Moven Minds its Business in B2B Pivot

Moven Minds its Business in B2B Pivot
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels

Blame it on the ‘rona? In a transition announced earlier this week, Moven – which made headlines recently with its partnership with Saudi Arabia’s STC Pay – is moving away from the direct to consumer / neobank model to focus on what founder Brett King summed up as “our distributed smart banking and financial wellness capabilities.”

“It has become patently clear we need to focus our energies and our resources on the segment of our business where we can reach the most consumers moving forward,” King said.

The company specifically noted the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Moven’s funding pipeline as a leading factor in the decision. The company emphasized that its Enterprise business remains healthy and well-funded.

“The Moven brand now has the opportunity to represent patented financial well-being, available to enterprises of all types,” Head of Moven’s U.S. Strategy Denny Brandt said. “Our patent gives us competitive strength in a rapidly evolving B2B environment. We continue to be involved in ventures in multiple geographies where we power direct-to-consumer banking services.”

Moven announced that it will close customer accounts at the end of April. The company has begun to communicate with accountholders to let them know what to expect as well as to ensure a smooth transition.

Founded in 2011, Moven made its Finovate debut a few years later at FinovateEurope in London, earning a Best of Show award. The New York-based company, among the first to combine smartphone apps, debit cards, and bank accounts as part of a unified strategy for managing personal finances, launched Moven Enterprise in 2016 to license its technology to banks and other financial institutions. Moven Enterprise debuted on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope in 2017, showing how its engagement platform brings value to customers while producing measurable, positive business outcomes for banks.

Notably, Moven’s partnership with STC Pay is not the company’s first foray into the MENA region. A little over a year ago, Moven announced that it was teaming up with Bahrain-based Almoayad Technologies, which is leveraging the company’s technology to help fulfill the open banking mandate from the country’s central bank.

Global Fintech and the COVID-19 Crisis

Global Fintech and the COVID-19 Crisis

The fight against the coronavirus pandemic has captured the attention of people all over the world. From medical professionals on the front lines of caring for the sick to small businesses making hard decisions about how to keep their workforces intact during lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, everyone has been touched by the current crisis.

Earlier this week, we took a look at how fintechs and financial services firms are rising to the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. Looking at three different areas – safety, digitalization, and service – we saw how companies in countries ranging from Russia and India to the U.K. and the U.S. are lending their insights, talents, and generosity to the cause.

Companies like London-based Aire, a Finovate alum that is offering lenders three months of free access to its credit insight service, are an example of what is happening across the fintech space. “We’re seeing an unprecedented level of change in the market for consumers right now,” company founder and CEO Aneesh Varma said. “Lenders are understandably stretched and struggling to build accurate pictures of their customers in real-time.”

CoinDCX Cashes In: Two weeks ago we interviewed Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of Indian cryptocurrency trading platform CoinDCX, on cryptocurrencies and cashlessness. This week, we learned that the company has raised $3 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and HDR Group. The capital will help the company launch new products, boost R&D efforts and marketing, and build the CoinDCX team.

“As the country’s largest exchange, we are in a position to drive national crypto adoption forward responsibly,” CEO and co-founder Sumit Gupta said. “This successful investment round will go a long way in funding our vision of accelerating India’s growth into a $5 trillion economy.”


Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Kenya-based telecom Safaricom to waive fees for its M-Pesa mobile money service to help customers avoid cash during the COVID-19 outbreak.
  • Somalia’s MyBank to deploy Sharia-compliant, core banking technology from Path Solutions.
  • Ghana goes live with its Universal Quick Response (QR) Code and Proxy Pay system.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • SME Finance, a factoring services provider for businesses in the Baltics and Poland, picks up 10 million euro investment from new partner, Citadele Bank of Latvia.
  • Berlin, Germany-based, digital business bank Penta raises 18.5 million euros in new funding.
  • The COVID crisis has authorities in Russia decontaminating cash and urging citizens to use digital payments.
  • Erste Bank Hungary deploys mobile security technology from OneSpan.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • DriveWealth announces its first MENA region partnership: a collaboration with UAE-based wealth management firm, Wealthface.
  • Al Ansari Exchange taps Pelican for financial crime compliance.
  • Emirates’ World Investments commits to investment of $255 million in Australian challenger bank Xinja.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Mobile payments company HUMBL forges new partnership with Digital India Payments.
  • Singapore-based anti-fraud solutions provider Advance.AI opens offices in Bengaluru and Delhi.
  • Indian alt lender Vivriti Capital secures $50 million in Series B funding.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican SME lender Creditjusto raises $100 million in debt financing from Credit Suisse Group.
  • Brazilian fintech Creditas announces plans to boost staff by 500 by the end of the year.
  • Wirecard teams up with Mexico’s Banca Afirme as the German digital payments solutions provider extends further into the Mexican market.

Asia-Pacific

  • TransferWise teams up with Alipay to enable fund transfers to China.
  • Bank of China launches its AI-based FX trading signal app via Eikon.
  • Thai remittance company DeeMoney goes live on RippleNet.

Top image designed by Freepik

ebankIT and Enterprise Engineering Forge North American Partnership

ebankIT and Enterprise Engineering Forge North American Partnership

Finovate Best of Show winner ebankIT is working with fellow Finovate alum Enterprise Engineering (EEI) to launch a new omnichannel banking solution geared toward financial institutions in North America in general, and the U.S. in specific.

The collaboration will combine Enterprise Engineering’s experience as an integrator and advisor on digital transformation and open banking with ebankIT’s omnichannel digital banking platform.

“This partnership is an important step on the consolidation of our growth strategy for the North American market, where we already have a significant presence,” ebankIT CEO Renato Oliveira said. “With the change of both operations and customer service models, it is essential for banking organizations to have a flexible and sophisticated solution, capable of bringing a true omnichannel experience, which is exactly the main strength of ebankIT.”

The companies previewed this initiative back in February. The joint venture is geared toward helping banks and credit unions in the U.S. offer full-service banking capabilities, including leading-edge technology solutions, to their customers. EEI and ebankIT are marking this latest development in their relationship with a series of educational, half-day seminars on Open Banking beginning this month in New York City.

“This partnership represents a terrific opportunity for EEI and ebankIT,” EEI founder George Anderson said when the collaboration was announced. “Our product sets are extremely complimentary and are best-in-class in our target markets.” Anderson noted that the partnership will result in “impossibly fast time to market and ROI for our joint customers.”

Founded in 2014 and maintaining offices in Porto, Portugal and London, U.K., ebankIT demonstrated its Digital Concierge 2.0 solution at FinovateEurope earlier this year. The technology unites financial and third party services via open banking integrations and channel analytics to provide relevant and engaging customer journeys.

Enterprise Engineering participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, presenting its Trusted Network Platform, an advanced data aggregation and management solution. A WealthManagement.com 2018 Industry Award winner, New York-based Enterprise Engineering was founded in 1995.

Fintech Joins the Fight Against the Coronavirus

Fintech Joins the Fight Against the Coronavirus
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

How are fintech companies lending their technology and talent to help the world better manage the COVID-19 pandemic? From insights into the impact on financial services to digital identity solutions to help with remote medical services, fintech companies from across the world are all-in when it comes to coping with the current global health crisis.

One of the key early posts on the impact of the coronavirus on financial services was put together by Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand, owner of Digital Banking Report, and host of the Banking Transformed podcast. Looking at both negative and positive impacts of coronavirus on fintech, Marous’ How Will the Coronavirus Impact the Banking Ecosystem, is an excellent first stop.

Another worthwhile read is Ron Shevlin’s Forbes column, which lists fintech companies that are providing technology help during the crisis. The continuously updated list, started on March 23rd, currently has more than 125 companies that are “extending free, discounted, or accelerated deployment offers to financial institutions.”

Here’s a look at three ways that fintechs and financial services companies are doing their part to make a difference.

Safety First

In times of crisis, leadership is paramount. Much of the fear and anxiety that comes with tough times can be alleviated by giving people and institutions clear guidelines on what the best practices are in order to manage the challenge.

In this regard, credit to the American Bankers Association for their guidance to community banks, issued earlier this week, on the importance of communicating “early and often” with customers. As a dinosaur who still visits his bank branch a couple of times a month, I have found it fascinating – and a little disconcerting, at first – to watch my local bank transition from gloved bank tellers (and no more free cookies!) to drive-up service only.

With this in mind, the ABA both encouraged branches to emphasize their digital channels, as well as provided suggestions on how to make in-branch visits safer for those customers who still required that access. Similar recommendations on personal responsibility (“if you feel sick, stay home”) as well as social distancing were made for bank employees whose jobs require them to be physically onsite.

Go Digital

The trend toward cashlessness and digital currencies is one area of fintech that will be positively affected by the social distancing of the COVID-19 crisis. Both the central bank of Russia and the National Payment Corporation of India have urged citizens in their respective countries to use digital payments in lieu of cash to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Africa, where mobile payments have helped contribute to financial re-inclusion, is also finding these technologies to be a potential resource for supporting public health. With cash deemed a conduit for the spread of the coronavirus by the World Health Organization, countries where mobile payment technologies are emergent are likely to see an even more accelerated rate of mobile and digital payments adoption.

Note that Safaricom, the telecommunications company behind the region’s leading mobile money service, M-Pesa, announced that it would waive fees on all P2P transactions under $10 for three months. Mobile money services in Ghana also have been encouraged by the country’s central bank to waive fees and lower KYC requirements to ensure access.

Maybe the image of a dystopian future in which books are incinerated will be replaced by one where massive bundles of cash put to the figurative – if not literal – torch. ” ATM Marketplace’s David Jones recently reported a conversation with an analyst who granted that reports of cash being disinfected or burned in Asia are making a pretty good case for the future of contactless payments.

Serve Somebody

Conducting their normal operations is one of many challenges businesses are facing at present. Fortunately, firms like U.K.-based challenger bank NorthOne are providing free banking services to SMEs and restaurants during the crisis.

“Small business owners across the country are having incredibly hard conversations right now around the kitchen table and desperately trying to figure out how they can keep the lights on through this crisis,” NorthOne co-founder and CEO Eytan Bensoussan said. “The last thing they need to worry about is finding a branch or paying bank fees.”

But the loss of revenue due to the various lockdowns and stay-at-home orders issued in many countries is even more of an acute problem. While governments haggle over publicly-sourced solutions for small businesses, a group of U.K. fintechs in the lending business – Trade Ledger, Wisefunding, and NorthRow – have teamed up to offer a turnkey origination and underwriting platform to enable banks and lenders to digitally fund SMEs.

“The government’s capital injection is a massive boost to an underserved market at an extreme time of need,” Trade Ledger CEO Martin McCann said, “but it’s impact will be lost if lenders aren’t able go get these loans to their customers quickly.”

The technology community in general, and to some degrees fintech, as well, has come under various strains of criticism of late. From overvaluation to questions of work culture to concerns that the innovations of Silicon Valley increasingly cater to the young and affluent, many of these critiques have merit. But all that said, as many of these companies are showing, there may be in the current crisis an opportunity for technology – and fintech – to remind the world of its enduring value to us all.


We would be remiss not to highlight our Finovate alums that are offering their services and solutions to help during the COVID-19 pandemic. These alums include Alpharank, Banno, Cunexus, Datanomers, Digital Onboarding, Finovera, Finscend, Horizn, Hydrogen, Inspirave, Invest Sou Sou, Kasasa, Moxtra, Pinkaloo Technologies, Plinqit, Q2, StreetShares, Temenos, and Teslar Software.

Arkose Labs Locks in $22 Million for its Fraud Fighting Technology

Arkose Labs Locks in $22 Million for its Fraud Fighting Technology

In a round led by Microsoft’s venture capital arm, M12, anti-fraud solutions provider – and FinovateSpring Best of Show winnerArkose Labs has raised $22 million in Series B funding. The round, which takes the company’s total capital to more than $36 million, also featured participation from existing investors PayPal and USVP.

“Our platform takes a zero-tolerance approach to cyber-attacks and our team is committed to putting a stop to the global fraud epidemic,” Arkose Labs CEO and founder Kevin Gosschalk said. He praised both Microsoft and M12 for their recognition that the challenge of cybersecurity is to “eliminate fraud, rather than contain it.”

Global Head of M12 Nagraj Kashyap noted that Microsoft was no stranger to Arkose Labs’ work in fraud-fighting. “Multiple Microsoft businesses are already benefiting from this innovative technology,” he said. “With Arkose’s end-to-end anti-fraud platform, enterprises across the globe can better protect against fraud and abuse long-term.”

San Francisco, California-based Arkose Labs offers an authentication system that identifies the context, behavior, and reputation of requests, recognizing them as either authentic or inauthentic. Authentic requests are passed through, while inauthentic requests are remediated with a set of dynamic defenses. Requests that cannot be recognized are processed via a challenge-response mechanism until there is evidence of the request’s authenticity. This process also helps improve the platform’s real-time decisioning, reducing the number of false positives over time.

The platform helps defend against a variety of threats including ATO (account takeover), scraping, spam, gift card abuse, and other fraud. Microsoft Director of Identity Security Alex Weinert credited Arkose Labs for offering a cybersecurity solution that is as efficient as it is effective. “Arkose Labs’ technology is an important component of our multi-pronged approach to minimize fraud without negatively impacting legitimate customers,” he said.

Arkose Labs said that the funding will help drive platform development and fuel global expansion, as well as enable the firm to add talent. The investment comes in the wake of the firm’s near doubling of its customer base and the introduction of a number of platform enhancements. These additions include new functionality for Arkose Detect, the platform’s dynamic risk engine, and for Arkose Enforce, the platform’s adaptive step-up mechanism.

“2019 was a banner year, with our platform detecting and preventing $500 million fraud attacks over the last twelve months,” Gosschalk said in January, “saving our customers hundreds of millions in fraud losses and operational costs.”

Founded in 2015, Arkose Labs was recognized by CNBC in its 2019 Upstart 100 roster. The company’s VP of Marketing and Strategy, Vanita Pandey, and Senior Producer, Hedda Peters, won Women in Cybersecurity awards at Cyber Defense Magazine’s Cyber Defense Global Awards last fall.

Lighter Capital Takes Debt Financing to Canada

Lighter Capital Takes Debt Financing to Canada

The physical border between the U.S. and Canada may be closed, but that’s not stopping tech startup financing provider Lighter Capital. The Seattle-based company announced today it has launched its services in Canada.

Canadian businesses can now take advantage of Lighter Capital’s debt financing offerings, including term loans and lines of credit, as an alternative funding source from bank loans and VC funding. Both debt financing options offer companies up to $1 million in capital.

The company’s flagship offering, Revenue Financing, will not yet be available to Canadian businesses. Lighter Capital’s Revenue Loans help borrowers access up to $3 million in loans that they repay based on their monthly cash inflow.

“With the Canadian tech industry’s continued growth, we’re seeing a correspondingly greater need among startups for access to venture capital as well as to various forms of debt financing,” said Meredith Powell, Vancouver-based venture partner at Voyager Capital, an investor in Lighter Capital. “Lighter Capital is a trailblazer in the area of debt-based financing and I have little doubt that, given the increasing demand for their services, they’re positioned for success across the nation.”

Fueling its Canadian expansion, Lighter Capital will open an office in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company is also partnering with the Canadian branch of the Founder Institute, a startup accelerator.

Founded in 2012, Lighter Capital has offered more than $200 million to 350+ U.S. startups. Of those, 20% have had successful exits.

Square to Launch Bank for Small Businesses

Square to Launch Bank for Small Businesses

Digital payments company Square announced it will launch its small business bank next year. Square’s application for the bank, Square Financial Services, has been conditionally approved for a bank charter.

Square Financial Services will operate as an independent subsidiary of Square. The new bank’s primary objectives will be to offer small business loans for Square Capital’s commercial lending business, and to offer deposit products.

“We appreciate the FDIC’s thoughtful approach to our application, and their recognition that Square Capital is uniquely positioned to build a bridge between the financial system and the underserved,” said Jacqueline Reses, Square Capital Lead and Executive Chairwoman of the board of directors for Square Financial Services. “We’re now focused on the work ahead to buildout Square Financial Services and open our bank to small business customers.”

In preparation for the launch of the new bank, Square has begun the hiring process to staff its new bank headquarters, which will be located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Square Financial Services CEO Lewis Goodwin and CFO Brandon Soto have been charged to lead the bank’s executive team.

This comes just one month after P2P lending company Lending Club announced plans to purchase Radius Bank. The move offers Lending Club users a full suite of banking tools. Square also follows in the footsteps of Varo Money, which received approval for deposit insurance from the FDIC in February.

Fiserv Buys Bypass Mobile for CX Improvements

Fiserv Buys Bypass Mobile for CX Improvements

Financial services firm Fiserv made its 32nd acquisition today. The Wisconsin-based company purchased Bypass Mobile, a company that specializes in software and POS systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is expected to help Fiserv support its clients in creating a seamless customer experience across physical and digital channels. By integrating with Fiserv’s universal commerce platform, Bypass will offer businesses a single point of contact. As a result, businesses will benefit from increased operational efficiency, enhanced security, and a more complete picture of customer interaction.

“Adding Bypass to our portfolio will make it easier for our clients to realize their digital transformation strategy, delivering interactions their customers are demanding,” said Fiserv Senior Group President of Global Business Solutions Devin McGranahan. “With this combination, we will improve the omni-commerce experience for businesses and their customers, making it easier and more efficient to pay for goods and services.”

Specifically, Bypass will enable secure Fiserv clients to accept payments in a secure environment across multiple devices. “In combination with Fiserv, we will help businesses accept payments efficiently while continuing to meet customer expectations by providing a variety of payment options,” explained Bypass CEO Brandon Lloyd.

Fiserv was founded in 1984. While the company’s most recent purchase was Merchant Pro Express earlier this month, its most notorious one in recent memory was the acquisition of First Data in January of last year. That deal closed for $22 billion.

Digital Banking Startup One Raises $17 Million in Series A

Digital Banking Startup One Raises $17 Million in Series A

Are middle class banking customers a silent majority that can be successfully marketed to as a cohort of their own?

That’s the wager of former PayPal and Intuit CEO Bill Harris, whose digital bank for middle class Americans, One, has just raised $17 million in funding. The capital infusion brings the San Francisco, California-based firm’s total capital to $26 million.

“Middle-class American families are being left out, and we built One specifically for them,” Harris said. “One will combine the technology and convenience of challenger banks with a full-suite of products that traditional banks offer.”

The Series A round featured participation by Foundation Capital, Core Innovation Capital, and Obvious Ventures. Harris initiated the round last year in partnership with One CEO Brian Hamilton, formerly the CEO of Azlo. The digital bank is in private beta now and is slated for a launch this summer. One will offer competitive rates for savers, and combine debit and credit into a single account with one card.

“The current financial system breaks up the money people earn into silos, making it hard for busy families to stay on top of their banking and credit accounts,” Hamilton explained. “Most people have a balance in their checking account that earns nothing and outstanding debt on their credit card that costs too much.”

One accountholders earn 3% APY on their balances when saved via One’s Auto-Save feature (1% APY on other saved balances), and can borrow at a monthly rate that is as low as 1%. No interest is charged on funds repaid within the borrowing month, and accountholders can increase their credit limit by setting up direct deposit.

One also supports shared “pockets” for saving, spending, and borrowing, to make it easier to share funds with family members, roommates, team members, and others. The digital bank charges no overdraft or cash advance fees, does not require a minimum balance, and provides access to more than 55,000 ATMs.

“One is designed to maximize a family’s hard-earned paycheck by unifying saving, spending, and borrowing into one account,” Hamilton said. “When this money is being managed from one place, people save more, are charged less, and gain control.”

Microsoft-backed Digital Asset Company Bakkt Raises $300 Million

Microsoft-backed Digital Asset Company Bakkt Raises $300 Million

With the support of PayU and Microsoft’s venture capital division M12, digital assets startup Bakkt has picked up a whopping $300 million in Series B funding. The round, which closed last Friday, also featured participation from Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital, Pantera Capital, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Bakkt’s parent company.

“Bakkt launched two years ago with the vision of building trust in and unlocking the value of digital assets for institutions and consumers alike,” company CEO Mike Blandina wrote in a blog post earlier this week. He pointed to the company’s launch last year of its end-to-end regulated market for bitcoin, as well as its institutional bitcoin custody offering, as examples of how the Atlanta, Georgia-based startup has been “focused on delivering that vision.”

These examples will soon also include a new app, slated for a summer launch, that will enable users to maximize the value of a widening variety of digital assets – from loyalty and rewards points to cryptocurrencies.

“Bakkt gives users control over their digital assets,” Blandina wrote. “Whether it’s miles from your favorite airline, loyalty points from the local grocery store, or bitcoin you’ve purchased, the Bakkt app enables you to aggregate all of these assets into a single digital wallet.”

The funding takes the company’s total capital to more than $482 million, and adds to its more than $1 billion valuation. Proceeds from the Series B will be used to help fund parent company ICE’s acquisition of loyalty solutions provider Bridge2 Solutions. Bakkt will leverage Bridge2 Solutions’ partnership network, and its Loyalty Pay offering, to help build and launch products of its own.

Powering more than 4,500 loyalty and incentive programs, including programs for seven out of the top ten financial institutions and two of the largest U.S. airlines, Bakkt was founded in 2018.

TransferWise Teams Up with Alipay to Enable Fund Transfers to China

TransferWise Teams Up with Alipay to Enable Fund Transfers to China
Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels

A collaboration between TransferWise and Chinese payments and lifestyle services platform Alipay will enable TransferWise’s more than seven million users to instantly send yuan to Alipay users. All that senders require is the recipient’s name and their Alipay ID to have funds from 17 different currencies converted to Chinese yuan and transferred to the account linked to the recipient’s Alipay profile.

“Our newest partnership with Alipay has been one of the most requested features from our users since our expansion to Asia,” TransferWise CEO and co-founder Kristo Käärmann said. “Alipay functions as the primary payment method for more than a billion people in China and we are excited to be bringing instant international transfers to the fingertips of Alipay’s users.”

Käärmann added that working with Alipay helps TransferWise move closer to fulfilling its Money without Borders mission, “and is a continuation of our vision of making cross border payments, instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free.”

Transferees will also benefit from being able to send money based on the real exchange rate. Eligible currencies are GBP, EUR, BGN, CZK, DKK, HUF, NOK, PLN, RON, SEK, USD, CAD, AUD, HRK, HKD, SGD, and JPY. Up to five transfers to Alipay per month are permitted, with per transaction caps of 31,000 CNY, and an annual limit of 500,000 CNY. TransferWise is celebrating the new offering by giving fee-free, first transfers for the first 100 new customers – as well as a bonus payment of 10 yuan to the recipient on their first remittance from Alipay received. The promotion extends until April 8.

Working with Alipay represents a significant opportunity for TransferWise. Alipay serves more than one billion consumers around the globe, and China itself is believed to be one of the biggest remittance destinations in the world, with Chinese ex-pats abroad expected to send more than $66 billion (£54 billion) back home to China according to a 2019 report from the Migration Data Portal.

“We are committed to working with partners such as TransferWise, using innovative technologies to help global consumers gain access to inclusive financial services,” Alipay Head of Global Remittances Ma Zhiguo said, “creating greater value for society and bringing equal opportunities to the world.”

The announcement comes in the wake of TransferWise’s introducing global money transfers to six mobile wallet platforms in Indonesia (GoPay, Ovo, and Dana), the Philippines (PayMaya), and Bangladesh (bKash).

Founded in 2011 and based in London, U.K., TransferWise has been a Finovate alum since their FinovateEurope demo in 2013. The company has raised more than $772 million in funding, and has earned a valuation of $3.5 billion as of its May 2019, $292 million secondary share sale.

Al Ansari Exchange Taps Pelican for Financial Crime Compliance

Al Ansari Exchange Taps Pelican for Financial Crime Compliance

UAE-based foreign exchange platform Al Ansari has partnered with financial crime compliance company Pelican. Under the deal, Al Ansari will leverage Pelican’s PelicanSecure, a set of AI-based sanctions screening, anti-money laundering tools, and transaction monitoring solution.

Al Ansari selected PelicanSecure for its compliance accuracy, auditability, processing capacity, and AI-based risk classification approach. Company CEO Mohammad Bitar also noted that, because AI is a core part of Al Ansari’s strategy, Pelican’s use of the enabling technology was a factor in the partnership.

“We selected Pelican as we are convinced they can support us enhancing our anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance frameworks to make them more robust through the use of innovative technology, said Bitar. “This is the start of a long-term partnership with Pelican and we look forward to working closely to streamline our operations around sanction screening, transaction monitoring and AML, both now and in the future.”

Pelican is headquartered in the U.K. and was founded in 1993. Among the company’s clients are ADCB, Standard Chartered Bank, Al Mulla Exchange, Wells Fargo, State Bank of India, and Bank of Barbado.

Al Ansari opened its first branch in 1966 and has since expanded to 190 branches. The company has 2,500 employees that help facilitate 80,000 transfers each day for 2.5 million customers every month. Last year, Al Ansari transferred $11.3 billion (AED 40.5 billion) via its network.