Daily news Archives - Page 112 of 139

Small Banks Can Now Use Kasasa to Offer Bitcoin Wallet

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 12, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Kasasa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Credit Karma Announces Integration with TurboTax

By David Penn Posted on February 11, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Credit Karma, Daily news, Intuit

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

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

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

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

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

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Moody’s to Acquire Cortera

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 11, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Cortera, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Klarna Launches Bank Account Offering in Germany

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 10, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna

Klarna is taking its Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform to a logical next step. The Sweden-based company announced today it will launch a bank account offering in Germany.

This move makes Klarna the first BNPL firm to make such a move. The company will now compete with the growing roster of digital banks in Germany, including N26 and Tomorrow.

Users will receive a Visa debit card, which is available in two colors, and will have tools on the app to track, manage, budget, and analyze their spending habits. Klarna will also reimburse users for two global ATM transactions per month.

“Our focus is to provide a superior shopping experience to our consumers at the intersection of retail and banking,” said Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “And we know that there’s still massive room for improvement to the way many people bank and save their money today. Users are demanding more seamless, intuitive and transparent services to meet their daily needs, but many banks still do not cater for this.”

As Siemiatkowski points out, Klarna banking will be useful for “bundling shopping and banking in one app.” However, it is difficult to see the extra value a Klarna bank account will bring to users who aren’t big on shopping. N26 touts an integration with Transferwise for easy and inexpensive foreign money transfers and Tomorrow differentiates itself with a positive approach to sustainability and social causes. Klarna, in contrast, makes shopping a more embedded experience. This isn’t necessarily a positive attribute for one’s finances.

To counteract this “spend, spend, spend” mentality, Klarna said it has plans to add savings goals to the banking app, a feature that is already available in Sweden.

A pilot of Klarna’s bank account will initially be available to the company’s “most loyal” users and will roll out to all Germany-based users “in the coming months.”

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Shopify Brings Embedded Finance to Facebook & Instagram

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 9, 2021
Categories: Daily news

As social commerce rises, e-commerce platform Shopify is getting in on where the action is happening. The company announced today it is bringing its Shop Pay checkout and payment processing system to Instagram users and Facebook Shops.

This builds on the existing payment methods available to these Facebook-owned social platforms. Previously, shoppers had the option to either pay with PayPal or manually enter their payment card credentials.

Shop Pay, on the other hand, stores users’ payment card and shipping information to make the embedded payment experience as seamless as possible for the end customer. Prior to today, Shop Pay was only available to Shopify’s e-commerce store clients, including brands such as Allbirds, Kith, Beyond Yoga, and Jonathan Adler.

Shop Pay expands to Facebook and Instagram

Shop Pay has 60 million users and last year helped buyers complete more than 137 million orders. This is small compared to PayPal’s 377 million active users. Shopify, however, is aiming to gain an edge by targeting the millennial customer base by offering carbon offset options that allow merchants and customers to offset the carbon emissions of their deliveries.

“People are embracing social platforms not only for connection, but for commerce,” said Carl Rivera, General Manager of Shop. “Making Shop Pay available outside of Shopify for the first time means even more shoppers can use the fastest and best checkout on the Internet.”

As for what’s next in the Shopify-Facebook tie-up, Rivera said to expect more collaboration in the future. He added, “…we’ll continue to work with Facebook to bring a number of Shopify services and products to these platforms to make social selling so much better”

The ecommerce tools are available for Instagram users today and will be available for U.S. Facebook Shops in the coming weeks.

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NCR Acquires Terafina to Expand Digital Banking Platform

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 8, 2021
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, NCR Corporation

Two weeks after announcing its purchase of Cardtronics, fintech hardware giant NCR is acquiring Terafina, a company known for its digital account opening and onboarding tools.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

NCR will tap Terafina’s expertise to expand NCR’s sales and marketing capabilities in its Digital First Banking Platform. The offering, which can be tailored to fit institutions ranging in size from large banks to community banks and credit unions, provides an API-led approach to digital banking that can be hosted or deployed on-premise to help banks lower costs and speed up their innovation cycle.

Last year increased the urgency for financial services companies of all kinds to improve their digital customer experiences. Founded in 2014, Terafina suits this need. The company offers a software-as-a-service solution that offers digital onboarding tools and helps banks and credit unions synchronize their branch, call center, and digital operations to provide a consistent user experience across channels.

At FinovateSpring 2019, Terafina Founder and CEO Meheriar Hasan showcased the company’s digital sales platform that helps banks address the needs of their small business clients.

“Digital Banking is a key aspect of the NCR-as-a-Service strategy we laid out at Investor Day in December,” said NCR CEO Michael D. Hayford. “Terafina has been a partner of ours and is already up and running, integrated with our Digital Banking platform. We know this adds value for our clients by making digital account sales, marketing and onboarding easier, so they can provide a superior experience for customers.”

Today’s deal marks NCR’s 29th acquisition since it was founded in 1884. NCR’s purchase of Terafina fits with the company’s strategy to purchase early stage companies to boost its product capabilities and enhance its leadership.

NCR is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and counts 36,000 employees across the globe. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NCR and has a market capitalization of $4.81 billion.

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Mambu and Signicat Team Up to Digitize Identity Management in Europe

By David Penn Posted on February 8, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global, Mambu, Signicat

A just-announced partnership between two Finovate alums – Mambu and Signicat – will bring digitized identity management services to banks, fintechs, and financial service providers across Europe. The collaboration between the SaaS banking platform and the digital identity company is designed to help institutions in the region leverage innovations in identity management to boost customer acquisition, enhance the customer experience, and defend against identity fraud.

The single-API integration between Signicat’s identity platform and Mambu will enable users to apply a variety of digital identity verification solutions to a range of processes, including onboarding, identity authentication, and e-signatures. In their joint statement, both companies highlighted abandonment as one challenge the new integration will help companies meet. They noted that 63% of consumers in Europe quit at least one financial app in the last year, citing research conducted by Signicat.

At the same time, the integration also will help companies deal with the new environment for cybercrime, particularly identity fraud, which has flourished in the work-from-home, COVID-19 era. “Identity fraud continues to be a major threat to businesses across the globe and damages trust,” Mambu Managing Director for EMEA Eelco-Jan Boonstra said. “And with everyone working from home – the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this. Therefore financial service providers are relying on customer trust and loyalty more than ever.”

Asger Hattel, who took over as Signicat’s CEO in January of last year, underscored the way the pandemic had accelerated pre-existing trends toward digitization. “Global lockdowns have turned a desire for digital services into an urgent need,” Hattel said. “Our research into consumer attitudes towards onboarding show that financial service providers are struggling to keep up with consumer’s digital demands – and it is costing them customers.”

Mambu’s partnership with Signicat comes in the wake of the Mambu’s $132+ million (€110 million) fundraising last month – which brought the company’s total valuation to more than $2 billion (€1.7 billion). Also last month, Mambu announced the addition of new Chief Financial Officer Langley Eide. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Mambu is an alum of both our Finovate conferences – debuting in 2013 at FinovateAsia – and our event for developers and engineers – FinDEVr New York, in 2016.

Based in Trondheim, Norway, Signicat specializes in providing identity assurance worldwide, enabling banks to leverage existing customer identity to accelerate onboarding, improve access to services, and connect users, devices, and more across channels and markets. A Finovate alum since 2017, Signicat has raised $8.8 million in funding from investors including Horizon 2020, Viking Venture, and Secure Identity Holding.

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CoCoNet Appoints Mark Lohweber as New CEO

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 5, 2021
Categories: CoCoNet, Daily news

Digital corporate banking solutions company CoCoNet Software announced a new CEO today. Mark Lohweber is now heading up the company, taking the reins from former CEO Björn Hassing, who will transition to serve as the company’s CTO.

Lohweber will head up CoCoNet’s board of directors, which also consists of Hassing and company CFO and COO Axel B. Wiethoff.

“In corporate banking, many banks have great potential for process and portfolio optimisation through digitalisation”, said Lohweber. “CoCoNet already offers outstanding solutions in this area. That is why I am very happy, together with Axel, Björn and the entire CoCoNet team, to be a strong partner in digitalisation for the banking sector.

Lohweber comes to CoCoNet after leading the banking business unit at IT service management company adesso for 13 years.

Founded in 1984, CoCoNet provides digital banking solutions to banks, with a customer lineup including Citi, GarantiBank, HSBC, ING, JPMorgan, KBC, and UniCredit.

At FinovateWest 2020, the company demonstrated its digital onboarding solution. The solution is tailored to corporate customers and is designed to suit the complex needs of this segment.

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Stash Raises $125 Million

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 4, 2021
Categories: Daily news, Funding, Stash

Investment platform Stash announced a new round of financing today. The $125 million Series G round boosts the company’s total funding to over $427 million.

Eldridge led the round, which received additional funding from new and existing investors, including Owl Ventures, funds advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Goodwater Capital, Entree Capital, and others.

The funding comes after a year of record growth for Stash, which was founded in 2015. Last year, the New York-based company saw a 100% increase in account openings. It now has five million customers and $2.5 billion in assets under management. Fueling this increase was the boost in automated deposits; Stash reported a 50% increase in the number of customers automating their investments last year.

Stash’s investment platform democratizes long-term investing by making the process easier and more affordable. “We believe in tried and tested principles of regular, long-term, and balanced investing as the key to building wealth. We therefore built Stash to make diversified investing easy, affordable and accessible, backed by personalized advice and accessible education—in order to avoid the pitfalls of short-term speculation and day-trading,” said Stash Co-Founder and CEO Brandon Krieg. “This new round of funding enables us to take this mission to millions more Americans.”

Stash’s newest upcoming product, Smart Portfolios, helps customers build long-term, diversified portfolios that are fully managed by Stash. The new offering is made for users who want to invest, but don’t know where to start. To keep things simple, Stash uses a subscription model instead of charging fees based on portfolio size. The Smart Portfolios product is included in Stash’s Growth and Plus subscription plans, which cost $3 per month and $9 per month, respectively.

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Digital Banking Innovator Narmi Tops $20 Million in New Funding

By David Penn Posted on February 3, 2021
Categories: Daily news, Funding

In a round led by New Enterprise Associates, a featuring the participation of more than twelve investors – including executives from Plaid – digital banking solution provider Narmi has raised $20.4 million in new funding. The investment represents the lion’s share of the New York City-based fintech’s total capital, and will be used to help power Narmi’s mission to enable regional banks and credit unions to compete with big banks and neobanks, alike.

“We started Narmi with the mission to help financial institutions thrive in a digital-first world and that mission hasn’t changed,” company co-founder Nikhil Lakhanpal said. “Since launching over four years ago, we’ve experienced over 100% revenue growth every year, launched four enterprise-grade platforms, and helped our partner financial institutions delivery transformational results.”

Also participating in the Series A round were Patriot Financial Partners, Picus Capital, Contour Ventures, and Firebolt Ventures.

Narmi’s cloud-based, API-powered platform gives financial institutions the ability to leverage its digital account opening, consumer and business digital banking, and administrator console platforms to boost growth, increase deposits, and make operations more efficient. The fintech’s customers have reported a 55% increase in new account applications from non-account holders, a 65% reduction in application time, and a 50% decrease in support volume, helping lower back office costs.

And like many fintechs in the digital banking space, Narmi has seen a dramatic uptick in interest in digital solutions with the onset of the COVID pandemic. The company reported a 70% increase in digital activity and transactions across its customer base.

Partner Radius Bank credited Narmi for helping it launch its online and mobile banking experience “50% to 70% faster” than its competitors. Radius Bank, named one of the Best Online Banks of 2021 by Bankrate, and one of the fastest growing banks in Massachusetts, was acquired by LendingClub a year ago for $185 million. Liz Landsman, General Partner at NEA, further praised Narmi for its “understanding of the challenges that regional banks and credit unions are facing to keep pace with an increasingly digitally-centric customer base in banking today.”

Founded in 2016, Narmi also includes Freedom Credit Union and Berkshire Bank among its customers.

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Payoneer To Go Public Via SPAC, Now Valued at $3.3 Billion

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 3, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Payoneer, SPAC

Cross-border payments expert Payoneer is the latest fintech to go public via SPAC merger. The New York-based company has agreed to merge with FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp.

The transaction is expected to close during the first half of this year.

Once the reorganization is complete, the newly created holding company will be renamed Payoneer Global Inc. and the combined company will operate as Payoneer, a U.S. publicly listed entity. After the deal is finalized, Payoneer will have an estimated value of $3.3 billion.

Payoneer was founded in 2005 and offers multi-currency accounts to marketplaces, sellers, freelancers, gig workers, manufacturers, banks, suppliers, and buyers. With a mission to “democratize access to financial services and drive growth for digital businesses of all sizes from around the world,” Payoneer helps users pay and get paid globally as easily as they do locally.

“Payoneer is at the forefront of the rapid, global shift to digital commerce across all sectors,” said Betsy Z. Cohen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp. “Its innovative and unique high-tech, high-touch platform positions Payoneer at the epicenter of some of the most powerful and enduring trends driving global commerce today. Its proven ability to facilitate the overall growth of e-commerce through capabilities such as B2B payment digitization, global risk and compliance infrastructure, and the enablement for SMBs to rapidly grow and scale sets Payoneer apart.”

Payoneer has raised $270 million from 18 investors including CBC Capital and 83North. Scott Galit is CEO.

Today’s news of Payoneer opting to go public via a SPAC merger echoes a larger trend. Lately, we’ve seen a rising number of tech companies, including Bank Mobile and SoFi, use SPAC mergers to go public. Benefits of the IPO alternative include a faster and cheaper process, no qualification threshold, and no IPO window.

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InvestCloud Becomes Fintech’s Newest Unicorn

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 2, 2021
Categories: Daily news

Wealth solutions platform InvestCloud announced it is now valued at $1 billion, making it a new fintech unicorn. The new valuation comes after the fintech restructured its debt and equity in a recapitalization.

“At a valuation of $1 billion, we can reward early investors in the business, while injecting new capital to fuel the next stage of our growth, further supporting our clients’ needs,” said InvestCloud Co-Founder and CEO John Wise.

Comprising a major portion of the recapitalization, Motive Partners, Clearlake Capital Group, and other InvestCloud client shareholders have agreed to acquire 80% of InvestCloud. As part of the deal, Motive Partners will contribute two portfolio businesses into the firm. The first is Finantix, which it acquired in 2018, and the second is Tegra118, which is a newly-formed company resulting from Motive’s acquisition of Fiserv’s Investment Services business.

InvestCloud expects the addition of Finantix and Tegra118 to solidify its presence in the wealth and asset management marketplace. After the restructuring, InvestCloud will have $4+ trillion in assets on its platform and revenues over $285 million, with a team of over 900 people. Moreover, Finantix and Tegra118 will boost InvestCloud’s presence in and knowledge of continental European and Asian markets.

“Together with Cheryl [Nash of Tegra118] and Christine [Mar Ciriani of Finantix] and their exceptional teams, they enable us to accelerate our plans to build platforms serving the main markets in global wealth and asset management, each utilizing the proven SaaS design principles, architecture and data models of the InvestCloud platform,” added Wise.

InvestCloud will use the expertise at Finantix and Tegra118 to offer four staple platforms and a marketplace:

Wealth Advisor Platform – With its existing skillset, InvestCloud will build upon its background in North America, the U.K., continental Europe, and Asia.
Private Banking Platform – Leveraging Finantix, InvestCloud will offer an international private banking platform.
Custom Financial Platform – Using InvestCloud’s design-first methods and AI Programs Writing Programs, clients can build unique intellectual property to create cloud solutions.
Financial Supermarket – Using the Tegra118 product, InvestCloud will build an international financial supermarket to connect asset managers to wealth managers.

Logistically, John Wise will remain CEO of InvestCloud, while Rob Heyvaert will continue as Chairman. Tegra118’s Cheryl Nash will become the CEO of InvestCloud’s Financial Supermarket division and Finantix’s Christine Mar Ciriani will become the CEO of the Private Banking division.

InvestCloud was founded in California in 2010. The company has raised $54 million from investors including JP Morgan Chase and FTV Capital.

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