Daily news

AutoRek Joins Swift Partner Program

AutoRek Joins Swift Partner Program
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, AutoRek, Daily news
  • Automated reconciliation software company AutoRek has joined the Swift Partner Program.
  • The partnership will enable companies to have greater integration between their operations and third-party data sources.
  • Scotland-based AutoRek made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.

AutoRek, an automated financial controls platform based in Scotland, has joined the Swift Partner Program. The move will enhance the consolidation and reconciliation of financial data and provide greater integration between companies’ operations and their third-party data sources. Leveraging its predefined catalog of API connections, AutoRek will consume messages directly from the Swift network, making the reconciliation process more efficient and providing wider data management. This will eliminate the need for AutoRek customers to both source and manage files and statements from the third-parties they are working with. Futhermore, AutoRek will investigate the creation of additional solutions to help its customers maximize the company’s connection with the Swift network.

“AutoRek is on a mission to set the benchmark in trust for finance operations and controls,” AutoRek Head of Strategic Partnerships Alastair MacKenzie said. “As a member-owned organization, we believe this collaboration with Swift will allow us to gain in-depth insights to help meet the needs of the world’s leading financial services firms.”

SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, offers a network that enables financial institutions to communicate and exchange information about financial transactions in a secure manner. Launched in 1973 and owned by the banks and member institutions that use the messaging network, the Belgian-based cooperative connects more than 11,500 banking and securities organizations, market infrastructures, and corporate customers in 200+ countries and territories.

AutoRek made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope last year. At the conference, the company’s Kashif Aslam demonstrated how AutoRek’s technology helps financial institutions — including banks, asset managers, insurers, and payments businesses — manage high-volume reconciliation challenges. “Some of the benefits include a significant reduction in cost through automation of otherwise manual and intricate business processes, an increase in control over your data through increased transparency so you can see and track everything that’s happened to your data throughout its lifespan within the system, and an increased ability to demonstrate compliance with financial regulation,” Aslam explained.

In the months since then, AutoRek has forged partnerships with J.P. Morgan Payments, global funds network Calastone, and French IT services and consulting firm Capgemini. The company’s customers include fellow Finovate alums eToro and Marqeta.

Founded in 1994, AutoRek is headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. Gordon McHarg is CEO.

Photo by Richard Harris

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Glia Unveils Unified Interactions Index Online Calculator

Glia Unveils Unified Interactions Index Online Calculator
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Glia
  • Customer interaction technology company Glia launched its Unified Interactions Index Online Calculator this week.
  • The new offering is based on the company’s Unified Interactions Index, and enables financial services companies to benchmark the quality of their customer interactions against that of their peers.
  • A multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Glia most recently demoed its technology at Finovate’s all-digital conference in 2021.

Leave it to customer interaction technology innovator Glia to take the idea of “Knowing Your Customer” to another level.

This week, Glia unveiled its Unified Interactions Index Online Calculator. Based on the company’s Unified Interactions Index, the new tool enables financial services companies to benchmark themselves against more than 500 peer companies in terms of the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall experience in customer interactions.

“Customer interactions are the new litmus test for loyalty, but until now financial institutions haven’t had an accessible way to compare their interaction strategy with peers and relate it to tangible KPIs,” Glia Co-Founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said.

Glia’s calculator gives financial institutions apples-to-apples benchmarking data on how they compare against peers and competitors. From the answers to 14 questions, the calculator provides a score that categorizes respondents into one of three areas –front runner, pacer, or straggler — based on the efficiency, effectiveness, and experience of their customer interaction strategy. With this information, Glia provides customer recommendations to help the institution improve its interaction strategy, and improve business results based on their own unique circumstances.

“Our calculator offers a quick, simple way to evaluate where an institution stands and then provides actionable steps on easy areas of improvement,” Michaeli added. “This ultimately helps deliver the information and tools necessary to modernize and enhance customer interactions and drive successful business outcomes.”

Headquartered in New York, Glia made its Finovate debut (as SaleMove) at FinovateFall in 2015, earning its first of several Best of Show awards. Most recently, the company demoed its technology before Finovate audiences at our all-digital conference in the spring of 2021. Today, Glia has partnered with more than 500 banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions around the world to help them improve the customer experience, boost loyalty, and drive revenues. The Glia Interaction Platform unifies voice, digital customer service, and AI in an architecture that eliminates data siloes and enables companies to shift traffic between channels, enabling customer interactions to evolve naturally.

The launch of Glia’s new offering follows the introduction of the company’s ChannelLess AI-powered Interactions for Financial Services experience. This platform, in the words of Glia Chief Product Officer Jay Choi, combines a best-in-class virtual assistant, back-end AI tools, and a data analysis solution for managers to help them “find new ways to drive efficiency, performance, and increase the value delivered by the contact center.”

Photo by Yan Krukau

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Plaid Introduces Pay-by-Bank for Billpay

Plaid Introduces Pay-by-Bank for Billpay
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Plaid
  • Plaid has launched a pay-by-bank tool for bill payments in the U.S., allowing consumers to securely pay bills directly from their bank account without manually entering their account details.
  • The tool provides offers billers cost savings and lower risk with fewer returned payments through its risk engine, Signal.
  • Plaid’s pay-by-bank tool is already being used across industries like telecommunications and property management, integrating seamlessly with existing payment processors like Adyen, Nuvei, and Checkout.

Pay-by-bank is back in the news cycle today– this time in the United States. Fintech infrastructure player Plaid unveiled a pay-by-bank tool for billpay.

The new tool, which is powered by Plaid’s network, provides businesses with a lower cost, more secure option for consumers to pay bills directly from their bank account with less friction. Because it leverages Plaid’s bank network, the new pay-by-bank tool does not require consumers to find their checkbook, manually enter their account and routing numbers, and wait for verification. Instead, the solution, which is embedded into a biller’s existing payments flow, connects to consumers’ accounts by securely entering their bank login credentials.

“Plaid provides both market-leading authentication through online banking and traditional account and routing number validation in the background,” the company explained in a blog post. “There’s no need to stitch together multiple vendors, so no matter how the user prefers to pay with their bank account, Plaid’s end-to-end Pay by Bank solution can securely accept it. Plaid Pay by Bank is available across all channels: online, in-app, in-store, and hosted contact center solutions.”

Plaid’s pay-by-bank is available as an all-in-one solution that includes processing, or it can be integrated with a biller’s existing payment processor such as Adyen, Nuvei, Checkout, and others.

Pay-by-bank offers two major benefits to billers. The first is cost savings. Plaid estimates that payments made directly from the consumer’s bank account offer a 40% lower processing cost when compared to credit card payments. The second benefit is lower risk. Plaid’s risk assessment results in fewer returns for recurring payments.

To decrease the risk of returned payments, Plaid leverages Signal, its risk engine that uses machine-learning-driven network insights that mitigate failed payments, connecting to closed accounts, or accounts with insufficient funds. Signal offers a feature called Smart Retries that provides guidance on when to retry failed payments. Plaid reports that this decreases non sufficient funds (NSFs) on first payments by up to 80%.

Plaid’s pay-by-bank tool is already in use with a handful of customers across telecommunications, property management, insurance, automotive, and other industries. One such company, a digital rent payment business Domuso, has integrated Plaid’s new bill pay experience into its existing payments platform.

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Alloy Helps Commercial Lenders, Embedded Finance Providers Fight Fraud

Alloy Helps Commercial Lenders, Embedded Finance Providers Fight Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alloy, Alumni News, Daily news

Back before regtech was cool, a Brooklyn, New York-based company called Alloy was introducing Finovate audiences and others to its technology that enables banks and other financial institutions to build fully-customizable APIs for customer identification and compliance. Even more, the company demonstrated how its graphical rules engine implements compliance rules in a way that actually optimizes conversions and coverage. Alloy’s technology empowers companies to choose which data sources are used and how they are applied. This lets companies decide how to customize and optimize this aspect of their own onboarding processes.

We first met Alloy in 2016, when the company demoed its technology at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley. In the years since then, Alloy has grown into an end-to-end identity risk management platform with more than 600 banks, credit unions, and fintechs using its technology to manage fraud, credit, and compliance risks. The company has raised more than $207 million in funding according to Crunchbase. Glia most recently secured an investment of $52 million in follow-on Series C funding in September 2022 from Avenir, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and other investors.

Alloy was founded in 2015 by Tommy Nicholas (CEO), Laura Spiekerman (President), and Charles Hearn (CTO) who met while working at a payments startup. In their mission statement they note that, in the company’s early days, they faced skepticism from investors, but were heartened by client feedback, which they said was “overwhelmingly positive” and inspired the founding trio to forge ahead.

These days, more and more companies are getting the message. In the past few days, Alloy announced partnerships with commercial lending platform Numerated and embedded finance and payment solutions provider Sonovate.

Alloy’s strategic partnership with Numerated will enable the latter’s customers to conduct robust fraud checks seamlessly from within their own lending operations. The partnership will bring streamlined onboarding, enhanced fraud prevention, and a unified digital experience to Numerated’s platform. This will help Numerated’s customers capture deposits and offer competitive lending products to their SME and commercial borrowers.

“Fraud prevention and lending automation are crucial in today’s financial landscape,” Numerated CEO Dan O’Malley said. “By partnering with Alloy, we are ensuring that our platform not only meets but exceeds the expectations of financial institutions looking for secure, scalable lending solutions. This partnership allows us to deliver the best of both worlds — top-tier risk management combined with the efficiency and speed of automation.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Numerated leverages advanced data and AI to help companies automate their business lending operations — from application to closing. With 500,000+ businesses and 30,000+ lenders among its customers, Numerated processes $400 million in loan volume every hour and, since inception, has processed more than $50 billion in loans on its platform.

With Sonovate, Alloy’s identity risk technology will be deployed to help the company combat rising fraud trends in the U.K. as it seeks to scale its operations. In a statement announcing the partnership, the companies noted a report from UK Finance that underscored the challenge of more sophisticated, AI-powered tools that fraudsters are using against financial institutions. The report discovered that $1.5 billion (£1.17 billion) was lost to financial criminals in 2023 alone.

“With its network of data sources, Alloy gives us the power to protect our business and customers from financial crime and the flexibility to make adjustments as needed as our business scales,” Sonovate Global Head of Risk and Compliance Tom Wilson said. “We are excited for this next step in our global growth.”

U.K.-based Sonovate serves recruitment businesses, consultancies, and labor marketplaces with embedded finance and payment solutions for their workforces. Sonovate provides swift credit decisioning, same-day funding, credit insurance, collection services, and both timesheet and workflow automation. Founded in 2014, the company has funded nearly $8 billion in invoices, supporting 3,300 businesses and 50,000 workers in 44 countries.

In addition to its partnerships with fintechs, Alloy announced last month that it was working with Meridian Credit Union, to help Canada’s second largest credit union enhance its user experience and reduce fraud risk for its 380,000+ members. Also this year, Alloy published its 2024 State of Embedded Finance report which examines trends in embedded finance risk management and compliance.

Photo by Soloman Soh

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Chimney Joins the Jack Henry Digital Banking Platform

Chimney Joins the Jack Henry Digital Banking Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Chimney, Daily news, Jack Henry
  • Property data innovator Chimney announced a new collaboration with digital banking solutions provider Jack Henry.
  • The collaboration will make Chimney’s product suite available on Jack Henry’s digital banking platform.
  • Chimney won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. Previously known as Signal Intent, the company also won Best of Show at our online FinovateSpring conference in 2021.

A collaboration between property data innovator Chimney and Jack Henry will help financial institutions empower their homeowners with actionable advice about their home value, home equity, borrowing power, and more. That’s because Chimney has made its product suite, including its latest offering Chimney Home, available via Jack Henry’s digital banking platform.

Chimney’s embedded financial tools enable banks and other financial institutions to engage more account holders digitally, generate more deposits, and fund more loans by leveraging intelligent recommendations to guide customers to the products that are most appropriate for them. Chimney Home, the company’s latest product, gives homeowners actionable information about the value of their home, potential borrowing power, and the availability of pre-qualified offers — all embedded within the bank’s digital channels.

“For many years, financial institutions have lacked the resources needed to personalize product recommendations for homeowners,” Chimney Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Covi said. “At the same time, getting approved for a home equity loan is a big feat, sometimes taking months and causing frustrations for many consumers. That’s why we created Chimney Home.”

Among the financial institutions currently using Chimney’s tools via Jack Henry’s digital banking platform is Financial Plus Credit Union. The technology will help the institution better serve members who are homeowners with the data they need to maximize their home’s value and equity. Chimney’s offering also replaces the credit union’s previous, more cumbersome cross-departmental strategy in favor of an omni-channel approach that makes access easier for homeowners and the process more efficient for the credit union’s mortgage services team.

“By combining financial health data and blending it with a homeowner’s property data, we’re empowering financial institutions to make more personalized loan recommendations in the fiercely competitive home equity space and allow account holders to take action on those recommendations right within their digital banking app,” Covi said.

Chimney won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. Previously known as Signal Intent, the company won Best of Show in its debut at our online FinovateSpring conference in 2021. Headquartered in New York, the company announced this spring that it had topped the 30 bank-client milestone.

Jack Henry first demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2010. Today, the Monett, Missouri-based company provides banks and credit unions with an ecosystem of modern technology solutions developed internally as well as the ability to integrate with leading fintechs. Founded in 1976, Jack Henry is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker JKHY. The company has a market capitalization of $13 billion.

Photo by Pixabay

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TrueLayer Lands $50 Million to Grow Pay-by-Bank

TrueLayer Lands $50 Million to Grow Pay-by-Bank
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • TrueLayer secured an additional $50 million in funding, bringing its Series E round total to $180 million.
  • TrueLayer’s valuation has dropped to $700 million from its peak of $1 billion in 2021.
  • Despite the downround, TrueLayer remains optimistic about its future, stating its intentions to work toward profitability.

Open banking platform TrueLayer is proving that it is not just AI companies that are receiving VC investor attention. The London-based company recently received a $50 million extension of its $130 million Series E round.

Today’s follow-on round was led by existing investor Northzone with contributions from Tencent Holdings, Tiger Global, Temasek Holdings, and Stripe. According to Bloomberg, the recent round reportedly values TrueLayer at $700 million, which is notably lower than the $1 billion valuation the company received during its 2021 Series E round.

Despite TrueLayer’s recent raise being a downround—reflecting a valuation drop of $300 million—this trend has been common across the fintech sector in recent years. TrueLayer remains optimistic, viewing the new funding as a vote of confidence in its future growth and ability to achieve profitability. “Separately to this fundraise, we have taken important steps to chart our path toward profitability. This funding is yet another vote of confidence in our company, our technology,” said TrueLayer CEO Francesco Simoneschi.

Founded in 2016, TrueLayer offers an open banking payments network that processes $40 billion across 120 million transactions annually. The company has 10 million users located among 21 European countries. In addition to its payments and payouts products, TrueLayer also offers Signup+, a streamlined onboarding tool, and VRP, its variable recurring payments tool.

TrueLayer appointed its first Chief Strategy Officer, Lisa Scott, earlier this year. The company has raised a total of $321 million. Francesco Simoneschi is Co-founder and CEO.

TrueLayer, which counts Revolut, Coinbase, and Robinhood among its clients, is well-known for facilitating pay-by-bank transactions. Pay-by-bank has seen increased interest among merchants, as they have multiple benefits in comparison to credit card payments. The benefits include fewer fees, faster settlement, and reduced chargebacks. While there has been some movement in pay-by-bank usage in the U.S., pay-by-bank has seen more growth in Europe where open banking is regulated and consumers don’t rely on credit cards as much.

Photo by Michael Kessel

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Tyfone Teams Up with FinGoal to Help Banks Personalize their Products

Tyfone Teams Up with FinGoal to Help Banks Personalize their Products
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FinGoal, Tyfone
  • Tyfone has partnered with FinGoal to deliver personalized banking solutions.
  • Tyfone will leverage FinGoal’s Insight Platform to help its clients transform transaction data into detailed personas and next-best actions for users.
  • FinGoal’s Next Best Actions has already been adopted by a portion of Tyfone’s clients, and more plan to join soon.

Digital banking solutions provider Tyfone has teamed up with FinGoal this week to help banks deliver personalized products and tools to account holders.

Tyfone will leverage FinGoal’s Insight Platform that turns transaction data into detailed personas and offers next-best actions for each account holder. Specifically, Tyfone clients will have greater access to FinGoal’s Next Best Actions, a tool that increases conversion rates, lifetime value, and engagement. Currently, a portion of Tyfone’s client base is already using Next Best Actions, and more plan to join soon.

Showcased at FinovateSpring 2023, FinGoal’s Next Best Actions can help increase conversion rates, lifetime value, and engagement across digital banking solutions by leveraging digital banking and personal financial data. With that data, FinGoal’s clients can better understand users and provide actionable insights.

“Today’s account holders want more than just banking—they’re looking for personalized insights and a seamless experience that helps them make better financial decisions,” said Tyfone Director of Strategic Partnerships Jared Kopelman. “By integrating FinGoal into our platform, we’re equipping our clients with powerful tools like transaction cleansing and categorization and clear merchant logos. This partnership empowers financial institutions to deliver a more intuitive and tailored experience that helps institutions better understand its customers and deepen relationships.”

Tyfone was founded in 2004 and provides digital banking and payment solutions. The Oregon-based company’s digital banking solution, nFinia, is an enterprise solution that allows CFIs to deliver a hyper-personalized digital banking experience to both retail and commercial customers. The configurable solution offers more than 300 financial functions and provides an open ecosystem with direct integrations with more than 160 players.

Headquartered in Colorado, FinGoal was founded in 2018. In addition to its personalized offers technology, the company offers transaction enrichment and account aggregation and verification tools.

“The better an institution knows its users, the better it can serve those users,” said FinGoal CEO David Nohe. “Tyfone is known for its modern and sophisticated banking solution, and this partnership gives banks and credit unions a modern platform with actionable insights to power better engagement. FinGoal will arm our joint clients with data analytics and enhanced user experience.”

Photo by Jopwell

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Hastings Direct Loans Partners with IDVerse

Hastings Direct Loans Partners with IDVerse
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, IDVerse
  • Identity verification solution and infrastructure company IDVerse announced a partnership with Hastings Direct Loans.
  • The U.K.-based lender will leverage IDVerse’s technology to enhance the accuracy and reliability of its identity verification process.
  • IDVerse, as OCR Labs, won Best of Show at FinovateAsia in 2017. The company rebranded to IDVerse in 2023.

Hastings Direct Loans is working with IDVerse to further automate the customer journey by adding IDVerse’s identity tools to its offering. The lender will put IDVerse’s identity tools to work to boost the accuracy and reliability of its identity verification process.

Calling IDVerse’s technology a “perfect match,” Hastings Direct Loans Head of Digital, IT and Change, Sam Kerr added, “Hastings prides itself on giving our customers a fair, easy to understand loan process by implementing innovative technology solutions into our stack, which also enable our ambitious growth plans. The API approach from IDVerse has allowed us to ingest more data to further insights in our decision process leading to better outcomes for our customers and business.”

IDVerse’s tools and infrastructure empower businesses to verify identities within seconds using only their face and smartphone. IDVerse’s identity verification technology covers more than 16,000 identity documents, and works with more than 140 different languages and typesets to produce face matching accuracy of 99.998%. Equipped with Zero Bias AI Tested technology, IDVerse enables businesses to verify a wider range of identities, ensuring greater accessibility, for example with those with disabilities.

Additionally, the technology leverages light refraction analysis to determine liveness, removing the need for users to turn or move uncomfortably or endure unnatural lighting in order to establish their identity. Zero Bias AI also means normalizing user photos to account for individuals that may not have the most modern smartphone camera technology or high-speed data connection. In addition to integrating and testing within a month, Hastings Direct Loans noted that it had experienced a 4x ROI within a month of launch based on the amount of fraud the company has caught.

IDVerse Commercial Director Adam Desmond complimented the Hastings team for its eagerness to embrace enabling technologies. “They understand the need for fintechs to use the latest technology and data to drive improved outcomes in customer experience – which led to better business outcomes. Being able to exchange information at speed during the integration has allowed us to show the true value of the tech (in) near instant time.”

Headquartered in the U.K., Hastings Direct Loans has offered personal loans to consumers for more than three years. To date, the firm has financed nearly $655 million (£500 million) for more than 50,000 customers, and currently processes more than $39 billion (£30 billion) worth of loan quotes per month. Hastings Direct Loans is part of the Hastings Group, a U.K.-based digital insurance provider with more than 3.1 million live customers policies.

Founded as OCR Labs, the company won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateAsia 2017 in Hong Kong. The firm rebranded as IDVerse in May 2023. More recently, the company has forged partnerships with data and compliance infrastructure company Prembly, age and identity verification solutions provider Veratad Technologies, and identity verification and fraud prevention specialist TrustID.

Last month, IDVerse announced the beta launch of its real-time face matching solution, Face Access, that offers 99.998% accuracy and instant, secure user authentication. Face Access features both Zero Bias AI and the company’s Deepfake Defender protection, which provides 100% liveness video fraud assessment with ISO 30107-3 compliance for presentation attack detection (PAD).

IDVerse has raised $45 million in funding according to Crunchbase, and includes Equable Capital and OYAK among its investors. The company is headquartered in London. John Myers is CEO.

Photo by Yoss Traore

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Fidelity Investments Closes $250 Million Venture Capital Fund 

Fidelity Investments Closes $250 Million Venture Capital Fund 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Fidelity, Funding
  • Fidelity Investments has launched its first dedicated venture capital fund, Venture Capital Fund I.
  • The $250 million Fund I targets mid-to-late stage companies in technology, media, and telecommunications sectors.
  • The new fund marks a shift from Fidelity’s traditional private market investing, allowing the firm to make direct minority investments and cater to high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and registered investment advisers.

Fidelity Investments recently closed its Venture Capital Fund I LP, or what it is calling Fund I. The $250 million fund– which received support from investors including high net-worth individuals, family offices, and registered investment advisers– held its final closing on September 30.

Fidelity has been investing in private companies for over 15 years, having backed Twilio, Stripe, and even SpaceX. During its decade-and-a-half of investing, Fidelity has deployed over $28 billion across 600 investments in 350 private companies. Historically, the firm has focused on high-growth category disruptors, leveraging its mutual funds to back private companies with notable competitive advantages.

Fidelity Investments Portfolio Manager and Global Head of Private Equity Karin Fronczke emphasized how the launch of the new fund strengthens Fidelity’s already robust track record of investing in private companies. “The success of this fundraise speaks to Fidelity’s legacy investing in private companies. We are grateful for the support from the fund’s limited partners,” she said.

The firm’s introduction of Fund I, however, marks a significant departure from its traditional approach, carving out a more defined venture capital strategy. With Fund I, Fidelity has a dedicated vehicle for direct minority investments and will target mid-to-late stage companies in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors.

Additionally, the new fund will help Fidelity meet the growing demand from high net-worth individuals, family offices, and registered investment advisers who want more diversification in private market investments. Fidelity’s Fund I is a notable shift towards a specialized venture capital structure that can cater to investors seeking access to high-growth private companies and diversification beyond traditional public markets.

Fund I is already in motion, having invested $31 million in 10 companies spanning industries including aerospace, defense, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce.

Fidelity, which already manages 50 alternative funds, recently launched liquid alternatives ETFs and mutual funds. The firm currently counts $27.8 billion in assets under management in alternatives and $80 billion in alternative investment assets under administration.

This announcement comes at an interesting time for the fintech venture capital funding environment, which is experiencing a notable drought. As Finovate Research Analyst David Penn noted on the blog earlier this week, “According to market intelligence platform Tracxn, funding for U.S.-based tech companies in Q3 of this year fell, both in comparison to the previous quarter as well as when compared to Q3 2023. Tracxn also reported that the number of tech unicorns actually increased this year compared to last year, with 13 new unicorns acknowledged in Q3 2024 compared to just five in Q3 2023.”

However, Fidelity’s optimism in launching a new fund may signal a turning point in the fintech funding landscape. This shift could push more traditional asset managers to create similar venture capital funds, pushing more capital into later-stage fintech firms, a group which has been ignored by investors over the past few years.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

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FIS Launches Digital Trading Storefront to Upgrade the Trading Experience

FIS Launches Digital Trading Storefront to Upgrade the Trading Experience
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FIS
  • FIS has launched its Digital Trading Storefront, enabling banks, brokers, and fund managers to offer a customizable digital trading experience with real-time execution and enhanced personalization.
  • The new Digital Trading Storefront is built on FIS’s Cross-Asset Trading and Risk Platform.
  • The new tool supports both buy-side and sell-side strategies while helping firms manage trading volumes and mitigate regulatory compliance risks.

Payment, banking, and investment systems provider FIS unveiled its Digital Trading Storefront today. The new tool enables banks, brokers, market makers, and fund managers to offer their customers a new digital trading experience.

The new Digital Trading Storefront builds upon FIS’ existing Cross-Asset Trading and Risk Platform. Formerly known as Front Arena, FIS Cross-Asset Trading and Risk Platform helps firms enter new markets quickly and support strategies for both the buy side and sell side. FIS’ Digital Trading Storefront enhances this by offering a suite of digital tools that allow for personalization and real-time trade execution.

Firms can customize their Digital Trading Storefront by integrating their own front or back-end components, and tailoring the design and customer experience to suit their brand. The platform facilitates more accessible trading in real-time, while helping mitigate regulatory compliance risk with APIs. When firms move their cross-asset trading platforms into the digital platform, they are better able to manage trading volumes at scale.

“Providing a competitive digital trading experience has become crucial for financial institutions who want to help customers be smarter when putting their money to work,” said FIS President, Capital Markets Nasser Khodri. “With this launch, FIS is unlocking financial technology that enables banks, broker dealers and wealth managers worldwide to deliver more modern experiences to their customers when their money is at work.”

FIS was founded in 1968. Headquartered in Florida, the firm offers a wide range of products and tools for its 15,000 clients across the globe, processing $50 trillion annually. In addition to wealth management tools, FIS also offers payment capabilities, risk management tools, customer communications products, and more.

In recent months, FIS has expanded its reach in the fintech and banking sectors through new offerings and partnerships. In July, FIS teamed up with Lendio, a fintech known for its lending technology, to launch a new SMB Digital Lending solution to support SMBs in need of financing. In August, Commerce Bank selected FIS to implement a loyalty program management platform.

Photo by Pixabay

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Cardlay Teams Up with Visa to Enhance Spend Management

Cardlay Teams Up with Visa to Enhance Spend Management
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Cardlay Payment Solutions, Daily news, VISA
  • Cardlay Payments Solutions has inked a partnership with Visa.
  • The collaboration combines Cardlay’s spend management technology with Visa’s payment network, data capabilities, and market position to drive innovation in spend management for commercial card issuers and their customers.
  • Headquartered in Denmark, Cardlay made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring.

Danish fintech Cardlay is collaborating with digital payments leader Visa to power innovations in the spend management space for commercial card issuers and their clients. The two companies’ new referral relationship combines Cardlay’s white label spend management platform with Visa’s market position, payment network, and data capabilities to provide fully embedded commercial cards and spend management solutions to their clients.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Visa, a highly respected leader in the digital payments industry,”  Cardlay CEO Jørgen Christian Juul said. “To be able to fuel our product and commercial growth further together with Visa is great and the collaboration will help bring our vision to life: delivering fast and effortless spend management to commercial card issuers.”

Cardlay leverages the integration of virtual and plastic payment cards, card management, and expense management (including automated VAT reclaim) to help companies automate key business processes. A strategic partner to banks, fintechs, card issuers and processors, as well as other financial institutions, Cardlay also runs its own virtual card program to complement its software suite.

Cardlay’s technology enables commercial card issuers to enjoy a fast time-to-market and ROI, as well as benefit from data capabilities such as real-time virtual credit cards and Visa’s Fleet 2.0 data. These capabilities provide greater efficiency via access to data and insights, facilitate cost reduction, and help support sustainable transportation and mobility budgets.

“We’re delighted to have partnered up with Cardlay and look forward to our work together, helping to streamline financial operations for businesses, providing them with greater transparency and control over their spending,” said Helen Jones, Executive Director, Visa Commercial Solutions, Visa Europe.

Headquartered in Denmark and founded in 2020, Cardlay Payment Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year. At the conference, the company demoed its bank-integrated, real-time expense management solution, Cardlay Expense. More than 500 companies and 5,000+ users in 10 markets around the world are taking advantage of the technology to simplify and streamline the spend management process.

Cardlay has raised more than $29 million in funding according to Crunchbase. The company’s investors include Global PayTech Ventures and SEB Venture Capital.

Photo by Stefan Grage

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Indeed Flex Taps Branch to Offer Same-Day Payouts

Indeed Flex Taps Branch to Offer Same-Day Payouts
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Indeed Flex has partnered with Branch to offer temp workers same-day payouts.
  • Temp workers on the Indeed Flex platform can access up to 50% of their earnings within one hour of finishing their shifts.
  • Integrating Branch Direct, Indeed Flex can give workers the option to receive their pay either through direct deposit for a small fee or into the Branch digital wallet for free.

Temporary staffing platform Indeed Flex has teamed up with Branch, a workforce payments platform that provides flexible options for businesses to pay their workers. Indeed Flex will use Branch to pay its temp workers in the same day of completing their shift.

Indeed Flex offers job seekers in a range of industries– including industrial, hospitality, facilities management, and retail– to choose from a wide range of jobs and schedules to fit their needs and gather experience to build their career. The company provides flexible work solutions with temporary, temp-to-permanent, and long-term opportunities.

“At Indeed Flex, flexibility is at the heart of everything we do, and we’re excited to enhance that commitment through our partnership with Branch,” Indeed Flex Founder and CEO Novo Constare. “By enabling Flexers to access their pay as quickly and easily as they can pick up shifts, we’re reinforcing our core value of providing both work and financial flexibility that adapts to their unique needs.”

By integrating Branch’s fast payout tool, Branch Direct, into its payouts, Indeed Flex can now offer temp workers access to up to 50% of their earnings within one hour of completing their shift. With Branch Direct, workers can quickly receive a predetermined percentage of their earnings into their existing bank account for a small fee after linking their debit card. Alternatively, the employee could receive the funds into their Branch digital wallet for free.

“Branch is excited to collaborate with Indeed Flex and support their mission of empowering the flexible workforce with greater choice,” said Branch Founder and CEO Atif Siddiqi. “The Branch platform and app are designed to meet the unique needs of both temporary staffing firms and contingent workers. We’re proud to offer an end-to-end solution that allows Indeed Flex to enhance workers’ financial stability and overall work experience with even more speed, ease, and convenience.”

Branch, which provides banking services via its partner Evolve Bank and Trust, was founded in 2015. The Minnesota-based company offers businesses a range of payout options that suit their needs– from easy-to-launch payment solutions to fully customized, branded experiences.

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

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