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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Loan origination, risk management, and analytics company Baker Hill forged a new partnership with Oakworth Capital Bank.
The bank will leverage Baker Hill NextGen to enhance its loan origination and portfolio monitoring for commercial and private client lending.
Baker Hill most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall in 2021.
Carmel, Indiana-based Baker Hillannounced a new partnership with Oakworth Capital Bank this week. The partnership is the first new alliance from the mortgagetech since private equity firm Flexpoint Ford acquired the company in June. Oakworth Capital Bank will deploy Baker Hill NextGen, a unified solution for loan origination and portfolio monitoring for both commercial and private client lending.
“Our bank’s mission is focused on delivering a personalized experience for our clients, which often means challenging the status quo and reimagining how financial services are delivered,” Oakworth Capital Bank chairman and CEO Scott B. Reed said. “The team is always looking for new, better ways to help our clients achieve their financial aspirations and Baker Hill NextGen will help us continue to do that.”
The new technology will enable Oakworth Capital Bank to enhance its commercial relationships, as well as automate the entire consumer loan origination process. The bank will also leverage Baker Hill NextGen Client Portal. This solution enables clients to submit loan documents online. Applicants also can track the status of their loan all the way to closing, bringing more transparency to the origination process. Additionally, the bank will integrate TruStage (formerly Compliance Solutions) with Baker Hill NextGen in order to automate loan document preparation and ensure compliance.
“With Baker Hill NextGen, Oakworth Capital Bank can optimize their entire loan origination process and continue surpassing their clients’ expectations with a world-class borrowing experience,” Baker Hill chairman and CEO John Deignan said.
Founded in 1983, Baker Hill most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall in 2021. In the time since, the company has forged partnerships with a sizable number of banks and fintechs. These alliances include partnerships with financial institutions like Arvest Bank, Salem Five Bank, and TowneBank. Also among the company’s recent partners are tax workflow automation software company FlashSpread, and regional financial services company BOK Financial.
OneID raised $1.3 million (£1 million) in funding.
The funds come from ACF Investors.
OneID has a unique approach on digital identity verification. It uses consumers’ existing banking relationship to authenticate their identity.
U.K.-based OneID announced it raised $1.3 million (£1 million) in funding. The Seed round, which marks the company’s second investment round, comes from ACF Investors. OneID also counts 170 angel investors among its backers.
“The investment from ACF Investors is a coming together of similar interests and visions,” said OneID CEO Paula Sussex. “As the world increasingly becomes digital-first, we aim to minimize fraud, enhance online experiences, and make the world a safer place.”
OneID, which will use today’s investment for product development, was founded in 2020 with a unique take on digital verification. The company leverages consumers’ existing bank accounts to authenticate them. After receiving consent from the consumer, OneID contacts the bank to verify their identity.
By leveraging consumers’ existing bank relationship, OneID eliminates the need for consumers to undergo a registration process, take a selfie, provide paper documents, or travel to a physical location. It also means that OneID does not need to store any sensitive data.
Sussex sees the round as a “vote of confidence” in the company’s efforts to make digital identification accessible and available to more U.K. citizens.
“We’re constantly monitoring businesses that have the potential to enhance the lives of the British people and redefine the future of the U.K., said ACF Managing Partner Tim Mills. “OneID, with its simple, trustworthy, and effective solution to a pressing problem, could touch some 50 million U.K. citizens and make bank-verified digital identification the norm in the UK.”
Credit assessment platform Uplinq Financial Technologies announced a collaboration with Visa.
Visa has agreed to introduce Uplinq to key financial institutions to help them mitigate risk and expand access to credit for SMEs.
Uplinq made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall in New York.
Credit assessment platform for SME lenders, Uplinq Financial Technologies, has announced a collaboration with Visa. Via the partnership, Visa will introduce Uplinq’s API-based technology to key financial institutions to help them mitigate risk and expand access to credit to small businesses in the U.S. and Canada.
“This engagement is a testament to the promise of our technology in bridging the vast and persistent gaps that small businesses still grapple with when trying to access fair credit, especially as related to minority and all protected class segments,” Uplinq founder and CEO Ron Benegbi said. Visa Commercial Solutions Head of Small Business Matt Baker added that “fast access to working capital” was “especially vital to small businesses” which he referred to as the “backbone” of the world economy.
Uplinq leverages billions of alternative data sets from more than 150 countries, examining a wide range of factors to provide credit assessment and loan adjudication. The company’s platform features more than 10,000 direct connections into SME data sources. Designed to complement a lender’s existing credit assessment process, Uplinq’s technology has supported more than $1.4 trillion in underwritten loans globally.
Founded in 2020, Uplinq is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall, demoing its Credit-Assessment-as-a-Service solution. At the conference, Benegbi used the example of his immigrant father’s struggle to secure a bank loan to add color to the challenges small businesses face when it comes to financing.
“At Uplinq we don’t lend money to small businesses,” he said. “We work with small business lenders to help them say ‘yes’ a lot more often. In fact, five to fifteen times more often, while significantly increasing net income.”
In the year since its appearance on the Finovate stage, Uplinq has raised $1.25 million in funding in October in a round led by ATX Venture Partners. The company secured another $600,000 in February in the form of a strategic investment from Cambrian Ventures.
This spring, Uplinq announced a partnership with SME Finance Forum to make it easier for SMEs around the world access financing. In June, the company was awarded “Fintech Startup of the Year” in the “Lending” category of the Banking Tech Awards. Uplinq also has bolstered its advisory board ranks over the past year, adding former Scotiabank Chief Risk Officer Daniel Moore and former M&T Bank Chief Data Officer Allison Sagraves.
The company is making the auto loans available to a wide range of consumers, even those with FICO scores as low as 580.
The move comes as others are pulling out of auto lending or tightening lending restrictions.
Digital bank Upgrade announced this week it now offers auto loans. The California-based company plans to originate the loans via car dealers and re-sell the debt to its network of banks.
According to Bloomberg, which broke the news, the company will target a range of consumers– even those with sub-prime credit– and plans to extend loans to consumers with FICO scores as low as 580.
This announcement comes at a time when many consumers are underwater on their auto loans, triggering higher delinquencies. According to Edmunds.com, the average U.S. consumer’s monthly payment reached $733 in July, marking a record high.
Because of this, multiple lenders have either exited auto lending in some capacity, or have tightened their lending standards. This has left a “void in the market,” according to Upgrade Co-founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche. “It’s great to be in that position to lower the cost of auto lending at the time it’s really needed,” he said.
Where others are backing out, however, Upgrade is doubling down. The company claims to have a competitive advantage over other lenders because it taps multiple sources of funding– from banks, to credit unions, to asset managers– which purchase the loans after Upgrade has originated them.
While Upgrade already offers auto loan refinancing as part of its banking product suite, this is the company’s first foray into auto loan origination. The company refinances auto loans at 5.24% to 17.94% APR on cars less than 10 years old with mileages under 130,000.
A group of 30 car dealers in California and Oregon are piloting Upgrade’s auto loans, which went live with the loans earlier this week.
Is the tide turning in favor of crypto? Today’s unanimous, three-judge ruling in favor of Grayscale over the SEC is yet another sign that crypto winter could be transitioning into crypto spring.
What happened? As we’ve been reporting in Tales from the Crypto, there has been a growing movement in favor of an exchange-traded fund based on the price of Bitcoin. A number of major financial institutions – including crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments – have applied to the SEC in order to make this happen. To date, firms pursuing ETFs based on Bitcoin futures have fared better than those companies opting to offer ETFs based on the spot price of the cryptocurrency.
One of the ways that the SEC has pushed back against these latter efforts has been to say that, essentially, spot Bitcoin ETFs are not safe. Specifically, the SEC told Grayscale – which was looking to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a listed Bitcoin ETF – that the planned product was not “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices.”
In June, Grayscale sued the SEC. And this week, a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals overturned the ruling. The court directed the SEC to grant Grayscale’s petition for review and to vacate its order to deny the company’s listing application. The succinct, two-sentence judgment does not determine the ultimate fate of Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF. But the successful appeal is a major boon for the effort to make spot Bitcoin ETFs available to traders and investors.
Crypto continues to have an easier path outside the United States than within it. Today’s news about Grayscale and the SEC comes at the same time that Coinbaseannounced a new PayPal integration for its users in the U.K. and Germany. The integration will enable Coinbase users in those countries to easily buy and withdraw cryptocurrencies via debit cards and bank accounts linked to PayPal.
“Coinbase’s mission of increasing economic freedom in the world means making it easier and faster for customers to interact and engage with the cryptoeconomy, reducing the frictions of the legacy banking system,” Coinbase VP and Regional MD, EMEA, Daniel Seifert said.
The process is simple for U.K. and Germany-based customers who already have a PayPal account. They can begin making crypto transactions on Coinbase immediately, the company said in a blog post. Customers also do not have to input their bank account or card number directly to Coinbase; users can continue using PayPal to securely manage their financial data. The company said that it plans to extend the functionality to other EU countries in the months to come.
Speaking of Coinbase, the company recently announced an investment in stablecoin company Circle. Circle is the issuer of the USDC stablecoin. The investment announcement was accompanied by a statement that the two companies will shut down the Centre Consortium, a private governance organization for USDC established by Circle in 2018.
“We believe that stablecoins can advance the real-world utility of crypto and help make the global financial system more open and inclusive,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a joint statement. “Together, we look forward to unlocking additional value by growing the USDC ecosystem, circulation and global adoption.”
Founded in 2018 to help financial consumers in the U.K. access digital assets, cryptocurrency firm Coinpass has agreed to be acquired by OANDA Global Corporation. OANDA acquired a majority interest in Coinpass last week.
OANDA CEO Gavin Bambury said the acquisition would add to the company’s multi-asset offering and its appeal to a broader range of retail investors. He added: “A crypto native, Coinpass will provide OANDA with the technology backbone and trusted experience in the regulated crypto markets we need in order to offer clients globally a fast and secure route to the digital economy.”
Coinpass offers fast, secure, and compliant trading in more than 50 fiat currencies, stablecoins, and cryptocurrencies. The firm won Best Cryptocurrency Exchange Platform at CityAM’s 2020 CryptoAM Awards. Coinpass launched its crypto trading platform in 2021 – the same year it secured approval from the Financial Conduct Authority – and initiated stablecoin trading in USDC and USDT in 2022.
“We are delighted at Fluency to be part of this exciting and forward-thinking partnership with Mastercard helping CBDC networks seamlessly bridge transactions between different types of CBDC: account and token-based, retail and wholesale, multi-CBDC with tokenized assets and regulated stablecoins,” Fluency CEO Inga Mullins said.
Fluency offers a technology to enable organizations and institutions to deploy, configure, and manage custom CBDC networks. The company has joined CBDC boards around the world in order to assist central banks and governments on CBDC design, implementation strategy, and policy.
“We believe in payment choice and that interoperability across the different ways of making payments is an essential component of a flourishing economy,” Mastercard Head of Digital Assets and Blockchain Raj Dhamodharan said. “As we look ahead toward a digitally driven future, it will be essential that the value held as a CBDC is as easy to use as other forms of money.”
Crypto exchange Bybitintroduced a revamped launchpad this week. The enhanced offering, Bybit Launchpad 3.0, gives early investors the opportunity to invest in new and pre-listed tokens directly from the Bybit platform. The technology connects project developers with potential investors, and provides a token launch process that is more streamlined and features greater transparency.
“Bybit Launchpad 3.0 is bringing innovative blockchain projects to the forefront,” Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Shou said. “We are providing direct access to pre-listing rounds and facilitating the acquisition of new tokens. These tokens then seamlessly transition to trading on Bybit’s trading platform.”
Headquartered in the UAE, Bybit was founded in 2018. With more than 270 assets available via its platform, the company has more than 15 million users around the world.
PhonePe has launched a stock broking app, Share.Market.
The app facilitates intraday trades and allows users to purchase stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and WealthBaskets.
The launch comes as PhonePe is more than three-quarters of the way through its recent $1 billion capital raise target.
Mobile payments app PhonePe announced today that its subsidiary, PhonePe Wealth Broking, has launched a stock broking app called Share.Market.
The new tool, which is available as a mobile app or web platform, enables retail investors and traders to purchase stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. Share.Market will also offer WealthBaskets– curated collections of stocks/investment products that align with specific themes, sectors, or market trends– and will facilitate intraday trades.
PhonePe anticipates that, thanks to PhonePe’s existing reach and distribution, Share.Market will help more Indians build wealth. That’s because PhonePe has around 480 million registered users, accounting for one in four adult Indians.
“We are delighted to launch Share.Marketwhich further enables our vision of driving Financial Inclusion at a population scale,” said Share.Market CEO Ujjwal Jain. “Our goal is to offer the benefits of discount broking while creating lasting value for our customers as they invest and trade.”
The app will embed real-time, value-rich insights into its products and will offer DIY tools that help investors make informed decisions. There is also a Markets section that enables users to track the stock market, indices, individual stocks, and sectors.
“We will continue to invest in advanced technology, data, research, and immersive experiences to offer these benefits at scale and drive this new era of Value led Discount Broking coupling intelligence with Broking,” Jain added.
The launch of Share.Market comes in the midst of PhonePe’s recent capital-raising streak. Since 2021, the company has brought in $850 million from General Atlantic and Walmart, pushing PhonePe close to the $1 billion capital raise target it announced earlier this year.
PhonePe, which launched in 2015, began offering investing tools, mutual fund products, and insurance tools in 2017. In the six years since, the company has launched several mutual funds and insurance products. PhonePe was most recently valued at $12 billion earlier this spring.
“InvoiceCloud’s market-leading solution and seamless integration capabilities made it an easy decision to work together to provide tax organizations with best-in-class, robust payment solutions,” Aumentum Technologies EVP Andrew Wright said. “Together, we remain dedicated to helping our customers save both time and money with our streamlined, joint offering.”
The new joint solution leverages SaaS technology to offer county tax offices the latest functionality in electronic bill presentment and payment processing. The new offering promotes digital payment adoption, discourages taxpayer delinquencies, and lowers customer service calls by an average of 39%. The solution offers a variety modern payment options – including PayPal, Venmo, and Pay by Text – as well as traditional payment methods, and features an intuitive design based on actual customer usage.
“The expansion of InvoiceCloud’s relationship with Aumentum Technologies is a testament to the value our integrated solution is driving, not just to county treasurers and tax collectors, but to taxpayers, as well,” InvoiceCloud VP, Alliances and Business Development, Paul Applegate said.
Founded in 2009, InvoiceCloud specializes in cloud-based electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP). The company’s technology has delivered a 59% average increase in e-payment adoption, a 104% average increase in paperless enrollment, and a 39% average decrease in billing and payment-related customer service calls. The firm was acquired by EngageSmart in 2018.
Earlier this month, InvoiceCloud announced the launch of a new digital payment experience, in partnership with Finovate alum D3. In May, the company unveiled new enhancements to its Online Bank Direct solution. InvoiceCloud began the year with a collaboration with tax core software provider DEVNET. The company is headquartered in Braintree, Massachusetts.
Aumentum Technologies has been providing property tax valuation and recording solutions software since 1972. Headquartered in Niagara Falls, New York, the company is an independent business unit within Harris Computer Corporation’s Public Sector Group. A subsidiary of Constellation Software, Harris Computer Systems serves more than 125,000 customers in more than 100 countries.
Bank of America is launching Global Digital Disbursements for commercial clients in Canada.
The launch in the Canadian market is facilitated via a partnership with Canadian interbank network Interac.
Global Digital Disbursements enables fast mobile B2C payments, helping businesses replace cash or check payments.
Bank of America has teamed up with Canadian interbank network Interac today. The bank announced today it is launching its Global Digital Disbursements product for commercial clients in Canada.
Global Digital Disbursements enables fast mobile B2C payments for users in multiple industries, such as insurance, healthcare, and education. The solution, which uses a person’s email address or mobile phone number as their identifier, works for companies seeking to replace cash or check payments.
“This is a milestone for Bank of America in Canada, as we continue to meet the evolving digital needs of our multinational clients, providing them with enhanced speed, flexibility and transparency to manage their payment and receipt flows,” said Bank of America Head of Product for Global Transaction Services, Canada Leslie Konecny.
The solution, which is available to Bank of America’s commercial clients that hold deposit accounts at the bank’s branch in Canada, uses Interac’s e-Transfer service, a solution that moves money across Canada to more than 300 other banks.
Unique to the Canadian market, Bank of America is making the Request for Pay feature available with Global Digital Disbursements. This feature enables businesses to text or email customers an invoice that contains a link to pay the required amount, which ultimately results in faster payments.
“The launch of Global Digital Disbursements in Canada follows the bank’s 75th anniversary in the country,” said Bank of America head of GTS Canada Maureen Jarvis. “This much anticipated launch speaks to our commitment to local innovations in financial services that help our clients realize cost savings and a competitive edge.”
Bank of America serves 68 million retail and small business clients through operations across the United States, its territories, and more than 35 countries. The bank is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BAC and has a current market capitalization of $232 billion.
AI-powered customer experience specialist Inbenta has acquired digital adoption platform Horizn.
Inbenta will integrate Horizn’s embeddable interactive product demos into its platform.
Horizn has won Finovate’s Best of Show award five times, most recently at FinovateFall last September.
AI-powered customer experience platform Inbenta has acquired digital adoption platform Horizn. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Inbenta CEO Melissa Solis referred to the acquisition as part of the company’s commitment to helping businesses lower customer service costs, grow sales, and enhance the customer experience in general. Inbenta’s platform leverages natural language processing, neuro-symbolic AI, and Generative AI across four digital communications modules – Chatbot, Knowledge, Search, and Messenger. These modules enable the platform to deliver comprehensive, configurable solutions for businesses in verticals from financial services and ecommerce to telecom and utilities.
The integration of Horizn’s technology, in particular the company’s embeddable interactive product demos, will enhance Inbenta’s platform in a number of ways. In addition to making employee training more effective and further enhancing the customer experience, the integration will also help reduce agent escalation. Horizn’s technology has reduced agent escalations in favor of self-service in 80% of cases.
“Everyone knows how helpful and time-saving a tutorial can be when presented in an easy to understand, visual format,” Solis said. “At Inbenta, customer experience is at the center of everything we do – it was only natural that product demo capabilities should be included within our customer experience platform.”
Founded in 2012, Horizn has partnered with more than 40 financial institutions around the world. This includes some of the largest banks like Wells Fargo and RBC, as well as regional and community banks. A Finovate alum since 2017, Horizn has won Best of Show on five different occasions. The Toronto, Canada-based company most recently took home top honors with its demo at FinovateFall last September.
“By acquiring Horizn, Inbenta has expanded the number of customer experience touchpoints that it can offer, setting itself apart from the industry’s text-reliant majority,” Horizn co-founder and CEO Janice Diner said. “The entire Horizn team is excited about this next stage of impact and innovation and looks forward to integrating itself into Inbenta’s leading customer experience platform.”
Post-acquisition, Diner will take a new position as Inbenta’s Head of Marketing.
FICO and LigaData have partnered on a decision-as-a-service tool.
The two will make the new capabilities available to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
The decision-as-a-service solutions suite includes mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.
Data and analytics firm FICO and big data analytics company LigaData have come together in a move to bring decision-as-a-service capabilities to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
The two California-based companies will offer solutions that leverage data to help telcos increase revenues, decrease costs, and expand their offerings. Tools included in the decision-as-a-service solutions suite are mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.
“Together we plan to also help communications service providers grant loans in emerging markets, making it easier for consumers while increasing the digitization of the economy,” said FICO Vice President of Global Partners & Alliances Alexandre Graff.
FICO and LigaData envision that the tool will help telcos add new revenue streams and ultimately expand financial inclusion in emerging markets. “Our partnership with FICO will give communications service providers new tools to expand and compete in a data-driven marketplace,” explained LigaData CEO Bassel Ojjeh. “In addition, we will be bringing to market new solutions that can help communications service providers serve the large number of unbanked and underbanked communities in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.”
LigaData’s name follows the naming convention of major soccer teams such as Bundesliga, La Liga, and Liga MX and is a reference to the company’s league of data experts. LigaData offers two main products, Data Fabric, which helps telcos leverage data better understand their customers by breaking down silos, and Flare, which serves as a decisioning engine that breaks down the data to provide operational and subscriber insights. These solutions are used by over 30 mobile network operators, supporting over 350 million subscribers around the world.
Founded in 1956 and headquartered in California, FICO offers decisioning tools used by more than 650 clients, including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and eight of the top 10 EMEA banks. The company was recently named Best Technology Provider for Data Analytics at the 2022 Credit Awards, and was identified as a leader in The Forrester Wave: AI Decisioning Platforms, Q2 2023 report.
Cybercrime analytics platform SpyCloud raised $110 million in Series D funding last week.
The funding will help the company accelerate innovation in key use cases, as well as grow its database of recaptured data.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2017.
Cybercrime analytics platform company SpyCloud has secured a $110 million growth round commitment of primary and secondary capital. The round, a Series D, was led by Riverwood Capital and featured participation from Silverton Partners. New valuation information was not provided. The investment takes the company’s total equity funding to more than $168 million, according to Crunchbase.
SpyCloud offers technology that enables the discovery and recapture of data from the Dark Web in order to better protect businesses from identity-based cyberattacks. Cybercriminals use these stolen employee credentials and consumer session data to attack businesses, individuals, and networks. SpyCloud’s approach to fighting cybercrime differs from traditional threat intelligence strategies by offering a credential monitoring and alert service that directly and proactively finds and recovers stolen assets from threat actors and other sources.
To date, SpyCloud has recaptured more than 450 billion assets, more than 31 billion passwords, and more than 33 billion email addresses. The company’s most recent platform enhancement, unveiled in January, provides what it calls “Post-Infection Remediation.” This protocol gives companies a framework to reset application credentials and invalidate session cookies in the wake of a cyberattack or breach.
In a statement, SpyCloud listed a number of ways the new capital will help fuel the company’s growth. The funding, for example, will enable SpyCloud to accelerate innovation across a number of use cases, including consumer risk and enterprise protection. The company will also be able to grow its database of recaptured malware assets, further develop its analytic capabilities, and add to its list of integrations. The platform is currently integrated with Active Director, Okta, and Tines.
“For the last seven years, we have proven that reacting quickly to identity and authentication exposures is the crucial factor in stopping the cycle of cybercrime,” SpyCloud CEO and co-founder Ted Ross said. “As authentication methods improve, businesses need to adjust their defenses to keep up with criminals’ new behavior. SpyCloud allows you to do just that – and we will continue to illuminate and resolve the most critical risks facing security teams today, stopping attacks they haven’t been able to see coming.”
SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2017. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2016. More than 500 corporations – including half of the Fortune 10 – leverage SpyCloud’s technology to combat ransomware, account takeover, session hijacking, online fraud, and other cybercrimes.
Fiserv and Akoya announced a partnership this week.
Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial organizations.
Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data held at financial institutions.
Digital banking and payments solutions company Fiserv has partnered with consumer-permissioned data company Akoya this week. Under the agreement, the two will facilitate financial data sharing among banks, their end customers, and the third party apps the customers engage with.
Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial institutions and brokerage firms, while Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data from more than 2,800 financial institutions.
“Fiserv and Akoya are empowering consumers to share their data by creating a broader and more secure data access network,” said Fiserv President of Digital Payments Matt Wilcox. “Direct access to data facilitates more integrated digital experiences for consumers and improves the security of the financial ecosystem.”
Akoya’s APIs can create secure, permissioned access to consumers’ account data across Fiserv’s client base of banks, fintechs, and merchants. This free flow of information across the network can help reduce risk related to account opening, funding, and account-to-account transfers. On the merchant side, consumers can opt to transact using a Pay by Bank option in which consumers link their bank account to the merchant’s wallet or app to make direct payments to the merchant.
Ultimately, the partnership will help consumers choose what financial data from their bank they want to share with third party providers.
“This will help consumers manage exactly who they give their data to and understand how their data will be accessed and used,” said Akoya CEO Paul LaRusso. “100% of Akoya’s traffic to financial institutions goes through APIs. Akoya doesn’t ask for consumers’ passwords, and it doesn’t screen-scrape. All consumers deserve this protection and control.”
In the U.S., where open banking regulations do not exist, partnerships like these are key to empowering consumers with control over their financial data. In addition to helping end customers, this open structure also creates efficiencies by empowering organizations with more data, reduces fraud by eliminating screen scraping, and reduces errors that come with manual data entry.
Founded in 1984, Fiserv’s solutions are used in nearly six million merchant locations and almost 10,000 financial insitution clients. The company powers 12,000 financial transactions each second. Fiserv is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker FI and has a market capitalization of $73.6 billion.
