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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Fixed income technology innovator bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding.
The investment round was led by BNY Mellon and brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.
bondIT made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2016.
Credit analytics and fixed income technology company bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding. The strategic investment was led by BNY Mellon and featured the participation of existing investors, as well. BNY Mellon will join bondIT’s Board of Directors as part of the investment. Valuation information was not provided when the funding was announced but, according to Crunchbase, the funding brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.
“This investment will help us accelerate innovation and offer clients a unique holistic solution for fixed income investing,” bondIT founder and CEO Etai Ravid said. “As bond investors are keen to lock in higher yields, our versatile technology and data-driven approach can help them increase automation to improve efficiency and performance, and better mitigate risk.”
Headquartered in New York and Herzliya, Israel, bondIT provides front office investment technology. The company leverages data science, explainable AI, and other advanced technologies to enable its customers to build, analyze, and manage investment portfolios. bondIT’s technology helps its clients accomplish in minutes what previously took hours or even days. Predictive credit analytics enable bondIT customers to anticipate potential changes in corporate credit risk and take advantage of potential investment opportunities before they manifest themselves in the market
“Collaborating with bondIT will allow us to deliver innovative digital solutions for fixed income investors by enabling investment professionals to explore new investment options more easily through the use of AI, further expanding their portfolio optimization capabilities for clients,” BNY Mellon MD John Goodheart said.
bondIT’s relationship with BNY Mellon extends back to 2021, when bondIT participated in BNY Mellon’s startup accelerator program. In the months since then, bondIT added David Curtis as Partner and Head of Global Client Business, and teamed up with MEAG, the asset manager of Munich Re and ERGO. The MEAG partnership, announced almost exactly one year ago, will digitize MEAG’s credit risk workflows. The Munich, Germany-based company will also use bondIT’s Scorable Credit Analytics to enhance its own credit research processes. A component of bondIT’s fixed income technology solutions suite, Scorable Credit Analytics analyzes more than 250 data points a day and translates raw data from a wide variety of financial and market data sources to provide actionable insights for investors.
“Working with bondIT is another important step in driving technological progress across our organization,” MEAG CIO of Public Markets Prashant Sharma said. “We aim to continuously increase the quality and efficiency of our investment process, and technology plays a crucial part in this.”
The partnership enables AvidXchange to expand on the global payments capabilities it launched last month.
The partnership will help AvidXchange offer its U.S.-based clients an embedded payment experience, creating a more convenient payment process.
Payment automation solutions company AvidXchangeannounced this week it has selected international money transfer company Wise (formerly known as Transferwise) to expand its international payment capabilities.
“Partnering with Wise to provide our customers with best-in-class international payment capabilities was an easy decision because of their market-leading platform and seamless integration capabilities,” said AvidXchange Chief Growth Officer Dan Drees. “Together, we stand firm as leaders and remain dedicated to making our customers’ payments process more efficient regardless of country lines.”
AvidXchange launched its global payments last month to create an embedded cross-border payment solution for its middle market business clients and their suppliers. Piloting the launch is Oracle NetSuite. The company will enable its clients to access the tool using AvidXchange’s SuiteApp within NetSuite’s SuiteCloud platform.
AvidXchange offers a range of payment automation products, which include invoicing, electronic bill payment, accounts payable automation software, purchase order requisitions, and more. The company serves a range of industries, including real estate, construction, financial services, hospitality, healthcare, and more.
Today’s partnership with Wise helps AvidXchange offer its U.S.-based clients an embedded payment experience that creates a more convenient payment process. The integration enables users to pay both domestic and international suppliers, all within the AvidXchange platform. Wise also offers AvidXchange clients more visibility into fees, gains, and losses to help them better control costs and view cash flow.
“Current systems don’t allow businesses to easily send, spend, or receive money internationally,” said Wise Platform Head Steve Naude. “Through our collaboration with AvidXchange, Wise is helping businesses gain access to a faster, more cost-effective and seamless way to manage finances with domestic and international suppliers in multiple currencies and countries. With 50% of transfers sent instantly, always at the mid-market rate, AvidXchange customers can now have confidence knowing they are saving time and money with each transaction.”
With more than 50 bank and business clients, Wise is one of the best-known players in the international remittance market. The London-based company was founded in 2010 with a simple mission: money without borders.
AvidXchange was founded in 2000 and currently processes over $140 billion transactions annually across its network of more than 680,000 suppliers. Despite its long tenure in the space, AvidXchange has only been a public company for a little over a year. The company debuted on the NASDAQ in October of 2021 and currently has a market capitalization of $1.69 billion.
Wells Fargo launched a new digital banking platform, Vantage, for commercial, corporate, and investment banking.
Vantage leverages AI and machine learning to deliver more personalized recommendations and actionable insights based on clients’ unique needs.
The new offering comes as part of Wells Fargo’s digital transformation efforts, which include the launch of a new consumer mobile banking app earlier this year.
The new digital banking platform from Wells Fargo, called Vantage, is an upgrade of the bank’s Commercial Electronic Office, or CEO Portal. The new offering is designed to give Wells Fargo’s commercial, corporate, and investment banking clients a more personalized experience by leveraging AI and machine learning. Vantage uses both enabling technologies to provide recommendations and actionable insights based on the specific needs of clients, and refines and improves its capacity for personalization as clients use the technology.
“Our Commercial and Corporate clients’ banking needs evolve over time, which is why we’re delighted to launch Vantage, a digital banking platform that simplifies and personalizes their experience so that they can stay focused on what’s most important – growing and improving their businesses,” Wells Fargo’s Reetika Grewal said. Grewal is the head of Digital for Commercial Banking and Corporate & Investment Banking clients.
Wells Fargo’s launch of Vantage is being billed as part of the institution’s overall digital transformation efforts. These efforts include the introduction of a revamped consumer mobile app — featuring a virtual assistant called Fargo — announced in October and launched earlier this year. The new Fargo-enabled app is able to handle a variety of basic banking tasks, including billpay and sending money, as well as provide transaction details and budgeting advice. This week’s Vantage announcement also arrives in the wake of Wells Fargo’s launch of its automated, same-day loan solution, Flex Loan.
Wells Fargo has approximately 27 million active mobile banking users, trailing rivals Bank of America, with more than 32 million active mobile banking users, and JP Morgan Chase, with more than 44 million such customers, as of Q3 of last year. Further, Wells Fargo is growing its mobile banking customers at a slower pace compared to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, according to company statements published by CNBC.com.
That said, customers appear to be happy with their Wells Fargo mobile banking experience. The bank’s app came in third place in the Touchpoint Group Engaged Customer Score (ECS) banking app performance rankings for banks in the U.S. – trailing Bank of America and top-rated Citi Bank, but ranking ahead of Chase. Touchpoint Group highlighted Wells Fargo’s app upgrade as a potential source of the app’s strong rating.
Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to more than $60 million.
Along with today’s announcement, X1 is also unveiling a new in-app stock investing tool that will enable cardholders to purchase stocks using points.
X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members.
Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million this week. The funds bring the company’s Series B round to $40 million and elevate its total funds to more than $60 million. The investment was led by Soma Capital and included contributions from Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) and Kyle Vogt.
While the self-described smart credit card did not provide an exact valuation, the company said that today’s round increases X1’s total valuation by more than 50% over where it stood four months ago, when the company raised $25 million in Series B funding.
X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members. One such new feature is X1’s new investing platform that enables cardholders to buy stocks in the X1 app using their rewards points. X1 will guide investors by recommending stocks based on the cardholder’s spending habits, risk preferences, investment goals, income, and time horizon. The new capability will begin rolling out to select cardholders in the coming weeks.
The company said in the press release that it has future plans to expand the stock purchasing features “to compete with more traditional investment options.” Based on this, we can expect features common to Acorns and Robinhood such as spare change investing and automatic investment deposits.
For a card with no annual fee, X1’s rewards are hard to beat. The company offers cardholders 2x points on every dollar spent, 3x points on every dollar spent for the year if transactions exceed $15,000, and 4x points on each dollar for one month of purchases for each referral. X1 has paid out more than $10 million in rewards points since exiting its beta last October.
“With X1, we want to build an iconic and enduring consumer finance brand in an industry that’s long overdue for disruption,” said X1 CEO and Co-founder Deepak Rao. “We’re honored by the reception our card has continued to receive and to have raised this funding from Soma Capital, an early investor in more than 20 unicorns. With our innovative new investing platform, we’re excited to reimagine yet another sector in the consumer financial market.”
Outside of its rewards structure, X1 has other unique features that help differentiate itself in the crowded credit card market. The company has a stainless steel card and offers users virtual card numbers that they can set to expire on a specified date in order to avoid forgetting a subscription or a free trial period. The former automatically expires after one use, while the latter automatically expires 24 hours after it is activated.
Canadian real-time cross border payments company Buckzy has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding.
The investment was led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures, and featured participation from new investors Luge Capital and Blue 9 Capital, as well as existing investor Revel Partners.
Buckzy made its Finovate debut in 2019 at FinovateFall.
In a round led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures, Canada-based real-time, cross border payments company Buckzy has secured $14.5 million in Series A funding. Valuation information was not immediately available. This week’s investment takes the company’s total equity funding to more than $23 million, according to Crunchbase.
“This round of financing is a validation of Buckzy’s vision to create an intelligent and automated international payment system,” Buckzy CEO Abdul Naushad said. “We’re on a mission to build the plumbing for real-time money movement globally, the same way high-speed internet fundamentally shifted the communications industry.”
New investors Luge Capital and Blue 9 Capital, and existing investor Revel Partners, also participated in the round. Luge Capital General Partner Karim Gillani will join Buckzy’s board as an advisor.
Buckzy offers real-time, cross border payments and Banking-as-a-Service capabilities via an embedded finance platform. The platform offers multi-currency bank accounts, local settlement accounts, and real-time FX quoting and booking. A licensed money transfer company, Buckzy has signed up more than 140 bank, neobank, and fintech customers since going live with its platform in 2020.
Calling the cross-border payments market a $150 trillion market globally – and one that is still underserved – Mistral Ventures Partners Managing Director Code Cubitt praised Buckzy for its ability to deliver “a much better customer experience, more automation, and lightning-fast payments.” Cubitt said the company had “the right blend of experience, expertise, and insight to build the next generation of cross border payments.”
Buckzy’s funding news comes at the same time that the company announced the appointment of Seema Rai Nair as VP of Customer Success and Network Expansion. Nair will be responsible for growing the company’s partnership network of banks, fintechs, ecommerce platforms, and other financial service providers.
“Demand for real-time and near real-time international payment services is rising around the world, and companies are increasingly turning to alternative providers such as Buckzy to address their need for fast, secure international payments,” Nair said in a statement.
Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Buckzy was founded in 2018. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York the following year.
Finastra and Clinc have partnered to integrate Clinc’s conversational AI technology into Finastra’s Fusion Digital Banking platform.
Finastra will offer its 8,600 financial instiution clients access to Clinc’s AI virtual assistants to help mitigate the load on call centers while providing quality answers to end users.
Finastra was founded in 2017 as a merger between Misys and D+H.
Financial software company Finastra has tapped conversational AI fintech Clinc this week. The two have partnered to integrate Clinc’s Virtual Banking Assistant technology into Finastra’s Fusion Digital Banking platform.
The added capabilities will enable Finastra’s 8,600 financial institution clients to increase digital engagement with their customers. Clinc’s Virtual Banking Assistant helps banks manage common banking requests through different channels, which ultimately helps reduce the volume of calls into the call center.
Clinc was founded in 2015 to build what it calls a “human-in-the-room” level of virtual assistant powered by AI technology and machine learning. The company’s solution understands natural language and leverages elements from the user’s inquiry– such as wording, sentiment, intent, tone of voice, time of day, location, and relationships– to craft an answer that is not only human-like, but also useful in answering the original question.
“We are incredibly pleased to be able to offer our AI solution to banks in collaboration with Finastra, whose FusionFabric.cloud platform is viewed around the world as a leading financial technology ecosystem,” said Clinc CEO Jon Newhard. “Our Virtual Banking Assistant, which can be integrated seamlessly as part of a digital transformation strategy, enables financial institutions to engage customers efficiently but without losing the personal touch. This is vital in an era when increasing numbers of consumers are demanding authentic and intuitive experiences from chatbots.”
Clinc’s technology will be available in Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud, a marketplace that helps financial services firms find pre-built, ready-to-integrate apps into their Finastra products. Since launching in 2017, FusionFabric.cloud has had 566 customers sign up and has helped form more than 153 partnerships.
“Financial institutions worldwide will benefit from increased access to Clinc’s innovative chatbot technology,” said Finastra Chief Product Officer, Universal Banking Narendra Mistry. “Understanding how real people talk and interact is critical as banks and credit unions work to ensure that the customer experience remains strong while embracing new technologies. We’re delighted to welcome Clinc to our technology ecosystem, and for Finastra’s customers to be able to easily offer conversational AI as part of their digital strategy.”
Finastra was founded in 2017 as a merger between Misys and D+H. The latter acquired Mortgagebot in 2011 for $232 million. Mortgagebot was among the first companies to demo at a Finovate event. The company won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2007. Finastra’s technology spans lending, payments, treasury and capital markets, and universal banking. The U.K.-based company counts 90 of the world’s top 100 banks as clients.
If you’ve been crying over your crypto wallet due to all the negative headlines about digital currencies, then now is the time to dry your eyes and thank Fidelity for giving crypto enthusiasts the greatest sign of approval since BTC and ETH peaked last year.
Fidelity announced this week that it has enabled cryptocurrency trading in retail accounts. Fidelity Crypto, as the offering is called, enables retail accountholders to buy and sell both Bitcoin and ethereum with as little as $1. The new functionality will be available in 35 U.S. states initially – California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Texas are among them. Fidelity plans to bring the technology to other states; the company is offering an early-access sign-up to let interested customers know when Fidelity Crypto is approved in their state. Similarly, the company is examining other cryptocurrencies with the potential to “expand trading opportunities over time.”
The fallout from FTX and the collapse of even the most widely traded cryptocurrencies have been only a few of the headwinds that might have convinced Fidelity to wait longer to launch its crypto trading capability. As recently as this month, a group of senators including Elizabeth Warren asked the company to reconsider its plan to enable its customers to invest up to 20% of their retirement savings in Bitcoin. Clearly those eager for signs of spring amid this crypto winter need look no further than Fidelity.
Ledger’s Crypto Card
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, French fintech Ledger has launched its crypto debit card in the U.K. and Europe. The new Crypto Life card enables users to transfer crypto between Ledger’s hardware wallets and card accounts via Ledger’s Ledger Live app. Crypto Life offers 1% crypto rewards in both Bitcoin and USDT, as well as offering 2$ in BXX, the native token of Baanx. Baanx is the U.K.-based fintech that developed the technology for Crypto Life.
Ledger users can use Crypto Life at approximately 90 million merchants and online stores across the U.K. and Europe that accept Mastercard. Ledger VP of International Development JF Rochet called the new offering an “easy and secure solution to pay with crypto that also allows you to self-custody until you want to top up.”
Headquartered in Paris, France, and founded in 2015, Ledger demoed its technology one year later at FinovateEurope 2016. The company specializes in trusted hardware solutions for Bitcoin and blockchain applications, which it distributes both directly via online sales as well as through an international network of retail merchants.
Kriptomat Adds Real Time A2A Payments via Volt Partnership
Sticking with the crypto-across-the-pond theme, we read news that Kriptomat, a cryptocurrency platform based in Estonia, has teamed up with U.K.-based payment gateway provider Volt. The goal of the partnership is to give customers the ability to make account-to-account payments, in real-time, to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies.
More than 500,000 cryptocurrency traders and investors on the Kriptomat platform are expected to benefit from the partnership. Previously, Kriptomat customers were required to use methods such as bank transfers, credit cards, and even e-wallets to make their transactions. Integrating with Volt payments will enable customers to be seamlessly directed to their banking app when paying with Volt, where they can authorize payments using their preferred authentication method. The result is a faster, more streamlined, and less costly way for Kriptomat customers to fund their crypto purchases.
“Today’s new crypto users are more like car owners, who expect to turn the key and have it work immediately – without learning the ins and outs of the processes that happen in the background,” Kriptomat CEO Srdjan Mahmutovic said. “Volt’s technology has helped us provide that level of usability to our customer base.”
BlockFi’s “We’re Not FTX”-Based Bankruptcy
The news that many feared was coming to BlockFi arrived this week as the cryptocurrency company, which carved out a niche in the space as a lender for small cryptocurrency investors, filed for bankruptcy. The company’s Chapter 11 filing follows the bankruptcy filings of other cryptocurrency lenders such as Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, both of which tapped out in July. But the far more looming shadow over BlockFi’s misfortunes is clearly the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with which BlockFi was financially entangled.
That said, both BlockFi’s bankruptcy declaration and the opening statement from BlockFi attorney Joshua Sussberg in court yesterday were attempts to do as much untangling as possible. Sussberg referred to BlockFi, which FTX both financially supported and – at one point – moved to acquire, as the “antithesis of FTX.” He credited BlockFi for its “focus on creating an opportunity for people that otherwise don’t have access to the financial system.”
Dimon’s Crypto Curious Bank: JP Morgan Gets Crypto Wallet Trademark
If Fidelity can be credited for the “giant leap” in crypto this week, should we salute JP Morgan’s “small step” of securing a crypto wallet trademark?
There’s a certain sport in highlighting any pro-crypto moves by JP Morgan – given the the outspoken crypto-skepticism of the bank’s legendary CEO Jamie Dimon. As a refresher, Dimon has referred to cryptocurrencies as “decentralized Ponzi schemes,” and said that the “notion that (crypto) is good for anybody is unbelievable.”
But that’s not stopping the bank he runs from expressing some crypto curiosity including, this week, news that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved of the J.P. Morgan Wallet. According to the registered trademark, the J.P. Morgan Wallet supports “virtual currency transfer + exchange, crypto payment processing, virtual checking accounts, and financial services.”
JP Morgan has been open about its interest in launching a digital wallet since October. Despite the disinterest of the bank’s CEO in most things crypto, JP Morgan has worked with Fidelity and New York Bank Mellon to offer various cryptocurrency related services and, earlier this month, completed the first cross-border transaction using decentralized finance (DeFi) on a public blockchain.
Greenwood, a digital banking platform catering to black and Latino communities, raised $45 million in new funding this week.
The funding round was led by Pendulum, an investing and advisory platform for founders of color.
Atlanta, Georgia-based Greenwood was named after the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was known as “Black Wall Street” in the early 20th century due to its high concentration of black-owned businesses.
In a round led by Pendulum, a strategic growth investing and advisory platform for founders of color, digital banking platform Greenwood has secured $45 million in new funding. A digital banking platform designed to meet the needs of members of the African-American and Latino/Hispanic communities, Greenwood will use the funding to advance its goal of closing the wealth gap between ethnic minority and majority populations and enable African-Americans and Latinos to more readily build generational wealth.
“Our vision is to make Greenwood the premier destination for black and Latino wealth creation and regeneration while keeping community connection and collective professional advancement at the center,” Greenwood chairman and co-founder Ryan Glover said.
Joining Pendulum in this week’s funding were a host of new investors including Cercano Management, Cohen Circle, The George Kaiser Family Foundation, and NextEra Energy. Existing investors Bank of America, Citi Ventures, PNC, Popular, Truist Ventures, TTV Capital, and Wells Fargo also contributed.
Greenwood also announced the launch of a new offering that takes advantage of its recent acquisitions of The Gathering Spot and Valence, a pair of African-American owned private membership networks for black professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporations. The offering, called Elevate, gives its members access to The Gathering Spot’s private membership network – including the organization’s physical clubhouses in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. – as well as Valence’s professional networking platform and recruiting database. The launch of Elevate is geared toward helping Greenwood fulfill both the community building and career advancement components of its mission.
“Greenwood is poised to create new outcomes and equip our communities with the resources they have been systematically excluded from in the pursuit of economic opportunity,” Pendulum CEO and co-founder Robbie Robinson said.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Greenwood has more than 100,000 customers on its platform, and more than one million individuals in its combined community including The Gathering Spot and Valence. The fintech offers a digital bank account with no hidden or overdraft fees, a Mastercard debit card, support for P2P transfers, two-day early wage access, and a global ATM network. Greenwood also provides opportunities for its customers to help communities in need via programs like Feed a Family (in partnership with Goodr), donations to non-profits such as the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and NAACP from customer spare change round-ups, and monthly small business grants of $10,000 to African-American or Latino/Hispanic owned businesses. The platform also offers financial education and information designed for black and Latino audiences via its Greenwood Studios operation. Greenwood’s banking services are provided courtesy of a partnership with Coastal Community Bank.
The name of the digital banking platform was inspired by the Greenwood District, a historic African-American community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that, in the early 20th century, featured one of the greatest concentrations of black businesses in the U.S. Known as “Black Wall Street”, the community was the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in which a mob of white Tulsans destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the Greenwood District. The attack was described as the “single worst incident of racial violence in American history.” Hundreds were hospitalized and estimates of the number of Oklahomans killed ranged from 75 to 300.
Small business banking platform Tide has agreed to acquire lending marketplace Funding Options.
Tide will integrate Funding Options’ loan matching technology into its own business loan comparison site.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A rising tide lifts all boats. Or in today’s case, a rising Tide lifts Funding Options. That’s because small business banking provider Tide has agreed to acquire lending marketplace Funding Options. Financial terms of the deal, which was first reported by AltFi News, were not disclosed.
U.K.-based Tide was founded in 2015 to help small businesses save time and money on banking and administrative tasks. The business bank accounts offer accounting tools, expense cards, invoicing, payment collection capabilities, business loan comparisons, and cashflow insights. Tide currently counts more than 450,000 sole traders, freelancers, and limited companies as clients.
By integrating Funding Options’ business lending comparison technology into its own, Tide will be able to offer small businesses a broader set of options when applying for a loan. That said, Tide plans to maintain the Funding Options brand as it exists today. Funding Options CEO Simon Cureton will continue to lead Funding Options and will also be charged with leading Tide’s business loan comparisons.
“With this deal, Tide is aiming to create one of the UK’s biggest digital marketplaces for SME credit, and to make it easier for small business owners to access this vital resource,” Tide CEO Oliver Prill told AltFi. “We know that getting credit is even more important to our members in these challenging times: not just in terms of the rising cost of doing business, but also when high street banks are typically slower to offer smaller businesses loans.”
Funding Options was founded in 2011 and now maintains a network more than 120 lending partners. Since launch, the company has matched small businesses with more than $812 million in working capital in increments ranging from $1200 to $5 million.
Once finalized, the deal will mark Tide’s first acquisition.
Cion Digital and upSWOT have teamed up to bring embedded finance and embedded business management solutions to commercial loan brokers.
Courtesy of the partnership, the two companies will enable wealth managers and commercial loan officers the ability to identify ideal financing solutions, as well as broaden their offering with new embedded financial and business management tools.
Cion Digital made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring. Making its Finovate debut in 2000, upSWOT returned to the Finovate stage in September for FinovateFall.
Cion Digital, which offers technology to help businesses find the right loan products that suit their needs, has partnered with fintech platform upSWOT. Together, the two Finovate alums will provide wealth managers and commercial loan brokers with embedded finance and embedded business management solutions. These tools will empower these businesses to offer their customers access to a wide variety of tools – including accounting, ERP, payroll, e-commerce, CRM, marketing, and POS business applications – via more than 200 API-enabled apps.
“Cion Digital is focused on using data and machine learning to help financial advisors and commercial loan brokers secure financing for their clients that meets their clients’ unique financial objectives and curate high-value relationships for lenders and financial institutions,” Cion Digital Chief Product Officer Taylor Adkins said. Adkins noted that the partnership with upSOT will make available a wealth of data sources and insights that can be used to further help business owners identify the financing solutions they need – as well as add to their offering with embedded finance and business management resources.
“Fintech has incredible power to dramatically reshape the success of SMBs,” upSWOT CEO Dmitry Norenko added. “The institutions that enable SMBs to take advantage of these dramatic shifts in technologies are institutions that care about their customers and ensuring that they will still be here in a decade.”
A Finovate alum since 2000, upSWOT most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage in September as part of FinovateFall. At the conference, upSWOT showed its white-label, digital-banking-embedded solution that connects to more than 200 integrated SaaS applications, delivering actionable insights, cash flow forecasts, and more. Earlier this month, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based fintech announced a partnership with Standard Chartered to launch a pilot project in Singapore that would give Standard Chartered’s SME customers intelligent forecasting capabilities. Founded in 2019, upSWOT has raised more than $5 million in funding.
Cion Digital demoed its Crypto Dealership Platform at FinovateSpring 2022. In October, the company launched its wealth advisor lending platform, which gives wealth management firms and registered investment advisors (RIAs) curated loan offers and a streamlined application approval process. The platform connects firms and advisors directly to banks and other lenders; the new offering supports not only traditional assets and securities but also crypto assets, as well.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, and founded in 2021, Cion Digital has raised $12 million in funding. The company’s investors include 645 Ventures and Green Visor Capital.
Miami, Florida-based neobank Novo raised $35 million in funding, taking its Series B funding round to $125 million.
The Series B raises Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.
The latest capital infusion comes from GGV Capital, which manages more than $9 billion in investments across North America, China, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Israel.
An additional $35 million investment brings the total raised by Miami, Florida-based fintech Novo to $125 million. The latest infusion comes courtesy of strategic investor GGV Capital, and brings Novo’s total equity funding to more than $170 million.
In a statement, Novo CEO and co-founder Michael Rangel highlighted the new functionality of the Novo Platform and the “tens of thousand” of small business customers the company has onboarded. Rangel also praised GGV as “instrumental” in helping other technology companies (“from Airbnb to Square”) scale their businesses, and said he believed the support of the firm would help Novo reach “millions more small businesses in the coming years.” Note that GGV Capital Principal Robin Li will join Novo’s board of directors as an observer.
With more than 175,000 small business customers, Novo offers a free business checking account with free ACHs and incoming wires; a Novo Virtual card; no hidden fees; and an application process that can be completed in less than 10 minutes. Novo also provides online small business banking services including the ability to send and track invoices; as set aside funds for taxes, payroll, and more via its Novo Reserves feature. Novo is partnered with Middlesex Federal Savings, which provides FDIC coverage of Novo deposits up to $250,000.
Additionally, as of 2021, the company has offered Novo Apps, a comprehensive apps marketplace to enable SMEs to customize their banking experience; Novo Boost, which gives small businesses same day access to payments received through Stripe; as well as Express ACH that enables same day processing of ACH payments.
GGV Capital Managing Partner Hans Tung underscored Novo’s “ecosystem approach” to providing banking services to small businesses, freelancers, and gig economy workers. “They’ve built a robust, intuitive platform that allows SMBs to connect all of their business and financial applications to their Novo account,” Tung said.
Novo’s latest investment comes as the company announces surpassing $12 billion in lifetime small business transactions. Founded in 2016, Novo was named one of the “Next Billion-Dollar Startups” of 2022 by Forbes earlier this year.
U.K.-based fraud and financial crime prevention company Featurespace secured funding to help build an AI-powered prototype to fight money laundering and other financial crimes.
The funding comes from both the U.S. and U.K. governments, and is part of an initiative supported by Innovate UK, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and messaging network SWIFT.
Featurespace made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016.
Fraud and financial crime prevention specialist Featurespace has secured funding from both the U.S. and U.K. governments to build an AI-powered technology to help financial services institutions – including banks and payment service providers (PSPs) – to detect and stop financial crime. The goal specifically is to enhance the ability of financial institutions to combat cross-border money laundering, application fraud, and APP fraud, in particular. The U.K.-based company, headquartered in Cambridge, will build a prototype, leveraging AI, that will be trained on “sensitive private payments data.” Featurespace will apply federated deep learning to the data, using privacy-enhancing techniques such as k-anonymity and local differential privacy. Organizations will not have to reveal, share, or combine their raw data in the process.
“U.K. and U.S. governments want banks to work together to stop fraud and money laundering,” Featurespace Director of Innovation David Sutton said. “This type of privacy-preserving collaboration AI is a hard problem that no one has yet solved. We are confident we can meet this challenge. We’re the only company in this project that has deployed innovative tech to fight worldwide financial crime – and we have the banking customers to prove it.”
The funding comes courtesy of the privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) Challenge Prize, an effort begun in July by Innovate UK and the U.S. National Science Foundation. The initiative also is supported by bank-owned messaging network SWIFT. Featurespace has been given a deadline of January 24 to build the prototype. Upon completion, if the project is successful, it will be showcased at the second Summit for Democracy to be convened in the U.S. in the first half of 2023.
“A successful outcome of this project is to make money laundering across borders and between banks much more difficult,” Sutton said. “If you make it harder to launder money, you make criminal activities less profitable. This will benefit businesses, society, and consumers.”
Founded in 2008, Featurespace made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016. More than 70 direct customers and more than 200,000 institutions ranging from HSBC and Worldpay to fellow Finovate alums like TSYS and Marqeta, rely on Featurespace’s technology to protect themselves against fraud and financial crime. An innovator in the field of fraud prevention, Featurespace has developed technologies like Adaptive Behavioral Analytics and Automated Deep Behavioral Networks to profile both authentic and fraudulent behavior to combat financial crime in real-time. Both technologies are components of Featurespace’s ARIC Risk Hub.
Last week, Featurespace announced a partnership with Railsr to help customers of the embedded finance platform better defend themselves from fraud and financial crime. Per the agreement, Railsr’s fraud teams will be able to leverage card and payment fraud prevention and AML solutions via Featurespace’s ARIC Risk Hub.
“As embedded finance increasingly becomes expected by consumers, making sure they are protected from fraud and financial crime must be expected in equal measure,” Featurespace Chief Commercial Officer Matt Mills said. “Railsr (has) recognized this early and added a critical layer of self-learning technology to ensure their customers get only the best experience.”
