Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

We’re starting off the week with a major acquisition in the U.K. lending space, as well as fintech funding news in payments, wealth management, and financial education.

Digital banking

Missouri-based Central Bank leverages Personetics’ AI-driven engagement platform to enhance financial wellness.

SaaS core modernization and transformation solution provider for banks Zafin unveils new tools – Dynamic Cohorts and Signals – to enhance customer personalization and engagement.

Digital banking experience platform Plumery announces availability on Google Cloud Marketplace.

Emporia State Federal Credit Union launches new app courtesy of a partnership with digital banking solution provider Bankjoy.

Bank integration provider AccessPay secures $24 million in equity and debt financing.

Payments

Paysend partners with Currencycloud to enhance its FX and treasury capabilities.

Integrated payments company Bluefin adds 23 new devices, 6 new applications, and three new key injection facilities (KIFs) to its Encryption Management Services P2PE Component listing.

Germany payment management platform NX Technologies raises $23.8 million (EUR 22 million) in Series B funding.

Stripe teams up with Amazon to power payments for Just Walk Out technology in Australia and Canada.

MENA-based payment gateway provider HyperPay inks a collaboration with Capital Bank.

Lending

Baker Hill forges new partnership with Dallas-based Harmony Bank.

ChargeAfter secures a patent for its embedded lending technology.

National Building Society agrees to acquire Virgin Money for $3.7 billion (£2.9 billion).

Desjardins partners with cloud banking firm nCino to leverage its Automated Spreading Solution to enhance lending.

Open banking

Dwolla expands its partnership with MX to power account aggregation and verification.

Open banking platform Link Money forges partnership with Silicon Valley Bank to enhance ACH processing and money movement for merchants.

Wealth management

Online trading and investing platform Robinhood launches rewards credit card for its Robinhood Gold subscribers.

Wealth-building platform Belong secures $3.7 million (£2.95 million) in pre-seed funding.

Multi-asset class investment accounting platform FundGuard raises $100 million in Series C funding.

Financial education

Wealth building and financial education platform Goalsetter closed a $9.6 million Series A extension round.

Cash management

Cash-flow management platform Settle launches Automatic 3-Way Matching for Purchase Orders.

Fraud prevention

Plaid forges partnerships with Sandbox Banking and RealPage to help fight fraud in the customer experience.

AI-powered fraud and risk platform DataVisor launches its end-to-end anti-money laundering (AML) solution.

Financial crime compliance company Napier AI reports that its customer Banco do Brasil has won the Celent Model Risk Manager 2024 Award for combatting financial crime.

Visa adds three new AI-powered risk and fraud prevention solutions.

Cryptocurrencies / Blockchain

Revolut and Layer 1 blockchain Sui team up to boost blockchain education and adoption.

Trading and investing platform eToro adds 12 new altcoins to its cryptocurrency offerings.

Identity management / verification

ID verification company AU10TIX unveils expanded Digital ID solution.

Insurtech

Rewards credit card company Yonder to offer its members a new travel insurance experience courtesy of a partnership with embedded insurance orchestration firm Qover.

New Jersey’s largest credit union, Affinity Federal Credit Union, partners with Insuritas to launch Affinity Insurance Agency.

PayPal Ventures and MassMutual Ventures lead $47 million Series C funding round for Indonesian insurtech Qoala.

Mortgagetech

Equifax UK teams up with Homely to help first-time homebuyers become “mortgage-ready.”


Photo by Madison Inouye

Bluefin Payment Systems Acquires TECS Payment Systems

Bluefin Payment Systems Acquires TECS Payment Systems

Payment and data security company Bluefin Payment Systems announced it will acquire TECS Payment Systems, an omnichannel payment solutions provider.

Once the deal is finalized, Bluefin and TECS will serve a combined 34,000 merchants and close to 300 global partners in 55 countries. And for both Atlanta, Georgia-based Bluefin and Austria-based TECS, the acquisition will expand their geographical footprint.

“We are delighted to welcome TECS’ employees, customers and partners to Bluefin,” said Bluefin CEO John M. Perry. “This combination brings together two companies that focus relentlessly on meeting merchant needs for next-generation payment processing and management as well as the secure exchange of PHI and PII data with PCI-validated encryption and tokenization.”

Bluefin will leverage the purchase to offer its customers omnichannel payments and smartPOS capabilities, which will be integrated into the company’s existing payments and data security suite. TECS clients will benefit from added data security solutions, as well as additional resources for its TECS product and solution suite.

Founded in 2007, Bluefin offers encrypted and tokenized payments for point-of-sale transactions. Additionally, the company’s data security platform, ShieldConex, tokenizes payments, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and Protected Health Information (PHI) entered online. Last month, the company appointed a new CRO to fuel its growth. And, earlier this fall, Bluefin partnered with commercial hardware manufacturer Sunmi.


Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Data Security Specialist Bluefin Banks $25 Million in Growth Funding

Data Security Specialist Bluefin Banks $25 Million in Growth Funding

In a round led by Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, payment and data security technology company Bluefin has raised $25 million in new financing. With total capital now standing at more than $30 million, the company said the funding would “fuel” its product line, help drive growth internationally as well as within the U.S., and support “opportunistic acquisitions.”

In its statement, Bluefin put this week’s investment, and the growth opportunities for the company, in the context of changes taking place as a result of the global health crisis. Noting that the pandemic has increased reliance on mobile point of sale devices, Bluefin warns that this means the number of potential attack entry points for hackers and cybercriminals has also increased. With an estimated 27.7 million mobile POS devices in use by 2021, Bluefin argues that additional security to defend private data will be required for all businesses, regardless of their sales hardware preference.

“Bluefin is dedicated to remaining at the forefront of technology and solution development in the fight against breaches and cyberattacks,” Bluefin CEO John M. Perry said. “Our partnership with Macquarie will enable Bluefin to not only introduce more solutions to protect e-commerce, online and point-of-sale transactions, but also to make these solutions available globally through our extensive partner network and Bluefin’s products. We look forward to leveraging Macquarie’s deep financial and global expertise in this next phase of company growth.”

A specialist in securing Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), as well as financial card data, Bluefin leverages PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization to safeguard information upon entry, in transit, and in storage. Bluefin’s technology enables secure payment acceptance for card present, e-commerce, and mobile transactions, and is available via its network of 130+ integrated partners or directly through the company.

“Bluefin has developed industry-leading data and payment protection technologies, which are crucial in the global climate of rising data breaches and cyberattacks against organizations of all sizes,” Macquarie Capital Principal Finance Managing Director Anand Subramanian said. “We are very pleased to partner with this innovative company to expand their cybersecurity product suite and fuel continued growth in the U.S. and internationally.”

An alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, Bluefin announced a partnership with CPA Site Solutions in September, enabling the accounting website provider to offer enhanced online billpay. In August, the company teamed up with electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) solutions provider Invoice Cloud.


Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels

Bluefin Unveils ShieldConex

Bluefin Unveils ShieldConex

Payment security solutions company Bluefin is expanding its expertise this week with the launch of ShieldConex, a tool to help secure personal data for firms in retail, hospitality, healthcare, and high education verticals.

With ShieldConex, firms can enter sensitive consumer data– including personally identifiable information and card data– into forms embedded on their website. Once sensitive data is entered into an online form, Bluefin’s technology immediately tokenizes it, replacing it with a Format Preserving Token (FPT) or Format Preserving Encryption (FPE) that can be used in the same way as the original data. With the encryption in place, even if an organization is hacked, the fraudster only sees tokenized data, which is useless to them.

The new tools allows merchants to remain compliant in encrypting their data while maintaining control over the embedded, client-facing form.

According to Bluefin Chief Strategy Officer Ruston Miles, the company is currently “in testing” to help a major airline tokenize user information entered online. “What makes this system unique is the fact that we will collect the information on behalf of the client first, and then perform FPT or FPE. Thus, the client never touches the sensitive data on their web property and the partner gets back a vaultless token for storage – it’s the best of both worlds,” added Miles.

Originally focused exclusively on securing the payment experience, Bluefin offers token-based payment processing, payment tokenization, point-to-point encryption, EMV authentication, and Payment iFrame, a tool that allows merchants to embed an iFrame in their checkout page to encrypt user-entered payment data.

Miles gave a presentation at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014 about how Bluefin’s point-to-point encryption can help with PCI compliance. Recently, the Georgia-based company partnered with NCR and Powertranz to help secure NCR’s Aloha POS solution.

Bluefin has raised $6 million and was founded in 2007. John Perry is CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Fiserv Drives Digital Transformation for NEFCU.
  • DemystData Lands $12.5 Million for its Data Marketplace.
  • CashFlows Partners with Akamai for Defense Against DDoS Attacks.
  • Wealthfront Acquires Financial Planning Startup Grove.

Around the web

  • SumUp to power card payments for Fleximize members.
  • Wipro teams up with Blue Prism to launch new automation lab in Australia.
  • AiThority talks with DataSine CEO Igor Volzhanin on the role of machine learning and AI in marketing technology.
  • IdentityMind picks up new patent for digital identity-based automated review.
  • Tink urges regulators to “be flexible” when it comes to the implementation deadline of September 14 for PSD2.
  •  Flybits named to the Digital Finance Institute’s list of Canada’s Top 50 Fintech Companies for 2019.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • PayActiv and Visa Help Workers Access Earned Wages Earlier.
  • Temenos Drives Digital Transformation for Africa’s Vista Bank.
  • iSignthis Inks Banking and Payments Deal with Ibanera.

Around the web

  • BioCatch adds touchscreen pressure as a new behavioral biometric value.
  • NCR, Bluefin, and Powertranz team up to support POS card processing for Caribbean quick serve restaurants.
  • Experian launches Singapore-based incubator, Experian X Labs.
  • ETFLogic unveils ETFLogic Pages, a new platform for analyzing exchange-traded funds.
  • Minna Technologies and Exate earn spots in the fourth edition of ING’s FinTech Village.
  • BlueRush deploys its Individeo platform with a large Colombian bank courtesy of a partnership with Bee Concept.
  • Inspire Federal Credit Union goes live with NYMBUS.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Open Bank Project Collaborates with Open Source Software Company Red Hat.
  • Ondot Lands Strategic Investment from Citi Ventures.
  • Experian, FICO, and Finicity Launch the UltraFICO Score.

Around the web

  • Bloomberg TV features Best of Show winner Bumped.
  • Envestnet | Yodlee launches new suite of developer tools.
  • ThreatMetrix partners with SAS, bringing digital identity intelligence to machine learning to help creditors fight identity fraud.
  • Finastra introduces its cloud-based instant payments offering for SMEs.
  • Sberbank inks Memorandum of Understanding with SWIFT.
  • Artivest appoints new Chief Compliance Officer, Kamal Jafarnia.
  • Featurespace unveils its ARIC White Label solution for advanced fraud and risk prevention.
  • Finextra: Fidor and GFT extend partnership to the Americas markets.
  • Kony acquires innovation subsidiary of Umpqua Bank.
  • Finextra: NTT Data plans pan-Asian federated trade information platform based on blockchain.
  • SuperMoney surpasses $1 billion in financing requests
  • Bluefin and TokenEx partner to strengthen payment security with PCI-validated P2PE and omni-channel tokenization.
  • ID.me launches KYC / AML identity verification solution and ID document verification solution.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • New partnership makes Venmo a payment option for Uber and Uber Eats.
  • Hedgeable announces plan to end management of accounts by mid-August.
  • IdentityMind Global to provide KYC for Ontology Trust Ecosystem.
  • Socure named to Red Herring Top 100 in North America for 2018.
  • Mortgage Cadence integrates compliance auditing and monitoring into its loan origination platform.
  • Bluefin and Verifone team up to boost payment security with PCI-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE).
  • Twisto payment platform goes live in Poland this week.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Paysend Seals Deal on $20 Million Financing.
  • ezbob Lands Undisclosed Investment from Honeycomb Investment Trust.
  • New Investment Takes ThetaRay’s Total Capital to More than $60 Million.

Around the web

  • Cryptocurrency trading platform DXE chooses Mobile Verify from Mitek for automated ID verification.
  • Delano.lu profiles developer platform Hydrogen, recognized last month as the 2018 fintech startup of the year by KPMG Luxembourg and Luxembourg House of Financial Technology.
  • Benzinga interviews Unison CEO Thomas Sponholtz in the wake of the company’s $40 million Series B round.
  • Hypepotamus features Cardlytics post-IPO, interviews CEO Scott Grimes.
  • Bluefin and NCR expand POS payment security to provide PCI-Validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE).

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • PeoplesBank Partners with Gro Solutions to Enhance Mobile and Online Experience.
  • Stash Teams with Green Dot to Become a Challenger Bank.

Around the web

  • Lending Club announces Bahman Koohestani as Chief Technology Officer.
  • Yahoo partners with PayPal to make Braintree available to online sellers using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and Yahoo Stores platforms.
  • Main Street Softworks adds support for Bluefin’s Decryptx PCI-validated P2PE Decryption-as-a-Service.
  • PYMNTS.com features a conversation with Entersekt Chief Commercial Officer Dewald Nolte.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alums Take Gold, Silver and Bronze at PYMNTS Innovation Awards 2015

Finovate Alums Take Gold, Silver and Bronze at PYMNTS Innovation Awards 2015

Sixteen Finovate and FinDEVr alums have been recognized by the PYMNTS Innovation Awards 2015. Three alums, MasterCard , Clover Network and OnDeck took home top honors in their categories, winning gold in “Best New Technology,” “Best POS Innovation,” and “Best Small Business Innovation,” respectively. The rest of the alum field earned silver and bronze in 13 additional categories, including LoopPay, which earned Silver for Best New Technology and a Bronze for “Most Innovative.”

InnovationProject2015_homepage

More than 600 companies competed for the awards, with more than 10,000 votes tallied. Finalists were selected by an expert panel, and the top five companies in each category were submitted to the “PYMNTS community” for voting. In addition to the Innovation Awards, the event recognized Phil Tomlinson of TSYS (also a Finovate alum) and Michael Joseph of Safaricom, inducting both into the PYMNTS Hall of Fame. Two women, Carey Kolaja, VP of Global Consumer Products for PayPal and Perse Faily, CEO of Tillster, were also recognized at the event. Apple took home the Innovation Award’s Catalyst Award for what MPD CEO Karen Webster called during the award ceremony, “creating a roadmap for the industry” with its ApplePay innovation.

The full list of winning alums is below. For more information about the Innovation Awards 2015, including the full list of all finalists, visit their page here.

Gold

Silver

Bronze

FinDEVr Preview: BehavioSec, Bluefin Payment Systems, CardFlight, Cloud Lending, and Concur

FinDEVr Preview: BehavioSec, Bluefin Payment Systems, CardFlight, Cloud Lending, and Concur
FinDEVrLogo

One of the great things about FinDEVr is the way it gives us the opportunity to get to know both new companies and innovators as well as see familiar companies and innovators in new and exciting ways.

To this end, here is the first of three looks at another fifteen innovators who will be taking the stage on September 30, Day One of FinDEVr.

Click here for Part Two. Part Three is here.

Tickets are still available for the first event for fintech developers. Click here to save your spot today. And once you’ve registered, don’t forget to join the community on Bizzabo.


BehavioSecLogo_FinDEVr

BehavioSec is a leader in frictionless behavioral user verification & authentication. BehavioSec examines how you interact with a website or mobile device to provide a frictionless layer in web fraud prevention.

Keynote: Realtime Scoring of Behavioural Biometrics via Web Services
Presenting our web & mobile SDK, we deep dove into the back end services and show how easy it is to instrument a web site or mobile app with frictionless behavioral biometrics to add a new layer of security.
In an interactive session we are demonstrating a number of use cases of both real-time scoring and ‘after the fact’ biometrics forensics. We open up the client SDK to show the APIs, file formats, etc. In parallel we expose the typical integration points to see the architecture and the power the backend web service APIs offer developers to represent additional transaction security in a way that suits your organization’s business needs.
Why it’s great for developers:
  • Frictionless web or mobile fraud prevention via behavioral biometrics
  • Lite touch integration to deliver a new layer in security for web and mobile platforms


BluefinLogo_FinDEVr

Bluefin Payment Systems is a leading FinTech company focused on processing, integrating, and securing payments. Bluefin offers P2PE, tokenization, mobile payment SDK’s, payment gateways, merchant accounts, PCI Compliance, transparent redirect, recurring billing, and branded online merchant account enrollment.

Keynote: Bluefin, Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE)
Bluefin is the only validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) Solution listed by the PCI Security Standards Council, North America. P2PE can reduce the scope of card data environment and related PCI requirements. Your software doesn’t need to be PCI Compliant if card data is encrypted using P2PE.
Why it’s great for developers:
  • Your software doesn’t need to be PCI Compliant if you implement Bluefin’s P2PE Solution.
  • Add P2PE to webpages/applications using keyboard emulation or HID version.
Bluefin is currently the only PCI Council-listed P2PE Solution. P2PE encrypts card data before it reaches your applications and protects card data from malware.

CardFlightLogo_FinDEVr

CardFlight is a leading provider of mobile POS technology and tools that makes it easy for anyone to accept swiped (card present) payments in any mobile app with virtually any merchant account. They offer both iOS/Android mobile payment applications and software development kits (SDKs) that can be incorporated into custom applications. CardFlight’s platform also includes encrypted card readers and a payment gateway that supports over 20 different processors, to provide clients with complete mobile payments and mobile POS (mPOS) solutions. CardFlight won the Electronic Transactions Association’s 2014 Technology Innovation Award.

Keynote: CardFlight SDK for Mobile Payments
The CardFlight SDK allows any mobile developer to build mobile point-of-sale functionality into his or her own mobile apps. CardFlight supplies three things:
1. Encryped mobile card readers that fit into the audio jack of any smartphone or tablet
2. Easy-to-integrate software development kits for iOS and Android, complete with developer-friendly documentation and support
3. A PCI Level 1 compliant payment gateway that works with all major processors/merchant accounts
This allows developers to easily process swiped credit card payments within their own apps without the complexity of typical payment integrations. By using the CardFlight SDK, developers can fully customize their user experience and keep control of their product, while being able to integrate payment data into their other back-end systems (CRM, inventory management, analytics and reporting, etc.)
The CardFlight SDK and gateway is compatible with merchant accounts from leading processors, including Braintree, Chase Paymentech, Global Payments, First Data, Stripe, TSYS and Vantiv.
Why it’s great for developers:
  • We provide iOS and Android SDKs and a credit card reader to add swiped credit card payments to your application.
  • We process transactions through our PCI compliant gateway, eliminating your scope for PCI Compliance.
  • We integrate with all major processors (Stripe, Braintree, Balanced, etc.)
CardFlight is a leader in credit card payment enablement for mobile. We make it easy to accept swiped credit card payments in your own application, allowing you to keep your merchant provider, branding and customer experience.

CloudLendingLogo_FinDEVr

Cloud Lending Inc., is an enterprise cloud lending solution provider. Our agile solutions are designed to empower lending businesses to simplify business processes, stay compliant an deb future ready.

Keynote: Cloud Lending Inc. – Enterprise Lending Software
Cloud Lending products enable financial institutions achieve scale and flexibility by moving the core back office to the cloud. Why did we choose Salesforce? The results that have been achieved by our customers using applications built on the Force.com platform – three digit growth every quarter.
Why it’s great for developers:
  • It is end-to-end and supports multiple loan types
  • It is borrower focused
  • It addresses regulatory changes in a matter of hours
We run on Salesforce, leveraging both its CRM to track loan status form bid to re-payment and its ability to integrate with other native apps.


ConcurLogo_FinDEVr

Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions trusted by over 25,000 clients around the globe with over 25 million users. The Concur Platform allows developers to develop and market innovative solutions to the lucrative $1.23 trillion business travel market.

Keynote: Numbers, they don’t lie …
Concur processes more than $55 billion dollars in annual T&E spend for its 25 million customers. In this presentation, Mithun Dhar,  Director of Evangelism & Strategic Marketing, will walk us through and give insight into this spend and tell developers why its a great opportunity to tap into this lucrative market.
Why it’s great for developers:
  • Access to 25 million business travelers
  • Access to more than 25,000 businesses that use Concur
  • Insight into over $55 billion dollars of annual T&E spend
Business travel is a $1.12 trillion industry, with U.S. business travelers logging 460M trips a year. The Concur Platform allows you to tap into this lucrative market.


Click here for Part Two of our three-part look at another set of companies that will be presenting and holding workshops at FinDEVr on Tuesday, September 30. For Part Three, click here.
And if you missed our previous editions of our FinDEVr Preview, the links below will help get you up to date.