Appoints FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer

Zeta Appoints FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Zeta
  • Modern core processing provider Zeta appointed FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Booe has spent more than 27 years working at FIS, where she served as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Zeta was voted Best of Show at FinovateWest Digital 2020.

Modern core processing provider Zeta is introducing a fresh face this week. The California-based company recently brought on FIS Veteran Karla Booe as Chief Compliance Officer.

Booe will drive regulatory compliance programs for Zeta’s U.S. based clients from her office in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has spent the past 27+ years working at FIS, where she most recently served as the company’s Deputy Chief Compliance Officer. 

Commenting on Booe’s appointment, Zeta CEO and Cofounder Bhavin Turakhia said, “She will further our already strong commitment to regulatory risk and compliance.”

“There has been little-to-no tech innovation with regard to the management of regulatory risk compliance for credit cards in the last decade,” said Booe. “I am excited to help drive that change for Zeta’s clients. Zeta’s mission to provide next-gen capabilities to banks so they can launch products, programs, and innovations faster are underscored by a technology framework and by design principles that will completely change the processing landscape.”

Zeta, which was voted Best of Show at FinovateWest Digital 2020, offers modern core and processing for banks and embeddable banking for fintechs. Earlier this year, Zeta received $30 million in new funding, bringing its valuation to $1.5 million.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Intelligent Identity Security Innovator Sontiq Urges Customer Engagement to Fight Fraud

Intelligent Identity Security Innovator Sontiq Urges Customer Engagement to Fight Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Report series, Sontiq
  • Intelligent identity solution provider Sontiq has issued a new report on security in financial services.
  • The report, 2022 Digital Safety and Security Report for Financial Services, underscores the importance of engaging customers and members in the fight against cyberfraud.
  • Sontiq made its Finovate debut in the fall of 2021 and was acquired a few months later by TransUnion for $638 million.

Intelligent identity security firm Sontiq has warned that the growing sophistication of cybercriminals and increased awareness and concern over the challenge to digital security from the public have created both new challenges and new opportunities for financial institutions. In a new report, the 2022 Digital Safety and Security Report for Financial Services, Sontiq highlights the way cybercriminals have leveraged advanced technologies – including automation and AI – to achieve what Sontiq called a “historic level of data compromise” in 2021.

“Consumers are increasingly anxious about cyber threats, but feel unprepared to take action or deal with the fallout,” Sontiq SVP of Enterprise Risk Solutions Al Pascual said. “Notably, they don’t want generic security advice. Financial institutions can combat increased identity risks with personalized, self-service tools that are seamlessly embedded into the digital banking experience.”

Here are some of the key takeaways from Sontiq’s report.

Financial institutions must understand the threat landscape

“What consumers, organizations, and the media often misunderstand,” the report noted, “is that the data breaches with the greatest impact on individuals are often not the high-profile ones that capture headlines.” Sontiq’s research distinguishes between high-profile breaches at institutions like Facebook/Meta and LinkedIn and high-risk breaches at companies like Gallagher and Waste Management. This is because “high-risk” breaches, while involving fewer victims, tend to involve compromises of more valuable personally-identifiable information compared to “high-profile” breaches.

Synthetic identity fraud is a bigger threat than identity theft

A growing number of financial services companies are recognizing the challenge of synthetic identity fraud, with Sontiq observing that 72% of financial services firms believe that synthetic identity fraud is a “much more pressing issue” compared to traditional identity theft.

Why so? And what’s the difference?

Traditional identity theft involves stealing a real person’s PII (personally-identifiable information) and using that data to engage in criminal activity. And make no mistake: traditional identity theft is still an issue, costing $24 billion in losses and victimizing more than 15 million individuals in 2021. Synthetic identity fraud, by comparison, involves a blending of both real and fictitious information. This enables the fraudster to create a completely new, made-up identity that can then be used to fraudulently open accounts, and apply for loans and credit cards. A newer arrival on the cybercrime scene, synthetic identity fraud also comes at a significant cost. The Federal Reserve has estimated that synthetic identity fraud losses have climbed to $20 billion, making it the “fastest growing financial crime.”

Personalized, proactive identity protection gives financial institutions the opportunity to differentiate themselves

In its report, Sontiq makes it clear that consumers are uncertain about who to turn to in the event of a security breach. “Nearly half of Americans,” the report notes, “say they would not know what to do if their identity was stolen.” Because of this, more than half of American fraud victims (54%) have indicated that they believe their financial institution can play a major role in helping them “navigate and resolve their identity fraud issues.” Breach victims across generations – under 35, between 35 and 54, and over 55 – all turned to their financial institutions for assistance in comparable numbers (50%, 48%, and 44% respectively).

This has resulted in a significant growth in the identity theft protection services market. Analysts project that this market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4% over the next 10 years.

There are a variety of ways that financial institutions can seize this opportunity by deploying better anti-fraud tools and partnering with fintechs and cybersecurity specialists. But key to all of these efforts, according to Sontiq, is customer engagement. Educating financial services consumers on what to do to enhance their own online security – and what to do in the event of a security breach – is critical. Also important is the role of empowerment, and helping consumers understand what they can do to enhance their own defense against fraud.

“Getting consumers to adopt a self-service approach to identity protection also has the potential to help a financial institution better invest resources,” the report noted. “Informed, engaged customers who actively protect their identities become potent allies – finding fraud earlier and reducing overall risk to them and the financial institution.”

Download the free white paper to read the full report.

Sontiq made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021. At the event, the Nottingham, Maryland-based company demonstrated its BreachIQ solution. BreachIQ identifies and diagnoses a consumer’s security breach history to provide personalized, protective actions the consumer can take to improve financial health and enhance security. The technology effectively leverages AI to turn ID fraud risk into a consumer financial health opportunity.

Launched in 2019, Sontiq was formed when EZShield acquired identity theft protection provider IdentityForce. Last spring, Sontiq announced its acquisition of Breach Clarity, a post-breach fraud specialist and Finovate Best of Show winner. In October 2021, Sontiq itself was acquired by fellow Finovate alum TransUnion for $638 million. In a statement, TransUnion said that Sontiq’s identity security technology compliments its own digital identity assets and solutions.

“TransUnion is committed to empowering consumers to shape their financial futures,” TransUnion President of U.S. Markets and Consumer Interactive Steve Chaouki said. “With Sontiq, we will ensure that consumers and businesses have a comprehensive set of tools to protect the financial profile they have built.”

Photo by RODNAE Productions

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

PayPal Adds New Business Credit Card

PayPal Adds New Business Credit Card
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, PayPal
  • PayPal launched a small business credit card this week.
  • The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard is PayPal’s first business credit card.
  • PayPal also offers a range of other tools for small businesses, including working capital tools, business loans, risk management support, and more.

Small businesses in the U.S. have gained yet another credit card option this week with PayPal’s launch of its its first commercial credit card.

The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard, which is issued by WebBank, has no annual fee and offers cardholders 2% cashback on all purchases. The rewards are not subject to earning caps nor do they expire. Additionally, the card comes with free employee cards, does not charge a foreign transaction fee, and integrates with PayPal’s merchant platform to facilitate access to transactions, balances, available credit, and rewards.

Once a business is approved for the card, it can immediately begin spending via a virtual card that is automatically integrated into their PayPal account. Businesses can view their account and spending details via their PayPal Business account.

“As small business owners continue to recover from the challenges of the past two years, having multiple financing options to address their capital needs is more important than ever,” said PayPal Vice President of Global Merchant Lending Bernardo Martinez. “The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard provides merchants greater value, more choice, and the increased flexibility they need to manage their business finances, offering among the best value available on no annual fee business credit cards today. This new solution continues PayPal’s commitment to supporting small businesses and offering options to help manage the day-to-day costs of operating their business.”

Founded in 1998, PayPal has long been an ally to small businesses. In addition to the business credit card, the California-based company also offers a working capital solution that has distributed more than $20 billion, as well as payout capabilities, business loans, payment acceptance tools, risk management support, and more. These products have helped PayPal amass 20 million small business customers in the U.S. And this is no small feat, given the fact that there are only 33 million small businesses in the U.S.

The launch of the The PayPal Business Cashback Mastercard comes five years after PayPal launched its credit card for individual users in 2017.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alums mmob and Dapi Join Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program

Finovate Alums mmob and Dapi Join Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, DAPI, mmob
  • Mastercard will welcome five fintech startups to its inaugural Start Path Open Banking Program.
  • The initial cohort will feature two Finovate alums: UAE/San Francisco-based Dapi and mmob, a Best of Show winner from the U.K.
  • The new, open banking-oriented program will enable fintechs to leverage Mastercard’s open banking expertise and market insights to scale their businesses.

A pair of Finovate alums – one from the UAE and another headquartered in the U.K. – have earned spots in Mastercard’s new open banking-focused Start Path program. Dapi, an open banking API provider based in the UAE, and mmob, a U.K.-based embedded finance innovator, will join three other fintechs in Mastercard’s three-month program.

“Open banking is a natural progression of how Mastercard has always embraced innovation and consumer trust with equal measure, and how we’ve remained a trusted partner for our customers,” Mastercard EVP for Fintech & Segment Solutions Blake Rosenthal said. “We are thrilled to launch the Start Path Open Banking program and welcome five high-growth startups from around the world to collaborate with us and accelerate open banking innovation.”

Rounding out the inaugural class are Finantier, an open finance platform based in Indonesia; Mono, a fintech headquartered in Nigeria that helps businesses access financial data and facilitate payments; and U.S.-based Paywallet, which helps lenders and other financial services companies improve payment certainty.

Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking program is designed to work with open banking startups as they scale their businesses and explore opportunities for co-innovation. The five companies selected for this year’s program have demonstrated “strong synergies” with Mastercard’s approach to technology and consumer choice, according to a statement. The companies will spend three months working with and learning from Mastercard’s open banking expertise and platforms via its wholly-owned subsidiaries – Finicity and Aiia – both of which are also Finovate alums.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year, mmob won Best of Show for its Intelligent Partnerships Infrastructure, which enables businesses to build better digital experiences via embedded finance solutions. The company, founded in 2020 by Irfan Khan (CEO) ad Arsalaan Ahmed, serves both firms looking to embed new products as well as those who want to have their own products embedded into other solutions. mmob helps businesses integrate the kind of complimentary products and services that boost conversions and create new revenue streams.

“We will be using the next three months to work with Mastercard’s teams, develop our product and introduce mmob’s solution to Mastercard’s global network,” mmob said in a statement.

In March, mmob secured $6.6 million (EUR 5.9 million) in funding. The investment came courtesy of angel investors, high net worth individuals, and banking executives. The funding will enable the company to expand in both the U.K., where it is headquartered, as well as in Malaysia. With partners including PensionBee, Anorak, Uinsure, and Superscript, mmob announced its latest partner, iwoca, back in September.

“As big banks reduce their risk appetite, we believe embedded finance is the future of SME lending,” iwoca Commercial Growth Director Colin Goldstein said when the partnership was announced last fall. “Mmob presents an exciting opportunity for us and a win-win for everyone involved in its ecosystem.”

Dapi, headquartered in the UAE, demonstrated its technology at FinovateMiddleEast in 2019. An infrastructure API technology company, Dapi facilitates connections between banks and fintechs across the Middle East. Founded in 2019 by Mohammad Aziz (CEO) and maintaining offices in San Francisco, California as well as the Middle East, the company offers both data aggregation and payment initiation services with a single integration.

“Dapi’s mission is to provide the building blocks for a thriving fintech ecosystem in emerging markets around the world,” Aziz said in an exclusive interview with Finovate. “Our API serves as the bridge between financial applications and banks, empowering developers to create digital wallets, budget trackers, investment applications, and more.”

In January 2021, Dapi raised $3 million in funding, bringing its total capital raised to $5.2 million courtesy of investors including the Pioneer Fund, Y Combinator, and BECO Capital. The company began the year partnering with NymCard, a banking-as-a-service provider headquartered in the UAE. The strategic agreement will enable end customers to top up their card accounts from any local bank account in real-time and at lower cost.

“We are very excited to have Dapi onboard,” NymCard VP of Strategic Partnerships Nabil Tabbara said. “Our strategic partnership with Dapi solves a major pain point for clients who are looking to build frictionless card programs. This is a big step forward for the region’s fintech ecosystem as we combine our effort to help them become more profitable.”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ACI Worldwide Unveils Mobile Engagement Platform to Empower Shopping-on-the-Go

ACI Worldwide Unveils Mobile Engagement Platform to Empower Shopping-on-the-Go
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news
  • ACI Worldwide unveiled its mobile engagement platform ACI Smart Engage this week.
  • The new solution relies on location, voice, and image recognition to enable consumers to purchase goods and services remotely with a single click.
  • The launch of ACI Smart Engage comes at the same time that ACI Worldwide announced a divestment of its business banking unit, ACI Digital Business Banking.

Real-time payments software company ACI Worldwide launched its mobile engagement platform ACI Smart Engage today. The solution leverages location, voice, and image recognition technology to enable merchants to offer their entire inventory of products and services directly to consumers’ smartphones. ACI Smart Engage combines geolocation with scannable media and audio tags inside a range of media types – including TV, print and radio advertisements, posters, magazines, catalogs, window displays, and more. Consumers can use the solution to instantly purchase products and services on-the-go with a single click.

“With ACI Smart Engage, merchants can reach consumers through their smartphones no matter where they are and turn every interaction into an opportunity to sell,” ACI Worldwide head of merchant Debbie Guerra said. “ACI Smart Engage combines the in-store and online experience for consumers by reaching them on their smartphones through various media, including supermarket labels, restaurant menus, or window displays, and driving true mCommerce sales through embedded one-click payments. With ACI Smart Engage, merchants can make ‘window shopping’ a reality.”

Merchants can integrate ACI Smart Engage into their existing mobile apps using Smart Engage SDK APIs. The technology is a part of ACI Omni-Commerce, a secure omni-channel payment processing platform that supports the in-store, online, and mobile needs of modern merchants. ACI Omni-Commerce also offers consumers more of the kind of purchasing experiences they are looking for.

“Consumers are reaching for their smartphones to make informed buying decisions more than ever before,” Guerra added. “With Smart Engage, we enable merchants to reach those consumers at the right time, when they are most likely to make a purchase and then help them complete the purchase with a single click. It fosters direct engagement between merchants and their customers.”

ACI Worldwide’s launch of ACI Smart Engage comes as the company announced a decision to divest its corporate online banking solutions to middle market private equity firm, One Equity Partners. The move is part of ACI Worldwide’s “three-pillar strategy” which is designed to support value creation for shareholders via a focus on growth.

“Our efforts to accelerate organic growth are firmly on track, and we are now making progress on the third pillar, step-change value creation through M&A,” ACI Worldwide president and CEO Odilon Almeida said. “The divestment is in line with our commitment to continually review the company’s portfolio to maximize shareholder value.”

The transaction for ACI Digital Business Banking, as the technology is called, has been valued at $100 million. The deal is expected to close in Q3 of 2022.

A veteran of both Finovate and our developers conference FinDEVr, ACI Worldwide offers real-time payment solutions to help corporations process digital payments, enable omni-commerce, and manage fraud and risk. Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Miami, Florida, ACI Worldwide is partnered with 19 of the top 20 banks around the world, and works with 80,000 merchants directly and through PSPs. The company’s technology facilitates more than 225 billion consumer transactions a year.

With 2021 revenues of $1.4 billion, ACI Worldwide is a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ: ACIW) with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Trustly to Acquire Ecospend

Trustly to Acquire Ecospend
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Trustly
  • Sweden-based account-to-account payments specialist Trustly will acquire U.K.-based open banking payments platform Ecospend.
  • Trustly anticipates the deal will help accelerate its move into the U.K. market.
  • Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Global payments fintech Trustly announced plans to acquire U.K.-based open banking payments platform Ecospend this week. Trustly anticipates that the deal, which will close for an undisclosed amount, will complement the company’s account-to-account (A2A) payments platform and accelerate its rollout in the U.K.

The U.K. is a key geographical market for Sweden-based Trustly. The company set a goal to be the market leader in the U.K., and today’s acquisition accelerates Trustly’s journey towards that target. “I am delighted to welcome Ecospend to Trustly,” said Trustly CEO Johan Tjärnberg. “This is a perfect strategic fit and I am convinced that it will enable us to deliver a market-leading product in the U.K., allowing us to capture opportunities and accelerate our current U.K. expansion.”

Ecospend was founded in 2017 and is now a regulated A2A payments provider for the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Leveraging this certification, the company seeks to power open banking payments and financial data services. In the past year, Ecospend has processed over $6.3 billion (£5 billion) in A2A payments to over two million consumers. The company connects with 80+ U.K. banks, making it a valuable asset to Trustly’s A2A payments service.

“We will continue to leverage our market-leading technology and bank connectivity in the U.K. and, together with Trustly, broaden our capabilities to stretch across Europe and further markets,” said Ecospend Founder Metin Erkman. “We are really excited to join the Trustly family.”

Trustly was founded in 2008 and offers a simple A2A payments platform that doesn’t require the user to sign up, enter their card or bank numbers, or provide any billing information. From a merchant perspective, Trustly offers a card-not-present payments experience that provides a secure way for consumers to transact using their online banking credentials. The A2A nature of the payments experience is superior to traditional card payments because it offers stronger user authentication, higher approval rates, and guarantees payments with no risk of chargebacks.

A FinovateEurope 2017 alum, Trustly works with more than 8,100 merchants, helping them connect with 525 million consumers and 6,300 banks across 30 countries.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Marqeta Inks Partnership with Embedded Finance Platform Alviere

Marqeta Inks Partnership with Embedded Finance Platform Alviere
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Marqeta

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta has come a long way since its Finovate debut in 2016. Back then, Marqeta was a six-year-old company, presenting the world’s first fully-documented, open API issuer processor platform, and emphasizing the company’s commitment to producing payments solutions that were “developer-friendly.” In fact, it was at Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016 that Marqeta led a presentation “Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-In-Time (JIT) Funding.”

In the years since then, the Oakland, California-based fintech has forged partnerships with fellow Finovate alum Token (2017); with CashFlows, Visa, and Mambu (2019), with Mastercard, Afterpay, and Uber (2020) and, last year, with companies including Bill.com, Coinbase, and Square. The company also has raised more than $530 million in funding, and launched as a public company a year ago, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ.

Most recently, Marqeta returned to the fintech headlines with news of its partnership with Alviere. An embedded finance platform, Alviere is currently in the process of expanding across Europe, where it plans to operate as an Electronic Money Institution and Principal Member Card Issuer in the region. By partnering with Marqeta, Alviere will be able to issue branded cards to customers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the U.K.

“Access to financial services is continuing to evolve, and consumers are constantly opening up to new ways of moving, storing, spending and saving money,” Alviere co-founder and CEO Yuval Brisker said. “For brands in Europe, and around the world, providing financial services means uncovering vast untapped opportunities. Embedding financial products under their existing business, products, and to their existing customer base, has quickly emerged as an important strategy for growth and customer retention.”

Marqeta’s platform supports issuance of both physical and virtual payment cards, as well as tokenization, card management, and fulfillment. Processing and settlement are also included, along with authentication and 3DS (3-D secure authentication), just-in-time (JIT) funding, and dynamic spend controls. Marqeta’s reliance on open APIs and webhooks enables institutions to create customizable card experiences, and seamless interaction with other applications, while providing visibility and transparency via notifications and card monitoring.

Alviere hopes to take advantage of what Simon Torrance forecasts to be a $7.2 trillion global opportunity in embedded finance by 2030. To empower non-financial brands with the ability to offer financial products and solutions to their customers, Alviere offers a suite of solutions including branded bank accounts and cards, global payments, payment processing, as well as crypto wallets and exchanges. The New York-based company’s partnership news with Marqeta arrives in the wake of Alviere receiving an investment of $70 million and the appointment of its first Chief Financial Officer.

“Financial services open up a new avenue of consumer engagement for brands and allow them to deepen the consumer experience massively,” Marqeta Chief Operating Officer Vidya Peters said. “We’re excited that Alviere will be able to allow its brand customers to build in new payments experiences using our platform.”

Photo by Maureen

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook