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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Digital investment platform Scalable Capitallaunched a crypto offering this week called Scalable Crypto. The new tool, which Scalable Capital is launching in partnership with Europe’s largest digital asset investment company CoinShares, helps users invest in cryptocurrencies.
Scalable Crypto will help everyday investors participate in crypto markets by offering access to crypto investments via regulated stock exchanges in Germany. The new tool will integrate with the company’s existing wealth management and broker offerings, and will hold cryptocurrencies in secured, cold wallets at regulated custodians.
“We make trading crypto as easy as trading shares or ETFs,” said Scalable Capital Co-founder and CEO Erik Podzuweit. “Crypto currencies are well established as an asset class in a balanced portfolio. With ‘Scalable Crypto’, we are providing an affordable and intuitive offering to help even more people to enter the crypto world. The expansion is the next stage in our journey to become Europe’s leading digital investment platform.”
Scalable Capital is making it easy for crypto-novices to experiment with digital currencies. Users trade on the Xetra and gettex exchanges and do not need to open a separate wallet to do so. Instead, cryptocurrencies are held in the form of securities in the customer’s existing account. Additionally, Scalable Capital takes care of the tax details for crypto securities.
Founded in Germany in 2014, Scalable Capital was launched during the roboadvisor craze and now has more than $6.8 billion (€6 billion) under management on its platform. Today, the company offers both B2C and B2B tools. The company provides private individuals digital wealth management, a broker with a flat rate, and overnight and time deposit offers. For B2B clients, Scalable Capital develops solutions for digital investment. Some of the company’s current clients include ING, Barclays, and Santander.
Scalable Capital, which demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2016, has 330 employees across its offices in Munich, Berlin, and London. Earlier this year, the company landed $180 million in new funding, bringing its total to more than $317 million. Scalable Capital has an estimated valuation of $1.4 billion.
A partnership between cloud-based digital banking solution provider Alkami Technology and Idaho Central Credit Union will enable ICCU members to buy and sell bitcoin within their mobile apps and on the credit union’s online banking platform. Bitcoin services are provided by cryptocurrency technology company NYDIG with Alkami’s platform facilitating the deployment.
Claiming the mantle of both the fastest growing credit union in the state, as well as one of the best performing credit unions in the country, ICCU Chief Information Officer Mark Willden said that adding new services such as bitcoin investing are key to ensuring that the credit union maintains its “momentum” and “deliver(s) additional value.” He added, “Fully integrated bitcoin services through NYDIG and the Alkami Platform take us to the next level when it comes to the member experience.”
Idaho Central Credit Union was founded in 1940 and serves more than 480,000 members throughout the state. With 1,600+ employees, ICCU has more than $8 billion in assets.
NYDIG works with Alkami to allow financial institutions to offer their customers and members bitcoin services in a secure and compliant way. NYDIG joined Alkami’s Gold Partner Program over the summer, making it easier for financial institutions to add bitcoin products and services to their offerings and provide them to their customers and members under their own brand.
“The demand for and utilization of digital currencies have expanded exponentially in recent months, leaving many FIs struggling to keep pace and retain these deposit streams within their institution,” Alkami Chief Strategy & Sales Officer Stephen Bohanon said. “Alkami’s partnershp with NYDIG further supports our mission to enable FIs to compete directly against the megabanks and challenger banks to capture this valuable market.”
A Finovate alum since 2009, making its Finovate debut as iThryv, Alkami has grown into a leading cloud-based digital banking solution provider with more than 280 financial institution customers. The company went public this spring, earning a market capitalization of $3.4 billion in its debut on the NASDAQ. Trading under the ticker ALKT.O, the Plano, Texas-based firm raised $180 million in its IPO.
Since its public listing, Alkami has forged a number of partnerships with financial institutions including STAR Bank in November and MainStreet Bank in October. Also this fall, the company announced its acquisition of digital account opening and loan origination provider MK Decision and introduced its new Chief Executive Officer Alex Shootman, formerly the CEO of Workfront. Alkami Board of Directors Chairperson Brian R. Smith said Shootman’s experience in “growing and scaling enterprise software companies” was “essential at this stage of Alkami.”
Today’s announcement from Idaho Central CU comes as NYDIG reports a massive $1 billion growth equity round that gives the company a valuation of $7 billion. The round was led by WestCap and featured participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, FinTech Collective, Affirm, FIS, Fiserv, MassMutual, Morgan Stanley, and New York Life.
The New York-based company now has a total capital of $1.4 billion. The new investment will help NYDIG further develop its platform, taking advantage of recent changes to the bitcoin protocol to introduce functionalities such as bitcoin and lightning payments, asset tokenization, and smart contracts. The company will also use the new funding to add talent to its team worldwide.
“Our roster of partnerships and strategic investors lays the foundation for NYDIG to become the leading provider of Bitcoin solutions for businesses in any industry,” NYDIG co-founder and CEO Robert Gutmann said. “(This) new equity capital will further accelerate progress towards making this exciting network accessible – and useful – to all.”
One month after introducing its next generation development application platform, OutSystems has announced that it is entering a strategic partnership with fellow Finovate alum ieDigital. The alliance will enable ieDigital’s financial services company partners – ranging from bank to mortgage lenders – to access a suite of pre-built, low-code applications that support a variety of operations including originations, self-servicing, retention, and collections.
The goal of the new relationship is to give financial service providers new resources that will help accelerate growth, become more cost-efficient, and better manage risk. The partnership also allows for additional functionalities to be added as part of broader, future digital transformation efforts. One example of this would be enabling companies to analyze data collected during the completion of online applications for a new financial product or service.
“By pioneering the low-code market and having a vision to transform how enterprise software is delivered,” ieDigital Commercial Director Garry Larner said, “the OutSystems platform perfectly complements our existing product-offering. We look forward to working alongside them to continue delivering market-leading financial technology that makes a real impact to all that use it.”
ieDigital noted that the partnership will leverage and further build upon the Interact Application Suite, an approach ieDigital used in a previous collaboration with Cambridge & Counties Bank to help the firm combat financial crime. The result was a more streamlined customer onboarding process, enhanced automation for both middle and back office workers, and better capacity and knowledge to support the development of applications going forward – including an option for Cambridge & Counties Bank to build its own in-house development capability.
Founded in 1984 and headquartered in London, U.K., ieDigital demonstrated its Money Fitness solution at FinovateFall 2018. The technology helps credit unions effectively compete with the wave of competition from “digital-first” providers with a forward-looking personalized service that credit union members can use to better manage their day-to-day finances, make better financial decisions, and improve their overall financial health.
More recently, ieDigital launched its customer retention solution Interact Switch, which is designed to help mortgage lenders retain customers at product offer maturity. The technology enables mortgage lenders to function more efficiently by cutting down on paper-based, mortgage representative, and third-party costs. Also this fall, ieDigital announced a partnership with Darlington Building Society and a collaboration with DF Capital to help the savings and commercial lending bank to launch a new digital interactive channel for its savings customers.
An alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr NewYork 2017, Boston, Massachusetts OutSystems specializes in cloud-native, low-code app development. More than 14 million people currently use OutSystems’s platform to build solutions such as mobile apps and consumer websites, as well as extensions of core systems from Microsoft and Salesforce. The latest platform edition from the company, code named Project Neo, marries the productivity benefits of visual, model-based development with state-of-the-art container- and Kubernetes-based cloud architecture. The technology is hosted on Amazon Web Services to make it easy for any company to build customized, cloud-based apps that scale globally and can be continuously updated.
“Developers should be the artisans of innovation in their organization, but they are mired in complexity that stifles their ability to innovative and differentiate,” OutSystems CEO Paulo Rosado said. “Instead of using their talents to fix, change, and maintain code and aging systems, you can give them industry-leading tools that unleash their creativity on your business, and achieve massive competitive advantage.”
Consumer payment services company Klarna has selected account-to-account (A2A) payments company GoCardless to offer debit bank payments to its U.S. clients.
Specifically, Klarna will use GoCardless’ technology to transfer funds via ACH for its Pay in 4 offering that enables customers to split any purchase into four interest-free payments both online and in-store.
GoCardless CEO and Co-Founder Hiroki Takeuchi said that he anticipates alternative payment methods to experience rapid growth as leveraging debt falls out of favor. “Over the next few years we expect account-to-account payments to challenge the dominance of cards as they tap into changing consumer demand and provide merchants significant benefits in terms of cost, conversion and churn,” Takeuchi said.
Klarna CTO Koen Köppen noted that the U.S. is a key market for Klarna. The company doubled its customer base in the last year, and now has more than 21 million U.S. customers. “To continue along that trajectory,” Köppen noted, “we need partners that not only provide our consumers and retailers more choice and control but also offer us cutting-edge technology and best-in-class service. We’re excited to work with GoCardless and leverage its expertise in account-to-account payments as we expand in the U.S.”
GoCardless, which wonBest Enterprise Payments Solution at the Finovate Awards earlier this year, was founded in 2011. The U.K.-based company’s technology helps merchants collect recurring and one-off payments from customers via ACH transfers. Businesses can integrate GoCardless’ API to automate payment collection and reconciliation billing for subscription and invoice payments. Among GoCardless’ clients are DocuSign, Survey Monkey, and Box.com.
Today’s news about Klarna’s new ACH payment capabilities for U.S. customers is the latest in the company’s recent push into the North American region. Last month, Klarna announced it is adding its Pay Now option to its U.S. payment services. The company also unveiled plans to launch its physical debit card in the U.S. market.
GoCardless entered the U.S. market in 2019 and has since opened two offices in New York City and one in San Francisco. By the end of next year, GoCardless plans to grow its U.S. team by another 125%.
The announcement that global identity verification specialist Trulioo has signed up a sextet of cryptocurrency companies as its latest round of customers is a testament to the growing maturity of startups in the digital asset business. The six firms – Centbee, GMO Trust, Omni Matrix, Skilling, Strike Protocols, and Vintech Capital – will use Trulioo’s GlobalGateway to enable them to meet KYC and AML compliance requirements.
“The pandemic democratized the world of financial services, helping casual or novice investors explore financial trading online,” Trulioo CEO Steve Munford explained. “With cryptocurrencies becoming mainstream, digital asset issuers and exchanges understood the need to bolster their identity verification programs to securely and seamlessly onboard a huge uptick in users while meeting compliance obligations.”
Trulioo’s GlobalGateway gives companies access to more than 400 data sources to confidently and securely verify the identities of more than five billion individuals worldwide via a single API. The platform provides identity verification with real time comprehensive match results, ID document verification using intuitive image capture and automated verification technology, and AML (anti-money laundering) watchlists with extensive international coverage. This coverage includes sanction lists from law enforcement and government regulatory entities such as financial and securities commissions.
The solution also provides Business Verification, which Trulioo demonstrated during its most recent appearance on the Finovate stage last year at FinovateEurope in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, the company demonstrated its GlobalGateway Business Verification technology which provides regulated entities with certainty about their business customers and assures compliance with Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements. Leveraging key company data from government sources in more than 80 countries and from non-government sources in more than 195 countries, GlobalGateway Business Verification automates the complete Know Your Business workflow, enabling companies to verify business entity data, conduct watchlists reviews, and identify and verify a business’ beneficial owners.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Trulioo has raised more than $474 million in funding. The company’s most recent fundraising was a Series D investment in June of this year that added $394 million to the firm’s coffers. The round was led by TCV.
Walgreens is in the fintech headlines again. Today, the drugstore chain and challenger bank Chime have partnered to allow Chime customers to deposit cash at Walgreens’ brick-and-mortar locations.
Customers can deposit their cash for free at 8,500+ Walgreens locations. In its announcement, Chime makes the comparison between Walgreens locations and bank branches, mentioning that the new partnership offers more walk-in locations than users have with any bank in the U.S. Also worth noting is the fact that 78% of Americans live within five miles of a Walgreens store.
“We know having access to a physical location for cash deposits is important to our members, and until recently, the options have been limited,” said Chime Co-founder and CEO Chris Britt.
Chime users can make deposits by handing the Walgreens cashier their cash and their Chime debit card. Once the cashier loads the funds into the user’s account, the money is available immediately. Customers are limited to three $1,000 cash deposits each day and $10,000 each month.
Chime’s Walgreens partnership adds to the company’s existing cash deposit capabilities. Customers can also deposit cash at 75,000+ other retail locations including Walmart, CVS, and 7-Eleven, though these stores charge a loading fee of anywhere from $3 to $5. Partnerships with pervasive retailers such as these are key for Chime, since many of the challenger bank’s users receive earnings and tips in cash.
Today’s news comes as Walgreens itself is entering the alternative banking arena. The company announced earlier this year it is partnering with InComm and Mastercard to launch a new bank account offering with a debit card that will pair with a mobile banking app and in-person service at Walgreens locations.
Chime was founded in 2013 and has since risen to the top of challenger banks in the U.S. The company has 20 million customers and boasts a valuation of $25 billion (though the accuracy of that number has been disputed).
At a time when concerns about illegal immigration have complicated the mostly positive attitude most Americans have toward immigrants in general, it is heartening to see that innovators and entrepreneurs in the fintech space are finding ways to bring vital services to those fleeing often-horrific conditions to find better lives in another land.
One such company is MAJORITY, a U.S.-based, mobile banking service designed specifically to serve the migrant communities in the States.
Founded in 2019, MAJORITY offers a banking app that provides an no-overdraft-fee, FDIC-insured bank account, a debit card with community discounts from local merchants, no-fee remittances, and “at-cost” international calling. The app is available for $5 a month. Company founder and CEO Magnus Larsson said that MAJORITY already has saved its Cuban members $21 a month on average and its Nigerian members $10 a month on average thanks to its “cost-efficient service offerings.”
MAJORITY also offers members the services of its hundreds of local advisors who help onboard and support new customers in their native languages. And while MAJORITY’s banking services are available in all 50 states, the company’s advisors are currently operating only in Texas and Florida.
Larsson explained the utility of the company’s human advisors in a conversation with TechCrunch. He described how a MAJORITY customer could meet up with an advisor outside of a grocery store and, within minutes, have their bank information, a Visa debit card, and the ability to use that grocery store to send money to another country.
“Migrants, by their very definition, are the most ambitious people in the world, striving for success in a new country – but they are lacking the necessary tools,” Larsson said. “Migrant-relevant financial services come with extensive fees that feel overwhelming for all people, but even more intimidating for those trying to navigate an unfamiliar system. At MAJORITY, we seek to remove the uncertainty that comes with international financial services and do our part to better facilitate a world where people are valued on their positive impact, not their country of origin.”
MAJORITY estimates that there are more than 258 million migrants worldwide, with nearly 50 million migrants in the U.S. – who are under-banked, un-banked, or otherwise experiencing “insurmountable barriers” when it comes to financially integrating into their new country. And courtesy of a $27 million investment MAJORITY announced last week, the company now has new resources to help.
“Our mission, as a migrant-led company, has always been to serve the migrant communities with the unique resources they need—financial and otherwise—and this latest funding will help us continue to perfect our services and support this community that is the backbone of America,” Larsson said.
The Series A round was led by Valar Ventures and featured the participation of Avid Ventures, Heartcore Capital, and a number of Nordic fintech founders. MAJORITY now has $46 million in total funding, which includes $19 million in seed funding the company raised earlier this year.
Accompanying its funding news, MAJORITY also announced that it is introducing a new feature that will enable migrants to sign up for a bank account without requiring a social security number. Instead, applicants will be able to use a government ID from any other country and proof of U.S. residency to access MAJORITY’s banking services.
“A bank account is the starting point to so many other things for someone moving to a new country, and American bureaucratic delays and backup shouldn’t prevent people from being able to establish themselves here,” Larsson said. An immigrant himself from Sweden, Larsson is currently waiting for visa approval in order to move from Stockholm to Miami, Florida, to further build out MAJORITY. He also looks forward to being able to grow the company from its current 65+ employees in Sweden and the U.S.
Supply chain finance company Tradeshift has raised more than $200 million in combined equity and debt funding. The San Francisco, California-based firm, which made its Finovate debut in 2012 at FinovateEurope, now has an estimated valuation of $2 billion according to Reuters. Tradeshift CEO and founder Christian Lanng, who did not confirm the valuation with Reuters, did tell the company that the new funding will help Tradeshift “refinance parts of our balance sheet focusing us on long term continued growth.”
The investment featured participation from Koch Industries, IDC Ventures, LUN Partners, Private Shares, and Fuel Capital. According to Crunchbase, the investment gives Tradeshift more than $1 billion in equity funding.
Founded in 2010, Tradeshift has become a leading B2B e-invoicing and accounts payable automation company. With more than 1.5 million companies connected on its platform, Tradeshift has processed more than $1 trillion in cumulative value since inception, a figure that has doubled in two years. The company’s offerings include its B2B marketplace for e-procurement Tradeshift Buy, its automated accounts payable platformTradeshift Pay, a supplier analytics solution Tradeshift Engage, early payment option Tradeshift Cash, and its virtual credit card offering Tradeshift Go.
By hosting all of these features on a single trade technology platform, Tradeshift enables businesses to transition from being “future proof” to “future flexible,” and to scale their operations virtually without limit. An early adherent of the value of embedded technologies, Tradeshift empowers companies to “continually digitize” their supply chain and take advantage of a dynamic, digital network of connected buyers and sellers.
“Embedding financial services directly into our product unclogs the flow of working capital across supply chains, eliminating a significant pressure point in the buyer-suppliers relationship,” Lanng explained. “As one of the first companies to recognize the potential for embedded finance in SaaS, we have been betting on the convergence of Fintech and SaaS products for awhile. We’ve built the technology and distribution channels to capitalize on what is now one of the defining trends in our industry.”
Named to Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2020, Tradeshift launched its cross-border e-invoicing solution last month, reducing friction in cross-border transaction flows for companies doing business in China. In October, the company announced that its Tradeshift Go virtual credit card solution was on track to process $2.5 billion in charge volume in 2021, a 6x increase over 2020. Tradeshift has forged partnerships this year with the Danish Export Credit Agency, trade and supply chain financing platform Raindew Trade, and Qatar-based Gulf Warehousing Company (GWC).
Modern SaaS banking platform Mambu has secured an investment of $266 million (€235 million) in a Series E round led by EQT Growth. The funding, the largest to date for a banking software platform according to Mambu, gives the Berlin, Germany-based company a valuation of $5.5 billion (€4.9 billion).
“This latest round of funding will allow us to accelerate our plans in expanding our mission-critical banking platform to further enable composable business models which are agile and continuously evolving,” Mambu co-founder and CEO Eugene Danilkis said. Additionally, the company will use the new capital to expand its global footprint to support an international customer base that is currently active in 65 countries.
More than 50 million end users rely on Mambu’s technology every day. In Q3 of 2021, Mambu produced year-on-year growth of more than 1.2x. Also this year, the company has signed 40+ customers, with more than 55% of its new customers headquartered outside of Europe. Among the company’s more recent partnerships are its alliance with Capgemini to offer BaaS in the Asia-Pacific region, and its collaboration with Germany-based Raisin Bank, which launched its own BaaS offering using Mambu’s cloud banking platform. Other major deployments included N26, Raiffeisen Bank, and ABN Amro.
Founded in 2011 – and a Finovate alum since 2013 – Mambu most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage this September at FinovateFall. At the event, the company provided a birds-eye view of its SaaS cloud banking platform, showing how users can open an account, create and launch new solutions in minutes, and leverage integrations with Salesforce, Stripe, Marqeta, and others to include KYC, fraud and identity verification, CRM, and other services.
“Our vision in creating Mambu was always to create an industry-leading platform that will enable more than a billion people to have brilliant banking experiences,” Danilkis said in a statement accompanying this week’s funding announcement. “We want to be able to empower our customers to create any financial product anywhere in the world and create amazing customer experiences.”
Every week is a good week to be a Finovate alum. But for those alums that focus on forging partnerships to help credit unions and banks transition from legacy systems to modern, cloud-based environments, the first full week of December so far has been especially productive.
Westmark Credit Union, an Idaho-based financial institution with more than $1 billion in assets, announced yesterday that it will swap out its current core banking system for Jack Henry & Associates‘ Symitar. The credit union cited Symitar’s open and flexible architecture, including the ability to both use the core “as-is” as well as to introduce additional functionalities in the future should they choose to. Symitar will provide Westmark CU with built-in workflows to bring automation – and lower error rates – to key processes.
“Symitar’s workflows and connectivity provide the opportunity to realize significant financial and efficiency gains,” Westmark Chief Information Officer Don West said. “And most importantly, it gives us the optionality we need to integrate with the products and service providers of our choice. With Symitar, we can build the best technology plan for our unique business needs, fueling future growth and keeping a highly competitive pace with the accelerated speed of change in today’s market.”
The transition will also take Westmark from an in-house core banking system to one that leverages a private cloud environment instead. This will enable the credit union to focus less on managing the day-to-day tasks of core maintenance and hardware updates and more on improving their member experience.
Speaking to this point, Jack Henry & Associates VP and President of the company’s Symitar division, Shanon McLachlan noted, “Jack Henry has seen a significant movement from on-premise to the private cloud environment with approximately 30 existing customers a year making the move, and this isn’t limited to any asset size. While this shift continues to be a huge trend, so is the need to have a modern core that enables credit unions to provide their members with the options they need to succeed,” McLachlan said.
Jack Henry & Associates made its first Finovate appearance at FinovateFall in 2010. Headquartered in Monett, Missouri, the company announced a major collaboration with fellow Finovate alum Envestnet | Yodlee last week to enable financial institutions to access consumer-permissioned financial data.
Another major fintech/financial institution partnership announced by our Finovate alums in the first half of this week is the collaboration between Trusted Novus Bank, a Gibraltar-based institution, and banking software company Temenos. As part of a “complete, end-to-end digital transformation,” the bank will trade its legacy core banking and front office systems for Temenos Transact and Temenos Infinity on the Temenos Banking Cloud.
“We want to expand our retail, corporate, and private banking and scale fast to increase our customer base,” Trusted Novus Bank CEO Christian Bjørløw explained in a statement. “With the Temenos Banking Cloud, we can deliver personalized, real-time customer experiences on a scalable platform that will foster innovation and keep the bank at the forefront of technology, and at the same time be true to our vision and values.”
The oldest established bank in Gibraltar, Trusted Novus Bank was reorganized in 2020 with goal of growing its business and enhancing the digital experience for its customers, as well. With its new core and front office system and access to the Temenos Banking Cloud, the bank will be able to build and offer personalized, real-time customer experiences that are customized for its different lines of business. Trusted Novus Bank will also be able to take advantage of straight-through-processing (STP) and automation, enabling its professionals to prioritize value-added, customer-facing services rather than on time-consuming administrative tasks.
“With banking services powered by the Temenos Banking Cloud, Trusted Novus can dramatically reduce costs and turbocharge innovation to deliver outstanding customer experiences,” Temenos President of International Sales Jean-Paul Mergeai said. “Trusted Novus has exciting plans to extend its banking services on our platform, and we will be working closely to ensure rapid time-to-value.”
A Finovate alum since 2013, Temenos operates worldwide and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The company recently announced that it was moving its North American regional headquarters to new offices in Manhattan, New York.
Even though our annual European conference has moved from February to March, FinovateEurope will always be synonymous with wintertime for many of us. So with the coldest season swiftly approaching, now seems as good a time as any to check in on the latest from some of our most recent FinovateEurope alums.
Paris, France-based Thread recently earned recognition at Catapult: Kickstarter 2021 Fall Edition. As one of the event’s five winners, the company is now eligible for up to $56,360 in subsidies. Thread made its FinovateEurope debut earlier this year, demonstrating its technology that makes complex and critical investment workflows more efficient and collaborative. In doing so, Thread aims to help investors make better investment decisions and reap “consistently higher performance.”
“With the acceleration of digital transformation worldwide, many companies have struggled to personalize their customer journeys online,” Surfly CEO Nicholas Piel said in a statement. “Surfly’s Co-browsing has helped ensure that insurers globally do not lose their personal touch with customers.”
Earlier this month we shared news that Strands had teamed up with carbon tracking company Doconomy. The partnership will enable the Barcelona, Spain-based fintech to offer climate impact and insight-driven engagement tools to their customers. Last month, Strands announced that digital financial solution provider Comviva will use Strands’ smart PFM solution to help its bank and financial services clients offer their customers a better digital banking and payments experience.
FinovateEurope 2021 Best of Show winner Quantum Metric was one of our more recent guests as part of our Finovate Webinar series. In partnership with BMO, the company led a webinar on How BMO is reimagining the Commercial Banking digital client experience using real-time analytics. Available for free on-demand for a limited time, the webinar panelists discuss the importance of quantifying the long-term impact of negative user experiences and how to establish a customer-centric mindset via Continuous Product Design (CPD).
Picking up a variety of fintech awards this year, white-label digital banking solution provider Meniga is another company that is leading the way in helping its customers understand and manage their climate impact – as citizens, consumers, and investors. Meniga, which demonstrated its Carbon Insight solution at FinovateEurope this year, announced that its transaction-based carbon footprint calculator had earned independent assurance from global accounting and professional services company EY.
ITSCREDIT was one of five Portuguese fintechs chosen to participate in a program to help provide Portuguese technology companies with the tools they need in order to “gain a foothold in (their) respective U.S. tech ecosystems” and help drive expansion. The landing pad program, Portugal Tech NYC, is sponsored by AICEP Portugal Global and SOSA, and will also feature the participation of Finovate alums ebankIT and LOQR.
ITSCREDIT demonstrated its Genie Advisor at FinovateEurope this year. The technology predicts customers’ financial conditions and provides insights to banking and finance professionals on how to best support customers that may be facing financial challenges.
To start the week, multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner iProov announced that its partnership with Eurostar, the high speed passenger rail service that links the U.K. with mainland Europe, was now live. Eurostar has launched a trial of a new contactless fast-track service, SmartCheck, at London Pancras International. The service lets passengers use their mobile devices to secure ticket verification and U.K. exit check before they travel. Ticket holders of Eurostar’s Business Premier and Carte Blanche programs will be able to use their iPhones to complete a biometric face scan, which uses iProov’s Geniune Presence Technology, for identity verification that is linked to the traveler’s e-ticket.
“The days of rooting around in your bag for your passport or hoping that your phone battery doesn’t run out before you show your e-ticket at the gate are over,” iProof founder and CEO Andrew Bud said, “(SmartCheck) is effortless and convenient while also delivering the reassurance and security that travelers expect.”
Speaking of companies that have won more than a few Finovate Best of Show trophies, Digital Customer Service innovator Glia has been on an epic partner-making pace since its FinovateEurope appearance earlier this year. Customer engagement solution provider Engageware, Connecticut-based Liberty Bank ($7 billion in assets), digital banking solution provider Apiture, and Conversational AI specialist Posh Technologies are just a few of the companies Glia has collaborated with this fall. In November, the company earned a top 250 spot in the Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 for North America.
Stockholm, Sweden-based Dreams, which demoed the savings module of its financial wellbeing platform at FinovateEurope this year, earned recognition at the Banking Tech Awards hosted by Fintech Futures. The company was named “Best Digital Banking Solution Provider.” Learn more about the Best of Show-winning company in our interview with Dreams CCO Lucia Hegenbartova, who sat down with Finovate VP Greg Palmer for an episode of the Finovate podcast over the summer.
CoCoNet Group, a digital banking services provider based in Germany, recently. announced a successful collaboration with Raiffeisen Group. The Swiss banking group leveraged technology from CoCoNet to launch a multibanking solution with integrated cash management and a secure EBICS interface to streamline online banking for corporate customers. CoCoNet made its FinovateEurope debut this March, demonstrating its MULTIVERSA Corporate Customer Onboarding solution.
The company formerly known as Nordic API Gateway has enabled more than 40 financial institutions, and a number of businesses, to integrate financial data and offer A2A (account-to-account payments) via a simple API. Founded in 2017, the company had raised $15 million (€13.5 million) in funding to date.
“For the past decade, we have worked to build Aiia into a leading and quality-driven open banking platform, which has onboarded hundreds of banks and fintechs onto safe and secure open banking rails,” Aiia founder and CEO Rune Mai said. “We have worked closely alongside banks, customers, and local authorities to ensure that our APIs show the true effect of open banking. We’re excited to become a part of Mastercard and progress our journey of empowering people to bring their financial data and accounts into play – safely and transparently.”
FinovateEurope 2022 is right around the corner. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then the time is now and the forum is FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22-23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!
A $60 million investment will enable digital asset compliance and risk management platform TRM Labs to help organizations and institutions better identify cryptocurrency-based financial crime.
“Crypto is moving faster than any sector in our lifetimes,” TRM Labs CEO Estaban Castaño said. “Organizations need a blockchain intelligence partner that can stay ahead of the evolving risk landscape – from ransomware attacks to DeFi exploits. This round enables TRM to continue to offer the most reliable data and most innovative technology solutions in the market to its customers.”
The Series B funding was led by Tiger Global and featured participation from a number of major firms including Visa, Amex Ventures, Citi Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Block (formerly Square), as well as DRW Venture Capital, Jump Capital, and Marshall Wace – among others. Combined with the capital TRM Labs has raised to date, the San Francisco, California-based firm now has total equity funding of nearly $80 million.
TRM offers a cohesive platform to empower businesses to better manage financial crime risk. The company’s technology enables firms to assess the risk profile of Virtual Asset Service Providers – what TRM calls “Know-Your-VASP” – and other cryptocurrency businesses. TRM’s platform provides forensic capabilities that allow organizations to investigate the source and destination of cryptocurrency transactions, and transaction monitoring that helps companies screen cryptocurrency wallets and transactions for AML and sanctions compliance.
TRM supports more than 900,000 digital assets across 23 blockchains, and features cross-chain analytics to enable seamless movement between Bitcoin, Ethereum, other blockchains. This allows organizations to build comprehensive visualizations that enable a more accurate and complete tracking of the flow of funds. Users of TRM’s platform can select from more than 80 different risk categories to establish their own risk scoring criteria.
Founded in 2017 and emerging from the Y Combinator two years later, TRM has since grown revenues by 6x year-over-year and expanded its workforce from four to 60. Cryptocurrency businesses such as Circle and MoonPay currently use TRM’s technology to identify suspicious activity in digital asset transactions and to satisfy AML requirements. Government agencies are using the company’s solutions in order to learn more about advanced cryptocurrency-related financial crime, ranging from hacks to terrorist financing. Last month, cryptocurrency payments company Dash announced an integration with TRM Labs to bolster its ability to monitor transactions on its platform for financial crime.
“By integrating with Dash, we enable organizations, including virtual asset service providers who want to list Dash, the ability to detect cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime and strengthen their compliance with AML/CFT regulations,” Castaño said when the integration was announced in November.
