Daily news

AKUVO Partners with Eltropy to Help Credit Unions Leverage Text to Improve Collections

AKUVO Partners with Eltropy to Help Credit Unions Leverage Text to Improve Collections
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Eltropy
  • Digital communications platform Eltropy and collections platform provider AKUVO announced a new partnership, integrating Eltropy’s texting functionality into AKUVO’s Aperture solution.
  • The integration will enhance the collections process for community financial institutions (CFIs).
  • Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and returned to the Finovate stage last year for FinovateFall in New York.

A newly-announced partnership between digital communications platform Eltropy and cloud-based collections platform provider AKUVO will enable credit unions to leverage the texting capabilities of Eltropy’s platform to enhance collections operations. Now, credit unions, community banks, and other community financial institutions (CFIs) will be able to access Eltropy’s texting communications platform from AKUVO’s Aperture solution.

“Integration between Eltropy and AKUVO’s Aperture will provide collectors with a powerful texting platform to guide their account holders through a proactive, effective collections experience,” AKUVO Chief Revenue and Operating Officer Steve Castagna said.

Headquartered in California and founded in 2014, Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 last September. At the conference, Eltropy demoed its Eltropy One offering, an all-in-one omni channel solution that lets financial institutions manage both inbound and outbound member and customer communications from a single console. Text, secure chat, video, voice, co-browse, chatbot, and secure file exchange are among the functionalities Eltropy provides – all in a secure and compliant fashion.

In addition to facilitating the delivering of seamless omnichannel customer experiences, Eltropy’s platform leverages AI to help CFIs better resolve issues and consumer inquiries. The technology detects both subjective conditions like consumer sentiment and mood as well as objective data like specific relevant keywords and phrases to provide real-time guidance and personalized recommendations. The company’s partnership with AKUVO, according to Castagna, underscores a shared “visionary approach” to using both data and analytics to help enhance the financial wellness of members and customers.

“One of our primary goals in 2023 is to build stronger integrations with vendors who have strengths in areas of need from our CFI customers, so we look forward to partnering with AKUVO who is making waves in the collection industry with their Aperture platform,” Eltropy VP of Strategic Partnerships Jason Smith said.

With $25 million in funding, Eltropy closed out 2022 with new partnership announcements with digital banking solutions provider Tyfone and credit union lending technology company Origence. Also last year, Eltropy acquired both video banking company POPi/o and AI conversational intelligence platform Marsview.ai. Ashish Garg is Eltropy’s founder and CEO.

Learn more about Eltropy in its upcoming Finovate webinar, 7 trends for community financial services in 2023.

Photo by Lukas

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Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million

Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqeta, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Marqeta is acquiring credit card program management platform Power Finance.
  • The company will add Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform.
  • Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Global card issuer Marqeta agreed to acquire credit card program management platform Power Finance. Terms of the deal, which is scheduled to close in the first quarter of this year, were not disclosed.

Power Finance was founded in 2021 by CEO Randy Fernando and CFO Andrew Dust to offer credit card program management services to companies seeking to create new credit card programs. The company’s platform takes care of credit card management, customer experience, application decisioning, transaction processing, and more. And because Power Finance is pre-integrated with third-party data vendors, it saves companies time when setting up KYC and underwriting processes.

“Companies like ours were made possible because of the path Marqeta blazed in modern card issuing, demonstrating the possibilities in payments with flexible and modern payment infrastructure,” said Fernando. “At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and by becoming a part of Marqeta we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale.”

Once the deal is finalized, Fernando will lead the product management of the Marqeta credit card platform.

Marqeta will leverage the acquisition by adding Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform. “It will allow us to accelerate processing revenue derived from credit programs, and improve our competitive positioning when competing for new deals, offering our customers a holistic credit card program management solution,” Marqeta said in a blog post announcement.

Marqeta launched its card issuing platform in 2010 to enable clients to manage their own card programs. The company offers configurable and flexible payment tools and customizes payment cards for their end customers. Earlier this month, Marqeta launched a Web Push Provisioning Solution to enable consumers to transact from their mobile wallets without having to download a separate mobile app.

Marqeta is a publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ. The company has a market capitalization of $3.54 billion.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

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OneSpan to Acquire Document Storage Company ProvenDB

OneSpan to Acquire Document Storage Company ProvenDB
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, OneSpan
  • OneSpan is acquiring blockchain-based document storage company ProvenDB.
  • The purchase will help OneSpan add document storage to its existing product offerings.
  • Terms of the agreement, which is expected to close this quarter, were not disclosed.

Digital agreements security company OneSpan agreed to acquire blockchain-based document storage company ProvenDB. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Australia, ProvenDB was founded in 2018. The company provides a blockchain-based database that enables users to store data, cryptographic signatures, documents, and more. The company also offers a product that adds proof, trust, and integrity to clients’ existing databases.

Under the agreement, ProvenDB will enhance OneSpan’s Transaction Cloud Platform to public and private blockchains. Integrating ProvenDB’s technology into OneSpan’s existing offerings will also add a new product offering that provides customers with secure vaulting capabilities and helps OneSpan secure digital agreements.

“Digital artifacts are simply too easy to fabricate, tamper, or delete in the era of Web3 leading to security breaches and loss of trust in digital information. In this world of evidence tampering and deep fakes, it is critical that we have non-repudiation and copies of the original artifact with an immutable chain of custody throughout the entire customer journey,” said OneSpan President and CEO Matthew Moynahan. “Securing business processes end-to-end leveraging blockchain technology will play an increasingly critical role in preserving the integrity of digital transactions and agreements to fuel this modern digital era. We have an ambitious plan to disrupt the digital agreement market and ProvenDB will accelerate that plan. OneSpan’s mission, the focus of our entire go-to-market strategy, is to restore trust and confidence in today’s most critical customer experiences, such as revenue-generating transactions or customer and vendor onboarding, and ensure that their integrity is never in question.”

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

Founded in 1991 and formerly known as VASCO, OneSpan offers a range of digital identity and anti-fraud solutions. The Chicago-based company authenticates four billion users each year and counts 60% of the world’s largest banks as clients. OneSpan went public in 1997 and has a current market capitalization of $540 million. Matt Moynahan is CEO.

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Better Launches One Day Mortgage

Better Launches One Day Mortgage
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Digital mortgage lending company Better launched a new product, One Day Mortgage, that offers borrowers a mortgage commitment letter within 24 hours of applying for a loan.
  • During a period of beta testing, Better reported that it processed over $50 million in commitments, offering commitment letters in an average of 12 hours.
  • To qualify for the One Day Mortgage, borrowers must be salaried, make a down payment of at least 3%, and upload required documents within four hours.

Digital mortgage lending company Better launched One Day Mortgage, a new tool that does what it says– it enables borrowers to get a mortgage in a single day.

Using One Day Mortgage, home loan borrowers can get pre-approved, lock-in their rate, and receive a mortgage commitment letter, all within 24 hours. This timeframe is weeks faster than the industry average of more than 30 days.

Today’s announcement comes a couple of weeks after Better first launched the service in beta to a small group of customers. Since then, Better has processed over $50 million in commitments from its One Day Mortgage product. What’s more, it has helped customers receive a commitment letter in an average of 12 hours.

The One Day Mortgages are available to borrowers working in a salaried job and making a downpayment of at least 3% on a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage. To further qualify, applicants must provide requested documents– including pay stubs, W2s, bank statements, and more– within four hours of locking in their rate.

Better’s One Day Mortgage product is a fairly large step forward for the mortgage industry, which has not seen much innovation in the past decade, despite the onslaught of new enabling technologies. The fast turnaround is made possible by Better’s digital-first approach that takes place completely online. This model enhances the user experience by offering a fully digital document upload and tracking tool.

“One Day Mortgage unlocks it all,” said Better shareholder and Partner at Novator Capital Prabhu Narasimhan. “It takes away the weeks of uncertainty that permeate the entire real estate transaction. If we can execute mortgage commitments in one day and closings in three days, we can complete entire transactions in less than one week to make the entire process better.”

Offering customers a mortgage commitment letter within 24 hours is certainly a competitive advantage for Better. As company chairman Harit Talwar explained, “This milestone will add immense value to the consumer, create a significant strategic moat for Better, and be a near impossible act for competitors to follow.” And he’s most likely right– for the time being. We probably won’t see other mortgage lenders offering 24-hour mortgage loans any time soon, but it’s quite possible the new offering will be industry standard by the end of the decade.

Founded in 2016, Better has seen its share of hardships in the past year. Last year, Better conducted its fourth round of layoffs in less than nine months, letting go of almost 4,000 employees during that time. What’s more, the company’s CEO Vishal Garg made headlines numerous times last year for his contributions to what employees described as a toxic work environment.

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Hawk AI Scores $17 Million to Help Banks Fight Money Laundering and Fraud

Hawk AI Scores $17 Million to Help Banks Fight Money Laundering and Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Hawk:AI
  • Germany-based fraud prevention and AML solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B funding this week.
  • The round was led by Sands Capital and featured participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, and adds to the $10 million Hawk AI raised in 2021.
  • Hawk AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.

In a round led by Sands Capital and featuring participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, Germany-based fraud prevention and anti-money laundering solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B financing. The capital adds to the $10 million in Series A funding the company raised in June of 2021, and will be used to help fuel both product development and global expansion.

“My co-founder Wolfgang Berner and I started this business based on the strong belief that only leading edge, real-time surveillance technology can deliver the change needed to fight financial crime,” Hawk AI CEO and co-founder Tobias Schweiger said. “This contrasts (with) the obvious, drastic deficiencies in legacy technology. Hawk AI’s growth will continue to be fueled by industry-wide demand for AI, cloud outsourcing, and a convergence of fraud and AML technology.” Schweiger added that this week’s investment would help Hawk AI “become the leading global surveillance platform faster.”

Founded in 2018, Hawk AI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demoed its AML Surveillance Suite, which combines explainable AI with traditional rule-based strategies to monitor transactions for fraud and evidence of potential money laundering in real time. The technology alerts financial crime specialists when suspicious behavior is detected while at the same time significantly limiting the number of false positives – by more than 70% – compared to legacy systems.

In its funding announcement, Hawk AI noted that more than $2 trillion is laundered every year, with U.S. fraud losses in 2022 topping $41 billion. Additionally, for what the company referred to as “high-growth markets,” fraud increased by more than 37% over the past 12 months. This has put additional pressure on institutions as both the volume and sophistication of financial crime continue to grow. Complicating matters further are an ever-changing array of regulations which Sands Capital’s Chris Eng said has made fighting financial crime “historically” challenging. To this end, Eng noted that, “Hawk AI’s sophisticated technology and use of explainable artificial intelligence present critically needed straightforward solutions for institutions across the payments landscape.”

Hawk AI’s funding news comes in the wake of a year in which the company realized year-over-year revenue growth of nearly 3x. Hawk AI also expanded its operations to Singapore last year, and now operates in more than 60 countries across Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America. Hawk AI includes fellow Finovate alums VISA, Diebold Nixdorf, and Mambu among its partners.

Photo by Frans van Heerden

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Bold Commerce and PayPal Partner to Create a More Flexible Checkout Experience

Bold Commerce and PayPal Partner to Create a More Flexible Checkout Experience
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, PayPal
  • Bold Commerce and PayPal struck up a partnership that will better integrate payments into more checkout experiences.
  • Using Bold Commerce’s headless checkout tool, retailers can place a point-of-sale wherever shoppers interact, including on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good.
  • The new solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

Customizable commerce company Bold Commerce announced today it is collaborating with PayPal to better integrate payments into the checkout experience. Because, as Bold Commerce Co-Founder Yvan Boisjoli puts it, “The checkout experience needs to extend to everywhere shoppers are today, which also means that a full range of payment options need to be available to shoppers wherever they are.”

Using Bold Commerce’s PayPal-enabled tool, retailers can put the checkout wherever shoppers interact. A point of sale can be placed on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good with a QR code printed on the label. Upon checkout, consumers can use a range of payment options, including PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, credit and debit cards, and multiple local payment methods.

“Payment choice and flexibility have always been a critical part of a successful commerce experience – but it’s only one part of the equation. Retailers today need to also offer a tailored checkout experience to help drive increased conversion,” said PayPal VP, Global Head of Channel Partnerships David Bruce. “It’s a powerful combination for a composable checkout to plug into any tech stack, and we’re excited to deepen our commerce capabilities with Bold Commerce.”

The new, flexible checkout method is expected to increase checkout conversion on merchant websites and what Bold Commerce is calling “shoppable touchpoints,” which will drive more revenue by decreasing friction. The headless, all-in-one payments and checkout solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

“Through this new integration we’re making it easy and accessible to power checkout anywhere, with any payment method. We’re looking forward to working with PayPal as they make this move into headless commerce,” added Boisjoli.

Bold Commerce was founded in 2012. The Canada-based company’s Checkout Experience Suite offers a customizable headless checkout tool with built-in subscription and pricing capabilities. Bold Commerce counts more that 9,000 brands and retailers as clients, including Pepsi, Mars, and Williams Sonoma.

Bold Commerce has raised $44 million and has been named to Deloitte’s Tech Fast 50, E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and CBInsights’ Retail Tech 100.

Photo by Adrien Delforge on Unsplash

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Quantum Metric Launches Atlas to Help Enterprises Turn Digital Opportunities into Solutions

Quantum Metric Launches Atlas to Help Enterprises Turn Digital Opportunities into Solutions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Quantum Metric
  • Continuous product design platform company Quantum Metric launched its Atlas solution this week.
  • Atlas provides enterprises with a library of pre-built industry guides to help them turn digital opportunities into new products and solutions for customers.
  • Quantum Metric won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope n 2021.

Quantum Metric, the continuous product design platform company that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2021, unveiled its latest solution this week. The Colorado Springs, Colorado-based firm announced the launch of Atlas, a structured and accelerated solution to help organizations respond to “critical business questions” with “outcome-driven insights.” Atlas provides companies with a comprehensive library of pre-built industry guides that give businesses a tailored set of dashboards, metrics, anomaly detection, and alerts, providing them with a stepwise approach to improving digital use cases.

“Organizations consistently struggle to know if their teams are asking the right business questions and working hard to drive their experience forward to the benefit of both their business and their customer,” Quantum Metric CEO Mario Ciabarra said. “With Atlas, we are empowering every member of digital teams to focus on what matters most, winning the hearts of their customers.” Ciabarra called the launch “a defining day” for the company.

Quantum Metric helps enterprises negotiate the distance between recognizing new digital opportunities and turning those opportunities into revenue-generating, customer-engaging products and services. The company estimates that the average enterprise “leaves up to $220 million on the table per year in inefficiencies” and suggests that, by using Atlas, these companies can boost efficiency by up to 90%. “Atlas completely reimagines what we know about building and optimizing digital experiences today,” Ciabarra said.

At present, the Atlas library consists of 90 guides, and includes customized use cases for verticals such as consumer banking, insurance, telecommunications, travel, and retail. Quantum Metric indicated that it will offer cross-industry guides to common digital use cases in the future.

Founded in 2015, Quantum Metric offers businesses a way to recognize customer needs, quantify the financial impact, and assess priorities based on both customer impact and meeting business objectives. The launch of Atlas comes just days after Quantum Metric announced a year of “record-breaking” growth, including a 98% customer retention rate and customer base growth of 41%. The company today captures experiences from 40% of the world’s Internet users and offers insights from more than four billion user sessions each month. Quantum Metric includes 20% of the Fortune 500 among its customers.

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PayEm Raises $220 Million for Spend and Procurement Management

PayEm Raises $220 Million for Spend and Procurement Management
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Business spend and procurement management company PayEm raised $220 million this week.
  • The round consists of $20 million in Series A equity funding and a $200 million warehouse debt facility.
  • The equity portion brings PayEm’s total equity funds to $47 million.

Business spend automation and procurement management platform PayEm brought in $220 million in combined debt and equity this week.

PayEm will use the funds to fuel its card operations, serve larger customers, and improve the employee experience within the digital product.

The funding, which is comprised of $20 million in Series A equity and $200 million in warehouse debt, saw contributions from Viola Credit, Mitsubishi Financial Group, Collaborative Fund, Pitango First, NFX, LocalGlobe, and Glilot+.

“This is a significant milestone in the company’s growth. Our new warehouse credit facility allows us to scale our credit cards operation and support larger customers with our fast-growing payments platform. In addition, the new equity funding will enable us to continue building our  platform,” said PayEm CEO Itamar Jobani. “With the current macroeconomic conditions, it’s never been more important for companies to have an efficient and clear lens into their financial health. We’re pleased to be that single source of truth for them as they may navigate turbulent times and supply chain issues, and simply need to do more with less.”

Headquartered in Israel, PayEm helps its business clients bring transparency to business finances, automate tasks, and enhance control of processes. The company offers businesses tools for spend management, employee reimbursement, automating accounts payable, purchase order approvals, corporate cards, and more.

Today’s round brings PayEm’s total equity funding to $47 million and adds more competition to the fast-growing business spend management space. Companies such as Brex and Ramp have been rewarded in recent years with massive funding rounds and high valuations. PayPal even jumped on the trend, launching its first commercial credit card last June.

Photo by John Guccione

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Trustly Forges Strategic Partnership with Nordnet to Bring Instant Deposits to Nordic Investors

Trustly Forges Strategic Partnership with Nordnet to Bring Instant Deposits to Nordic Investors
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Trustly
  • Payments platform Trustly announced a strategic partnership with Sweden’s Nordnet.
  • The partnership will enable Nordnet customers to easily and securely deposit funds using Trustly pay-ins.
  • Trustly, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013, was acquired by Nordic Capital in 2018.

A new strategic partnership between open banking, account-to-account (A2A) payments platform Trustly and Nordnet will enable customers of the Swedish savings and investment solution to easily and securely deposit funds in their accounts. The pact brings instant deposits to the whole Nordic region, including markets where instant payments are not yet available.

The new service is going live in Sweden initially, and will be available to all new customers who sign up for a Nordnet account. The service will launch in Norway in the first quarter of this year, and in Denmark and Finland later in 2023.

“Trustly’s technology and customer focus made them a natural choice and good fit for Nordnet in our ongoing work to build the best platform for savings and investments,” Nordnet Chief Product Officer and Deputy CEO Rasmus Järborg said. “With Trustly, our customers are able to fund their accounts instantly and start discovering what stocks or funds they want to buy.”

Founded in 1996 as Sweden’s first Internet broker, Nordnet currently provides savings, investment, lending, and pension services to customers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Nordnet operates the region’s largest social investment network, Shareville, which boasts more than 300,000 members.

The company also offers margin lending, residential mortgages, and unsecured personal loans both under its own brand and under the subsidiary Konsumentkredit. As a pension solutions provider, Nordnet offers endowment insurance in Sweden and Norway and, for Swedish customers, provides a digital pension management service. Headquartered in Stockholm, the firm reported total assets of more than $22.8 billion in 2021.

Trustly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2013 and returned to the Finovate stage four years later for FinovateEurope 2017. The company was acquired by Nordic Capital for an undisclosed sum in 2018, and has since forged partnerships with companies ranging from Alibaba.com to NACHA to IKEA. Last year, Trustly acquired U.K. open banking vendor Ecospend (terms not disclosed). In November, the company welcomed back Alex Gontheir as CEO of its Americas division. Gontheir founded and led PayWithMyBank as CEO. PayWithMyBank merged with Trustly in 2019 and Gontheir became Executive Chairman in 2021.

Photo by Jan Židlický

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Ping Identity Partners with Device Identification Platform Fingerprint

Ping Identity Partners with Device Identification Platform Fingerprint
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Ping Identity
  • Ping Identity has forged a partnership with device identification platform Fingerprint.
  • The partnership will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology into Ping Identity’s identity orchestration service, DaVinci.
  • Ping Identity made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateEurope in London.

Ping Identity, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016, announced a partnership with U.S.-based identity tech innovator Fingerprint. The collaboration will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology with Ping Identity’s DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service to enable users of DaVinci to accurately identify devices and stop fraud.

Fingerprint’s device identification platform provides 99.5% accuracy and, upon integration with PingOne DaVinci, will enable companies to enhance the customer experience by reducing the need for friction-producing multi-factor authentication for known users. The integration will enhance onboarding for new customers, as well. “Our mission is to empower developers to build safe and seamless Internet services,” Fingerprint CEO Dan Pinto said. He said that the partnership with Ping Identity would help show the effectiveness of the company’s device identity technology in a broad range of digital user journeys.

Fingerprint teamed up with Ping Identity as part of the latter’s Global Technology Partner Program. Growing the program and adding companies like Fingerprint is part of Ping Identity’s goal of delivering “better, more frictionless customer experiences” according to company SVP of Product Management Loren Russon. “Our partnership with Fingerprint leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey,” Russon said.

PingOne DaVinci enables users to design secure and seamless customer experiences across an entire technology ecosystem. The platform’s no-code orchestration and drag-and-drop interface mean that anyone who can whiteboard an experience can orchestrate it using DaVinci. Users build, design, and refine workflows, and then easily optimize these workflows with A/B testing and, where necessary, quickly deploy fixes and changes.

Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the sixth consecutive year, Ping One was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The company was acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in an all-cash $2.8 billion transaction. When the deal was closed in October, Ping Identity founder and CEO Andre Durand credited the way that “identity security and frictionless user experiences have become essential in the digital-first economy.” Durand added that, “with the support of Thoma Bravo, Ping Identity can further accelerate innovation to deliver the easy and secure digital experiences customers demand from every industry.”

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Stripe and Amazon Expand Payments Partnership

Stripe and Amazon Expand Payments Partnership
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Stripe and Amazon have agreed to “significantly expand” their partnership.
  • Under the agreement, Stripe will process a notable portion of Amazon’s total payments volume.
  • The two have been partners since 2017.

Payments infrastructure company Stripe announced today that Amazon has agreed to “significantly expand” its use of its core platform, recruiting the California-based company as a strategic payments partner in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.

While there is no specific breakdown, Stripe said that it will be processing a “significant” portion of Amazon’s total payments volume across its business units, including Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime, and more.

The two companies first partnered in 2017 to fuel Amazon’s expansion in Asia and Europe, as well as to support purchases made on high-traffic shopping days such as Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

“In particular, we value Stripe’s reliability,” said Amazon VP of Payments Max Bardon. “Even during peak days like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, Stripe delivers industry-leading uptime. We appreciate Stripe’s relentless commitment to putting users first.”

The partnership also marks a continuation and expansion of Stripe’s reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides the payment company’s core computing infrastructure. Leveraging AWS, Stripe has been able to increase developer productivity and accelerate product development.

“We couldn’t run without AWS—and we wouldn’t want to,” said Stripe CTO David Singleton. “AWS is our customers’ first choice. The platform gives Stripe enormous developer leverage, which we then deploy in service of our users.”

Stripe was founded in 2010 and today processes hundreds of billions of dollars every year for businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 500 firms. The company acts as a one-stop shop for almost every payment need, including embedded payments, payment acceptance, billing, invoicing, and more. Stripe, which released its own App Marketplace last May, has raised a total of $2.2 billion across 20 rounds of funding.

Today’s positive news comes at a good time for both companies. Last November, Stripe laid off 14% of its workforce and, earlier this month, the company’s internal valuation was cut to $63 billion, down from the company’s $95 billion valuation in March of 2021. Amazon has also been in the headlines for recent layoffs, with plans to cut 18,000 jobs.

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FNZ Agrees to Acquire Fixed Income Investing Platform YieldX

FNZ Agrees to Acquire Fixed Income Investing Platform YieldX
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • FNZ has acquired digital fixed income trading company YieldX.
  • The acquisition will combine FNZ’s investment platform, which represents more than 20 million investors across the globe, with YieldX’s digital infrastructure.
  • Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Wealth management firm FNZ snapped up some new tech talent today with the acquisition of digital fixed income trading company YieldX. Terms of the deal, which will combine FNZ’s full-service investment platform with YieldX’s digital infrastructure, were not disclosed.

FNZ anticipates the buy will help it further its mission “to deliver personalized investment solutions to more people across the wealth management industry.” Furthermore, YieldX’s focus on technology will help FNZ provide more investment options at scale, offering investors more variety and transparency.

“We have a joint vision of opening up wealth by transforming the wealth management industry through more transparent, accessible, and personalized technology solutions. YieldX’s solutions perfectly complement our existing strengths and will further differentiate our offering for the benefit of all clients,” said FNZ CEO of North America Tom Chard. “The acquisition also provides a unique opportunity to accelerate our growth and presence in the U.S. as we continue to add market leading capabilities to our global wealth platform. We’re incredibly pleased to welcome Adam and Steve, as well as the wider YieldX team to FNZ. Like us they are highly innovative, customer obsessed, and are an invaluable addition to our team.”

Founded in 2004, FNZ helps financial institutions offer personalized wealth management services to their end users. Acquiring YieldX will help the firm deepen its digital offerings that match clients with fixed-income opportunities that meet their preferred term, yield, and risk tolerance. FNZ currently represents more than 20 million investors across the globe, with more than $1.5 trillion in client assets under management. The firm’s partners include over 650 large financial institutions and 8,000 wealth management firms in 21 countries.

YieldX was founded in 2019 and has since raised $36 million across three rounds. The company’s most recent funding came in 2021 from its integration partner Envestnet, which invested $18 million in YieldX. The company’s clients range from wealth and asset managers, to global B2C financial services and technology providers.

Once the acquisition is finalized, YieldX Co-founders Adam Green and Steve Gross will join FNZ as the company’s CEO of Asset Management and Head of Asset Management Strategy, respectively.

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