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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.”
Finxact forged a strategic partnership with KPMG this week.
The alliance will combine KPMG’s design and systems integration capabilities with Finxact’s core bnking platform.
Finxact was acquired by Finovate alum Fiserv this spring.
Finxact, the core banking software company acquired by Fiserv earlier this year, announced a strategic partnership this week. The firm is teaming up with KPMG who will advise and help digitally transform clients on the Finxact platform. David Ortiz, Head of Partnerships at Finxact, explained the role that KPMG will play in helping Finxact clients embrace modernization.
“KPMG understands the way this manifests uniquely for different banking business models,” Ortiz said. “Together we’re combining technology and expert guidance to help our clients adapt and thrive.”
The alliance between Finxact and KPMG will blend the latter’s innovation, digital design, and systems integration capabilities with the former’s next generation core banking platform. The partnership will enable financial institutions to offer more personalized, differentiated customer journeys, accelerate time-to-market for new products, and boost cost efficiencies. FIs will benefit further from the ability to re-invent and expand their business models to better compete, engage new markets, and grow revenues.
“Universal banks, transaction-focused banks, ambient banks and fintechs are each facing unique challenges today that must be addressed with modern infrastructure,” KPMG Financial Services Advisory Principal Scott Huie said. “Whether that challenge is to reach new markets, improve unit economics, or embed finance, we are confident that with KPMG’s guidance and the Finxact platform we can help to enable new and winning digital experiences.”
Finxact was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. The company’s strategic partnership news with KPMG comes a month after it announced that it had agreed to power the new Zenus Global Digital Bank, in collaboration with Microsoft and implementation partner HSO. Also last month, Finxact and Finovate alum PwC announced a partnership that will enable FIs to offer new solutions built and delivered by PwC Banking and Capital Markets (BCM) and enabled on Finxact’s open banking platform.
Business software company Quadient and process automation solutions company Esker have partnered with the French government via a joint subsidiary NCS.
The partnership is designed to help businesses comply with new regulations governing the issuance and receipt of invoices between VAT taxpayers.
Quadient most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2018 in London.
Business software company Quadient and process automation solutions company Esker have announced a new partnership with the French government. Via their joint subsidiary NCS, Quadient and Esker will help ensure that businesses are able to comply with upcoming French tax regulations, specifically with regard to electronic invoice receipt and transmission.
The new legislation applies to invoices exchanged between VAT taxpayers, mandating that these invoices must be transmitted in either a structured data format (UBL, UNCEFACT CII) or hybrid format (Factur-X). Rollout of the new regulations begins in the summer of 2024 and continues through January 1, 2026. At that point all micro, small, and medium-sized businesses will be expected to comply.
“The widespread implementation of electronic invoicing over the next three years is a major challenge for the four million companies in France,” Quadient Chief Strategy and Product Officer for Intelligent Document Automation Nicolas de Beco said. “As a major player in the electronic document management market for small and medium-sized businesses, we look forward to our continued partnership with Esker, in which we join forces and expertise to offer businesses straightforward and efficient invoicing process automation.”
Beyond ensuring compliance with impending regulatory changes, the partnership between Quadient and Esker will bring a variety of benefits to French businesses. The list of complimentary services ranges from centralized workflow management and business process automation to invoice archiving, payment reconciliation, and reporting. The interoperability of these services with other business platforms and solutions will give French companies greater capacity to improve operations, pursue digital transformation, and enhance their cash management.
“As long-standing partners, our two companies have demonstrated their ability to work together to deliver innovative solutions that benefit thousands of businesses in France today,” Esker COO Emmanuel Olivier said.
Headquartered in France and founded in 1992, Quadient most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2018. The company’s partnership news with Esker and the French government comes just weeks after Quadient launched its Parcel Pending smart parcel lockers in Ireland to help modernize the residential property market in the country.
San Francisco, California-based digital bank Varo has added popular money transfer solution Zelle to its mobile banking app.
The integration will bring safe and secure money transfer capabilities to Varo’s more than six million accountholders.
Founded in 2015, Varo Bank is the first neobank to offer Zelle to its customers.
All-digital Varo Bank announced this week that it will offer money transfer solution Zelle in its mobile banking app. Varo is the first financial institution of its kind to offer Zelle in its app without having to partner with a bank. A safe way to send and receive money from friends, family, and trusted small businesses, Zelle has more than 150 million current users who access the technology via their banking apps.
“Adding Zelle to our product lineup is our bank charter in action,” Varo Bank founder and CEO Colin Walsh said. “We are excited to welcome millions of Americans to access Varo’s full range of benefits on our modern, secure, digital banking platform that now includes the ability to quickly send and receive money.”
Customers who have made a qualifying direct deposit in the last 31 days are eligible to enroll in Zelle at Varo. Additionally, those customers that have made any Zelle transaction in their Varo Bank account before November 3, 2022 are grandfathered into the program and will also be eligible to enroll in Zelle at Varo.
“Varo Bank customers will now have a way to send money to friends, family, and others they trust, whether they need to pay back a friend for dinner, split the cost of rent with a roommate, or pitch in for a group gift,” Early Warning Services Chief Product Officer Kash Baghaei said. Early Warning Services is the network operator of Zelle.
The addition of Zelle is part of Varo Bank’s effort to reimagine banking by giving customers the tools they need to become financially resilient and enhance their financial well-being. Other examples of these solutions include the company’s Varo Believe, a secured card to help consumers build credit, and Varo Advance, which enables users to borrow up to $100 with no interest and a simple fee based on the amount of the advance that tops out at $5.
“Varo Advance was created to meet the short term credit needs of millions of Americans, and it continues our commitment to provide customers the strongest possible foundation for their financial success, with instant availability and low, transparent pricing,” Walsh said.
Launched in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California ,Varo Bank offers an all-digital alternative for financial services consumers. The institution provides a bank account with no credit check, no minimum balance required, no monthly fees, and no overdraft fees. Accountholders have access to more than 55,000 fee-free, Allpoint ATMs in locations like Target, CVS, and Safeway. Varo Bank cardholders can get up to 6% cashback when they use their Varo Bank debit or Varo Believe card at select brands.
Wells Fargo launched a new small dollar digital financial solution called Flex Loan this week.
The new offering provides loans of $250 and $500, with a flat fee of $12 and $20, respectively.
Available in selected markets now, Flex Loan will be available nationwide by the end of the year.
Certainty, simplicity, and clarity are among the virtues of Wells Fargo’s new small dollar digital financing solution, Flex Loan. The new product is a digital, small dollar loan of either $250 or $500 with a flat fee of $12 or $20, respectively. Available only in select markets now, Flex Loans will be introduced across the U.S. by year’s end. Wells Fargo indicated that Flex Loan is part of the financial services company’s efforts to help customers meet short-term cash needs and avoid potential overdrafts.
“What makes Flex Loan different from other payment options is its certainty of approval for eligible customers, the simplicity of obtaining funds in minutes, and clarity around how much it will cost to pay for things like holiday gifts, travel, or an unexpected home or car repair expense,” Head of Personal Lending and Retail Services for Wells Fargo Abeer Bhatia said.
Eligible customers will see the Flex Loan offer in their Wells Fargo mobile banking apps. Once customers take out a Flex Loan and establish their repayment plan (four equal monthly installments), the funds are available in customers’ Wells Fargo account within seconds. Customers can then use the funds via their Wells Fargo debit cards for payments or purchases. There are no applications, late charges, or interest fees.
Flex Loan joins a trio of options announced by Wells Fargo in January that are designed to help customers better manage short-term cash needs. These options are: Early Pay Day, Extra Day Grace Period, and Clear Access Banking. Early Pay Day gives Wells Fargo customers access to eligible direct deposits up to two days in advance. Extra Day Grace Period adds an extra business day to make deposits to avoid overdraft fees. Clear Access Banking offers customers a checkless banking account with no overdraft fees.
With $1.9 trillion in assets, Wells Fargo & Company provides financial services to one in three U.S. households and more than 10% of U.S. small businesses. Wells Fargo is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker WFC, and has a market capitalization of $176 billion. Charles W. Scharf has been CEO of the bank since 2019.
Square is launching a credit card for its small business clients.
The American Express card will be powered by i2c and issued by Celtic Bank.
There is no word yet on a launch date, but Square said that more details will be released next year.
Move over, Brex, Divvy, and Ramp. Square is getting in on the business credit card game. The mobile payments company announced today it is expanding on its existing partnership with American Express to launch a new credit card that will be tailored for Square’s merchant clients.
Square already offers a small suite of banking tools, including checking, savings, and loans, but this is the company’s first ever credit card offering. Adding a credit card to the mix will not only round out Square’s in-house banking options, it will also help it compete in the increasingly profitable business banking arena.
“Small businesses can struggle to find fair and simple solutions for their credit needs. Square has spent years building a successful lending program to eliminate this barrier for sellers, and we’re uniquely positioned to innovate even further in this space to expand access to new types of credit products,” said Square Banking General Manager Luke Voiles. “We wanted to create a product on a payment network that has a strong track record of supporting small merchants, making this card a natural progression of our existing relationship with American Express.”
As with most fintechs that offer a credit card, Square is tapping a third party, i2c, to power the credit card offering, which will be issued by Celtic Bank.
According to Square, the credit card will integrate directly into the company’s banking suite to help businesses manage their cashflow and offer them visibility into their business’ finances. At the moment, there are not many details about the new American Express credit card, including the launch date, rewards benefits, or cost. However, Square said it will provide more information next year.
The only thing surprising about this announcement is how late to the game Square is. Square launched in 2009 when fintech was still in its infancy. The company debuted its lending arm in 2014 and remained relatively quiet until the challenger banking boom last year when it unveiled its savings and checking accounts.
In comparison, one of the largest challengers in the business banking arena, Brex, was founded in 2017. The company launched its business credit card offering in 2018 and was an overnight success. Multiple other new players joined in, including Ramp, Divvy, and Expensify. Perhaps Square plans to rely on its existing customer base to give it a competitive edge against the competition. The company had more than 64 million business clients as of 2020.
The fallout over the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX continues. On Friday, the embattled company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, noting that it had in excess of 100,000 creditors – before amending its filing days later to report that the number of creditors might be more than one million.
While 2022 has been a dark year for a number of cryptocurrency companies, none have suffered as FTX has. With a valuation of $32 billion and more than one million users, FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume last year. But all of this came crashing down earlier this month. When rival Binance learned that FTX partner Alameda Research had much of its assets in FTX’s token FTT, Binance began selling its holdings of FTT. This resulted in more selling, in what some observers have called the equivalent of a bank run, which demolished the value of FTT and created a serious liquidity crisis for FTX. An aborted plan by Binance to buy FTX gave the company few alternatives to the bankruptcy declaration it made late last week.
What’s next? The FTX crisis has reached the recrimination stage, with even the company’s performance coach weighing in. (You can read Dr. Lerner’s response to rather lurid allegations about the behavior of the company’s senior executives. Spoiler: he refers to the company’s Bahamas headquarters as a “pretty tame place”). A sizeable swathe of celebrities – from NFL star quarterback Tom Brady to supermodel Gisele Bundchen- who served as brand ambassadors for FTX are also finding themselves under scrutiny – and worse.
And speaking of scrutiny, it appears as if the FBI is in discussions with the Bahamian authorities on extraditing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to the United States for questioning.
Et tu, BlockFi?
Is cryptocurrency lender BlockFi now endangered due to the crisis at FTX? Media reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that the company, launched in 2017 and headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, may be considering bankruptcy.
Why? According to reports, BlockFi admitted that while it did not keep the majority of its assets at FTX, the firm did have deposits on the company’s platform, as well as an undrawn line of credit from FTX “and obligations that FTX owed it.” BlockFi has suspended customer withdrawals in the wake of the FTX collapse, is limiting platform activity, and also is reportedly planning to layoff an unspecified number of workers.
BlockFi has not responded to the reporting from The Wall Street Journal at this time. A message at the company’s website reads: “BlockFi is not able to operate business as usual. We have limited platform activity, including pausing client withdrawals as allowed under our Terms. We request that clients not deposit to BlockFi Wallet or Interest Accounts at this time.”
Anthony Pompliano Makes Crypto’s Case
Entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano was interviewed on CNBC’s Overtime program Tuesday afternoon. Asked about the FTX situation, Pompliano made an impassioned case for the future of cryptocurrencies. Pompliano also argued that the American market-based system is the only place where this kind of innovation – and accountability – is possible.
Pompliano runs investment firm Pomp Investments. He was formerly co-founder and partner with Morgan Creek Digital Assets, and Managing Partner with Full Tilt Capital. Pompliano also was a Product Manager at Facebook where he led the growth team for Facebook Pages, and helped launch solutions including AMBER Alerts and Voter Registration. He is the author of a daily email newsletter of business, finance, and Bitcoin called “Pomp Letter.”
Plug and Play Launches Crypto Program
At a time when so many are down on cryptocurrencies, it may be reassuring to hear news that innovation platform Plug and Play is keeping the faith.
In collaboration with founding partners Visa, AllianceBlock, The INX Digital Company, IGT, and Franklin Templeton, Plug and Play has launched its new Crypto and Digital Assets program in Silicon Valley. The goal of the program is to help startups around the world that are innovating in the crypto and digital asset spaces to connect with the program’s aforementioned founding partners to help them pilot their solutions. The program has four main focus areas: stablecoin adoption, decentralized finance, crypto economics, and enterprise blockchain.
“Not only will this unique partnership offer deeper connections on the West Coast and Silicon Valley, but it will also allow us to put our leadership and expertise to work as we advise companies on the benefits of participating in the rapidly growing ecosystem of blockchain, tokenization, and cryptocurrency,” INX Chief Business Officer Douglas Borthwick said.
Companies interested in participating in the Plug and Play Crypto and Digital Assets program are being encouraged to apply.
Binance Battles On
With its decision to acquire FTX now a thing of the past, blockchain company Binance is back to focusing on its own organic growth.
The company announced at midweek that it has secured a license from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). This license — a Financial Services Permission (FSP) — will enable Binance to offer digital and virtual asset custody services to professional clients that meet the FSRA’s conditions for FSP.
“Obtaining this license is a pivotal step in the growth of Binance in Abu Dhabi, and a reflection of the city’s progressive stance on virtual assets,” Binance (AD) Senior Executive Officer Dominic Longman said. “We are excited to continue to strengthen our symbiotic relationship with ADGM and the city of Abu Dhabi and look forward to providing institutional investors with a secure and reliable platform for their virtual asset activities.”
ADGM’s FSRA issued its virtual asset regulatory framework in 2018. ADGM Chairman Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi said that the framework is a core part of ADGM’s goal of supporting fintech innovation in the financial sector and “reinforcing the UAE’s status as a rapidly accelerating global crypto marketplace, with Abu Dhabi and the ADGM as the engine room powering this growth.”
Finovate has held two fintech conferences in the UAE in recent years: an inaugural event in 2018 and a second conference the following year in 2019. Read more about fintech in developing economies in our weekly Finovate Global column, published on Fridays.
Brightwell is launching a new cross-border payments solution called ReadyRemit.
Integrating ReadyRemit will enable Brightwell customers to help their end clients send money to 90% of the world’s population.
The new tool is leveraging partnerships with Mastercard and The Bancorp Bank.
Payments technology company Brightwellunveiled its new cross-border payments solution today. The new offering, ReadyRemit, is a cross-border-payments-as-a-service tool.
Powered via partnerships with Mastercard and The Bancorp Bank, ReadyRemit will enable Brightwell’s business and fintech clients to offer their end customers a cross-border payments solution with built-in compliance capabilities. The new tool aims to be faster than traditional money transfer tools, taking place in near-real time or on the same day the transfer was initiated.
“Our partnership with The Bancorp Bank, N.A., and Mastercard will enable customers to build a new revenue stream by offering low-to-no-code platform integrations containing everything needed to launch a global payments program in as little as 30 days,” said Brightwell Senior Vice President Hal Ramakers.
ReadyRemit will enable Brightwell’s clients to send payments to 90% of the world’s population and to more than 100 countries. Clients can make a range of payment types, including B2B, B2P, P2P, and P2B, and send the funds to 280,000 cash payout locations, including bank accounts, mobile wallets, and cash-out locations.
“Our Cross-Border Services enable fast, smart, and simple access to funds whenever and wherever you are,” said Mastercard Senior Vice President, Debit, North America Vickie Van Meir. “Our work with Brightwell supports a reliable, equitable payments experience, broadening financial access around the world.”
Brightwell offers a suite of payment products that includes a corporate expense program, global payroll service, an ATM program, fraud protection, and more. The company launched as a division of West Suburban Bank in Chicago, Illinois in 2009 under the name Prepaid Solutions. In 2011, the company split from West Suburban Bank, rebranded to Brightwell, and moved its headquarters location to Atlanta, Georgia.
Virtual card and spend management platform Extend announced a partnership with Bank of the West.
The collaboration will enable small and medium-sized businesses to take advantage of virtual card technology to enhance spend management.
Extend made its Finovate debut three years ago at FinovateSpring 2019, demoing its platform, app, and APIs.
Virtual card and spend management innovator Extend has teamed up with Bank of the West. The collaboration will enable Bank of the West’s small and medium-sized business clients to leverage Extend’s technology to create and control digital company cards and enhance spend management.
Bank of the West cardholders will be able to sign up for Extend in a process that does not require any technical integration. After enrolling their commercial cards, SME users can access Extend online or through a mobile device to create unique virtual cards; send virtual cards to workers, vendors, suppliers, and others directly from the application; attach purchase orders and receipts to transactions; and manage recurring expenses and subscriptions. Companies will be able to provide employees with a budget for issuing virtual cards, and virtual cards can be approved, modified, or canceled at any time.
“Bank of the West is committed to optimizing B2B payments, and our relationship with Extend offers our clients an efficient, easy-to-use solution for better spend management,” Bank of the West Managing Director Dominique Fracchia said. “Using Extend and their Bank of the West cards, businesses can create, distribute, and manage virtual cards to pay vendors, empower employees, track spending, and more.”
The offering is designed to bring the benefits of virtual cards and spend management to small and medium-sized businesses. Extend’s technology helps SMEs manage vendor payments, reconciliation, and other tedious and manual – but essential – payment tasks. In addition to saving time and boosting efficiency, Extend’s solution also helps businesses obtain real-time insights into – as well as real-time control over – company card spending.
“With Extend, Bank of the West is delivering new spend management capabilities that ensure its clients don’t wonder who paid what, when, why, or to whom,” Extend CEO and co-founder Andrew Jamison said. “This is what clients need from payments technology today – the power to run their businesses better, with the support of their preferred financial partners.”
New York-based Extend made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2019. The company demoed its virtual card distribution platform, its app – which instantly gives employees access to virtual cards – and its APIs that enable fintechs to take advantage of the technology. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $54 million in funding from investors including March Capital, Point72 Ventures, and FinTech Collective.
Bank of the West is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has more than 600 branches and commercial banking offices in the midwest and western United States. A subsidiary of French banking group BNP Paribas, Bank of the West has more than $94 billion in assets and 1.7 million customers. Nandita Bakhshi is President and CEO.
