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Pennsylvania-Based Fintech Savana Scores $45 Million in New Funding

Pennsylvania-Based Fintech Savana Scores $45 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Savana, a fintech headquartered in Pennsylvania, raised $45 million in new funding.
  • The new capital consists of a combination of equity and debt. Canadian investor Georgian led the equity component of the funding.
  • Savana will use the funds to fuel the continued growth of its Digital Delivery Platform.

Pennsylvania-based fintech Savana has secured $45 million in new funding. The capital infusion includes $10 million in debt financing. The Series A round was led by Toronto, Canada-based investor Georgian, and also featured participation from Fiserv – which also announced that it would expand its reseller agreement with Savana. The company will use the funds to power the growth of its Digital Delivery Platform, boost go-to-market activities, and accelerate its new capabilities roadmap.

“The banking industry is going through an incredible transformation,” Savana CEO, founder, and Chairman Michael Sanchez said. “This funding round will help support the growth of our digital delivery platform to enable any bank, whether new or going through transformation of existing technology infrastructure, to speed time to market of new products and services, support continuous digital innovation, and drive significant operational efficiency.”

Savana’s Digital Delivery Platform offers channel and product agnostic customer engagement, account servicing, and automated bank operations. The platform works with both new Gen3 cores as well as traditional core banking systems to provide universal digital delivery across all bank-assisted and consumer-direct channels. API-based and cloud-native, Savana’s Digital Delivery Platform gives financial institutions the ability to automate servicing for bank and credit union teams, as well as for customer-originated requests. The result is faster time-to-market and a more friction-free and consistent experience for customers and members, regardless of channel.

Founded in 2009, Savana is headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a township 25 miles west of Philadelphia. Last fall, the fintech announced that Live Oak Bank had converted its legacy bank operations to Savana’s process orchestration platform. A digital, cloud-based bank that serves small business owners in 50 states, Live Oak Bank was the leading SBA and USDA lender by dollar volume in 2020. Excluding PPP funds, Live Oak Bank has total assets of more than $6.9 billion.

“Our goal was to re-define what banking could become when we embarked on our transformation journey,” Live Oak Chairman and CEO Chip Mahan said. “We knew that the only way to create a more compelling customer value proposition was to lead with technology that enabled innovation, convenience, and speed of delivery from the core to the customer. Savana is a key component of our end-to-end solution.”

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American Express Unveils Cross-Border Payments Tool for Businesses

American Express Unveils Cross-Border Payments Tool for Businesses
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, American Express, Daily news
  • American Express is launching American Express Global Pay, a cross-border payments tool for U.S. small businesses.
  • Businesses can use American Express Global Pay to pay suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies.
  • American Express did not disclose exact fees, but said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment.

American Express is helping small businesses keep up with global competition with its launch of American Express Global Pay, a new cross-border payments tool for small businesses based in the U.S.

American Express Global Pay allows U.S. businesses to make domestic and international B2B payments to suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies using the mobile-optimized website. Eligible customers can earn one Membership Rewards point for every $30 in equivalent foreign exchange payments.

“Businesses today start, grow and compete on a global scale,” said American Express Executive Vice President of Global Commercial Services Dean Henry. “Our U.S. Small Business Card Members told us they want an international payment solution focused on simplicity, convenience and the chance to earn rewards – so we built American Express Global Pay to enable these businesses to easily and effectively manage their B2B payments globally on a secure platform, backed by the trusted service and unique benefits of American Express Membership.”

Available to eligible U.S. American Express Small Business Card Members, American Express Global Pay enables users to access the cross-border tool in the same location they manage their American Express Business account and offers same-day delivery of funds in select countries.

While American Express has not disclosed exact fees, the company said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment. “In addition to these fees, we also make money from the purchase and sale of foreign currency,” American Express said. “Recipient banks or intermediary banks may charge their own fees, which can reduce the amount delivered to your recipient.”

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Yext Announces Early Access Availability for its Summer ’22 Release

Yext Announces Early Access Availability for its Summer ’22 Release
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Yext
  • Yext announced the early access availability of its Summer ’22 release.
  • The New York company specializes in helping companies improve the way customers query their websites and apps for information about their businesses.
  • Yext made its Finovate debut in 2020 at FinovateFall.

Yext, a technology firm that leverages AI to collect and organize company information and provide it to customers, employees, and partners, announced that its Summer ’22 Release is now available for early access. The company announced last week that its solution now includes a number of new features that address a variety of business needs.

“Businesses today have to contend with an increasingly complex digital landscape,” Yext SVP of Product Management Maxwell Shaw said. “Instead of managing dozens of single-purpose applications, organizations should be empowered to consolidate essential functionality into one platform that can power both first and third-party experiences.”

The new features include:

  • Listing Updates: Provide greater visibility into engagement metrics and top keywords for enhanced search results. Improve status detail messages for better troubleshooting.
  • Custom Pages Development: Offers an improved, open architecture to enable external developers to create SEO-optimized landing pages at scale.
  • AI Data Cleaning. Applies a machine learning model for cleaning data, providing greater flexibility for developers who want to write complex functions or format data manually. Available currently as a Preview feature.
  • Fully Custom Search UI: Includes a new React component library which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends.
  • Solstice Algorithm Update: Leverages the Solstice algorithm update to enable administrators to optimize search experiences with Custom Phrases. Introduces Multi-Hop Relationship to support more complicated user queries.

Yext demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2020. The New York-based company showed how its technology helps streamline the way customers find answers to their queries when visiting a company’s website or app, using direct answers and calls-to-action. This helps boost conversion, lower operational costs, and generate new potential sources of customer intelligence to fuel future marketing efforts.

“Your marketing teams are spending a lot of money and effort driving customers to your site. We’re going to show you how to stop losing those customers because of your site experience,” Yext Head of Industry for Financial Services and Insurance Shane Closser explained during the company’s FinovateFall 2020 demo. “There’s no other solution in the market, especially within financial services, that you can deploy within six to eight weeks and see a demonstrable marketing ROI. Typically what we see is a 2x to 3x improvement in search experiences (for) users browsing your website.”

Founded in 2006, Yext began this year with a round of new platform additions for its Winter ’21 release, including listing modernization, consumer authorization, connector updates, and a feature called “Answers Headless React” which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends. This spring, the company announced a significant leadership transition that put board chair Michael Walrath in the CEO seat and named former Yext Chief Accounting Officer Darryl Bond as CFO. Yext also promoted Chief Strategy Officer Marc Ferrentino to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer.

With customers such as BBVA, Banner Bank, Farmers, and Citizens Financial, Yext is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker YEXT. The company has a market capitalization of $550 million.

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Uber Launches New Driver Debit Card

Uber Launches New Driver Debit Card
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Green Dot, Marqeta, MasterCard
  • Uber is launching a new debit card with tandem checking account.
  • The Uber Pro debit card is made available via partnerships with Mastercard, Marqeta, and Branch.
  • Uber Pro cardholders can receive up to 7% cashback on fuel purchases.

Uber’s latest attempt to attract more drivers to its platform comes in the form of a debit card with a tandem checking account. Late last week, the rideshare company announced the Uber Pro debit card.

The new debit card comes courtesy of partnerships with Mastercard, Marqeta, and Branch, a workforce payments platform that caters to gig economy workers and contractors. The card offers Uber drivers up to 7% cash back on gas purchases when they achieve Diamond status as an Uber Pro driver.

The Uber Pro card comes with a checking account powered by Branch, which will automatically deposit cardholders’ earnings into their account after every trip. Branch offers a unique take on earned wage access by enabling workers to access their paycheck as they earn it. The card currently has a wait list and will launch in the coming weeks.

This latest announcement comes three years after Uber originally introduced Uber Money, a debit card and mobile app powered by Green Dot, and five years after the company launched its Barclays-powered credit card.

The launch of the Uber Pro card comes alongside a handful of other driver-related announcements from the ridesharing company. The Uber app will now offer drivers a range of nearby trips to choose from, show drivers their exact earnings upfront before they accept a trip, and offer enhanced benefits to Uber Pro drivers.

These driver-focused benefits are in part an effort to smooth out the supply and demand issue that Uber is facing. The nationwide labor shortage, combined with high fuel prices, has historically made it difficult for Uber to attract drivers. In May, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, “Our need to increase the number of drivers on the platform is nothing new nor is it a surprise … there’s a lot of work ahead of us, but this is a machine that is rolling.”

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Rapyd to Power Rakuten Viber’s New Viber Pay

Rapyd to Power Rakuten Viber’s New Viber Pay
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Rapyd has partnered with Rakuten Viber this week.
  • Rapyd will facilitate in-app payments for Viber users.
  • “Through this partnership, Rakuten Viber can confidently step into the world of payments and become a leader in embedded finance, supported by Rapyd’s licensed end-to-end fintech offerings,” said Rapyd CEO Arik Shiltman.

Payments platform Rapyd partnered with consumer-facing messaging app Rakuten Viber today. Under the agreement, Rapyd will facilitate in-app payments for Viber users.

“The future of payments is integrated fintech, and this partnership demonstrates why we founded Rapyd in the first place: to democratize fintech for all,” said Rapyd CEO Arik Shiltman. “We’re proud to provide the infrastructure and licensing for global companies like Rakuten Viber, one of the world’s most trusted and recognized messaging and communications platforms, to develop their own financial services without them having to build the foundation from scratch. Through this partnership, Rakuten Viber can confidently step into the world of payments and become a leader in embedded finance, supported by Rapyd’s licensed end-to-end fintech offerings.”

The move places Rakuten Viber squarely in the center of the global digital payments space. Viber users can use the messaging service to send and receive money instantly, with no fees. Recipients can store money in a mobile wallet with an IBAN, which is available in the Viber app. Rakuten Viber is launching the service in Greece and Germany, where users can transact in Euros. The company will later expand into multiple currencies and will roll out to more countries.

Founded in 2016, Rapyd is a fintech-as-a-service innovator that offers a payments network and platform to facilitate local and international supplier and customer payments. The company has offices in London, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Denver, Dubai, Miami, Singapore, Iceland, and Hong Kong.

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Jack Henry Partners with Victor Technologies to Boost Real-Time Payment Capabilities

Jack Henry Partners with Victor Technologies to Boost Real-Time Payment Capabilities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Jack Henry
  • Jack Henry & Associates announced a partnership with Victor Technologies.
  • The partnership will help Victor Technologies move forward with its instant payments strategy.
  • Jack Henry & Associates serves more than 8,000 customers in the U.S. via its Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars brands.

Financial services provider Jack Henry & Associates has partnered with Victor Technologies to help advance its instant payments strategy. A subsidiary of MVB Edge Ventures and part of MVB Bank, Victor Technologies leverages both its integrated risk management technology as well as APIs to enable fintechs to embed financial services. The company has added real-time payments (RTP) capabilities via Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter, which will enable MVB Bank’s Jack Henry core to send and receive real-time payments.

“Instant payments 24/7/365 is now table stakes and offers a huge competitive advantage for our clients,” Victor Head of Strategy and Operations said. “The features of the RTP network provide payment finality and certainty, which reduces back-office reconciliation because transactions are now settled in real-time. This is especially true for key growth verticals like gaming and crypto where transactions need to be processed at any time regardless of banking hours. The addition of real-time payments gives end-users quicker access to their money.”

MVB Bank is the first Jack Henry client to go live using the company’s RTP Send functionality, and the bank intends to offer RTP Request for Payment services, as well. The ability to offer both solutions will make it easier for Victor Technologies to provide its customers with the kind of faster payment needs their businesses require.

A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates serves 8,000 clients around the country via its three signature brands: Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars. The company leverages these brands to deliver innovative solutions to community and regional banks, credit unions, as well as corporate entities and large-scale financial institutions. Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Monett, Missouri, Jack Henry & Associates’ partnership announcement with Victor Technologies comes just one month after Jack Henry announced that more than 250 financial institutions have taken advantage of its JHA PayCenter – and its connections to both The Clearing House RTP network and the Zelle Network – to execute their faster payment strategies.

“We strategically built JHA PayCenter to support the diverse faster payments strategies of Jack Henry clients, financial institutions using third-party core and digital platforms, as well as other fintechs,” Jack Henry & Associates VP of Payment Solutions Tede Forman said. “The payments hub virtually eliminates the inherent technology and staffing challenges experienced by financial institutions that elect to build and maintain direct connections to one or multiple faster payments networks.”

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MX Names Former PayPal Exec as New CEO

MX Names Former PayPal Exec as New CEO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MX
  • MX has appointed Jim Magats as CEO, replacing Interim CEO Shane Evans.
  • Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal, where he specialized in open finance.
  • Evans will continue to serve as a senior advisor.

Open finance fintech MX named Jim Magats CEO this week.

The news comes after company Founder and former CEO Ryan Caldwell stepped down at the beginning of the year, appointing Shane Evans as Interim CEO. After the transition, Caldwell stepped into a new role as Executive Chair to spend more time with family and focus on his daughter’s health recovery.

“Jim Magats brings a wealth of experience and knowledge about how to deliver high-impact financial solutions and products for consumers, merchants, and financial organizations, along with a vast network of partners and customers at the world’s leading financial institutions and fintechs,” said Caldwell. “We have tremendous confidence in Jim’s ability to lead the organization through the next phase of our growth in establishing our leadership in the open finance economy, helping organizations of all sizes access and act on financial data to improve customer outcomes and grow their businesses.”

Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal. Most recently, he served as the company’s Senior Vice President for Omni Payments Solutions where he was charged with overseeing the company’s open banking strategy and partnership network of more than 150 financial institutions and networks.

The appointment is strategic for MX, which has spent the past few years positioning itself as a leader in the open finance space, because of Magats’ experience in open finance. While at PayPal, he worked with regulators in Europe helping to create PSD2 banking standards. He also spent time building PayPal’s open, secure API capabilities to facilitate digital payments.

“Financial data is the lifeblood of a connected economy, and nobody helps organizations access and act on financial data better than MX. Our opportunity to make financial data accessible and actionable is global, extends across verticals, and has the potential to make a positive difference in the lives of billions of people,” said Magats. “After 18 amazing years at PayPal, I’m incredibly excited to join MX, a company on a mission to build the open finance economy and empower the world to be financially strong. We are going to deepen and extend our partnerships with financial institutions and fintechs to fuel the next wave of innovation while fostering greater participation in the global economy through new products, use cases, and services.”

During his seven-month tenure as Interim CEO, Evans saw the company through the tragic passing of company Cofounder Brandon Dewitt. Evans, who joined MX in 2019 as Chief Revenue Officer, will continue to serve as a senior advisor.

Photo by Pixabay

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Collaborative Banking Innovator Asa Partners with Pyramid Federal Credit Union

Collaborative Banking Innovator Asa Partners with Pyramid Federal Credit Union
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ASA, Daily news
  • Provo, Utah-based fintech Asa announced a partnership with Pyramid Federal Credit Union.
  • Asa will use its collaborative banking approach to enable Pyramid FCU to expand its offerings via connections with customer-facing fintechs.
  • Asa made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall 2021.

Pyramid Federal Credit Union, a Tucson, Arizona-based financial institution with $168 million in assets, has selected Asa to enhance the customer experience for its more than 17,000 members. Asa specializes in connecting financial institutions with customer-facing fintechs via a secure, compliant, and easy-to-implement marketplace. The company helps credit unions, as well as community and regional banks, leverage what it calls “collaborative banking” to innovate faster and provide the most modern customer experience possible.

Pyramid FCU CEO Ray Lancaster underscored the challenge that smaller financial institutions face when it comes to providing their customers and members with the kind of up-to-date digital experience they are accustomed to in other areas of their lives. “As a community institution, it can be challenging to keep up with the rapid rate that technology and member expectations change,” Lancaster explained. “Asa and the collaborative banking model help solve for this pain point, providing members with fast and easy access to the apps and tools they want to try, all without having to share any sensitive information. This allows us to nimbly innovate without being bogged down with cumbersome one-to-one vendor due diligence, carving out a strong competitive advantage.”

The partnership with Asa will enable Pyramid FCU to connect to a community of fintechs courtesy of Asa’s digital rails, which will allow Pyramid FCU to provide its customers with a range of new innovations and capabilities. The collaboration will ensure that member data is tokenized, normalized, and anonymized before being shared with any connected fintechs in order to remove both liability and risk.

“By embracing the collaborative banking model, Pyramid FCU is improving the member experience and empowering them with unprecedented choice, all while removing much of the liability and risk that has traditionally hindered credit union-fintech partnerships,” Asa founder and CEO Landon Glenn said.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Provo, Utah, Asa made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2021. At the event, we had the opportunity to talk with Asa’s Head of Fintech Relationships Ryan Ruff about the challenges of creating successful partnerships between financial institutions and fintechs and how Asa can help facilitate these partnerships.

Asa has raised $1.8 million in funding courtesy of an August 2021 seed round led by CFV Ventures.

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Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution

Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Socure
  • Identity verification and fraud solution provider Socure is teaming up with business verification and identity platform Middesk.
  • The partnership is the first instance in which two Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC0 innovators have created an integrated, end-to-end business verification solution.
  • Socure, a Finovate alum since 2013, has raised more than $646 million in funding.

Digital identity verification and fraud solutions provider Socure announced an industry-first partnership this week with business verification and identity platform Middesk. The integration combines Socure’s real-time, predictive analytics identity verification and fraud prevention solution with Middesk’s business entity verification technology to enhance the ability of B2B companies to accurately verify their customers. The collaboration marks the first time that two innovators in the Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC) space have created an integrated solution for end-to-end business verification.

“With our partnership, B2B companies will achieve an incremental lift in their business due to Socure’s industry-leading accuracy and coverage of our identity verification and fraud risk prediction solutions,” Socure CEO and founder Johnny Ayers said. “This accuracy leads to the auto-approval of more good consumers and creates increased conversion rates and a higher assurance of onboarding trustworthy business customers.”

The integration will help B2B companies verify not only the details of new business customers such as name, address, and tax ID, but also the personal details for that business’ beneficial owners. The addition of Socure’s digital identity verification and fraud platform will ease and streamline the process through which Middesk customers can authenticate the associated beneficial owners of the businesses they register and onboard. The partnership could be a major boon for businesses in regulated industries – including banks, financial services companies, and insurance companies – that require a high degree of business identity verification. The collaboration also should prove helpful to entities such as B2B marketplaces that serve gig economy businesses and entrepreneurs who often have smaller or more incomplete data footprints that can make KYB more challenging.

Middesk co-founder and CEO Kyle Mack said that the partnership would help Middesk customers who are eager to tackle the issues of identity verification. “Customers can now leverage the Socure integration to validate personal attributes of beneficial owners,” Mack said. “Additionally, Socure delivers key risk insights that determine the likelihood that someone’s identity is legitimate, and applicants are who they claim to be, which provides even more value to our customers in uncertain, but growing market conditions.”

Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateFall, Socure has grown into a leading identity verification solution provider. With more than 1,000 financial institutions, government agencies, and enterprises using on the company’s verification technology, Socure reported in May that it had reached record customer growth of 236%, and currently includes companies such as EarnUp and fellow Finovate alum Sezzle among its financial services clients. Also in May, Socure introduced new Chief Financial Officer Krish Venkataraman.

“I’ve long had the sense that, no matter what type of business you’re in, solving for identity verification was critical to operating in the next phase of the internet,” Venkataraman said when his appointment was announced. “What’s really becoming clear is that the line of demarcation between a real identity and how that identity operates in the digital world no longer exists. A person’s identity is how they access everything they want and need to do, and today, those things almost all happen online.” Venkataraman called Socure “the identity verification layer for the Internet.”

Headquartered in New York City, Socure has raised more than $646 million in funding. The company’s investors include Accel, T. Rowe Price, and ff Venture Capital.

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Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks

Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Arkose Labs, Daily news, Ping Identity
  • Finovate Best of Show winner Arkose Labs announced an integration with Ping Identity.
  • The partnership will combine Arkose’s Fraud Deterrence Platform with Ping Identity’s PingOne DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service.
  • Arkose Labs made its Finovate debut in 2019. Ping Identity has been a Finovate alum since its appearance at FinovateEurope in 2012.

Fraud deterrence and account security specialist Arkose Labs announced an integration with fellow Finovate alum Ping Identity. Arkose Labs will leverage Ping Identity’s no-code identity orchestration service, PingOne DaVinci, to create an additional level of protection against both bot and human-led fraud attacks.

The integration blends Ping Identity’s identity and access management (IAM) technology with the Arkose Fraud Deterrence Platform. The combined offering will enable enterprise clients to better identify authorized users sooner, reducing friction during account registration and log in. The technology also reduces emphasis on multi-factor authentication, creating an even more seamless experience for users.

“Arkose Labs is very excited to integrate our leading fraud detection and protection platform into DaVinci,” Arkose Labs Chief Product Officer Ashish Jain said. “Together with Ping we are providing a best-in-class experience to end users while helping to protect a company’s digital environment from malicious attacks.”

The Arkose Labs/Ping Identity partnership comes as the number of active fraudsters has grown by 10x since 2019 – according to the Arkose Global Network. Additionally, Arkose noted that consumer, account-based fraud still represents almost 33% of all cybercrime losses. Firms that have embraced Arkose Labs’ technology have seen their ability to improve bot detection by 90% or more and an improvement in authorized user throughput of 70% or more.

Partnering with Ping Identity should only enhance Arkose’s ability to help its customers defend themselves against cyberfraud. Companies that have teamed up to use PingIdentity’s PingOne DaVinci solutions – via Ping Identity’s Global Technology Partner Program – have been able to deliver protected user experiences in industries ranging from finance and e-commerce to gaming and consumer technology.

“Ping Identity is committed to expanding our technology partner ecosystem to deliver better, more frictionless customer experiences,” Ping Identity SVP of Product Management Loren Russon said. “Our partnership with Arkose Labs leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey.”

Arkose Labs won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019. The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateFall where it demonstrated its Fraud and Abuse Prevention Platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2017, Arkose Labs has raised more than $106 million in funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund, the Sony Innovation Fund, and PayPal Ventures.

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Business Finance Solutions Qonto and Penta to Join Forces

Business Finance Solutions Qonto and Penta to Join Forces
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • European business finance solution company Qonto is seeking to acquire its competitor Penta.
  • Together, the two will serve more than 300,000 small business customers across Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.
  • Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Two European business finance solution companies have agreed to join forces. In the deal, which is expected to close in the next few weeks, Paris-based Qonto is seeking to purchase Berlin-based Penta. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

“When Steve Anavi and I founded Qonto in 2016, we had the ambitious goal of simplifying everyday banking for SMEs and freelancers across Europe,” said Qonto CEO Alexandre Prot. “Today, we’re already present in four European markets and, while I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved so far, we want to go even further: the natural next step was to join forces with Penta. We are thrilled to welcome the Penta team onboard. Together we’re going to be the finance solution of choice for one million European SMEs and freelancers by 2025!”

Penta launched in 2017 and now serves 50,000 small business customers in Germany. Qonto launched the same year and currently serves more than 250,000 clients across France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The acquisition will combine Qonto’s brand strength, license, and core banking system with Penta’s local expertise.

Qonto is anticipating that Penta’s existing market presence will strengthen its operations in Germany. The combined entity will make Qonto a strong leader in the European digital business finance sector. After the acquisition is complete, the company will have more than 300,000 customers and 900 employees.

“With the combination of increasing customer numbers and rising revenues, we have gained even more substance in the past 18 months,” said Penta CEO Markus Pertlwieser. “We are very excited that we now have the chance to actively shape digital banking for business customers in Europe as a team with Qonto.”

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Open-Finance.ai Taps FICO’s Blaze Advisor for Real Time Credit Assessment 

Open-Finance.ai Taps FICO’s Blaze Advisor for Real Time Credit Assessment 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Fair Isaac FICO, FICO
  • Open-Finance.ai partnered with FICO to leverage the company’s Blaze Advisor decision rules management system.
  • Israel-based Open-Finance.ai will integrate Blaze Advisor into its open banking platform to offer real-time credit assessments.
  • This news comes as “Israel is on the cusp of major banking reform with the introduction of open banking,” said FICO VP of Partner Management in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Mark Farmer.

Analytic decisioning platform FICO and risk, finance, and compliance software company Open-Finance.ai have teamed up this week.

Under the agreement, Open-Finance.ai will integrate the FICO’s Blaze Advisor decision rules management system into its open banking platform. Using FICO’s technology, Open-Finance.ai will assist its financial services clients to save time on consumer credit assessments by leveraging real-time, analytically driven appraisals.

For Israel-based Open-Finance.ai, this comes just as open banking legislation is gaining traction. “Israel is on the cusp of major banking reform with the introduction of open banking,” said FICO VP of Partner Management in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Mark Farmer. “Automating decisions allows lenders to increase the efficiency of the lending process without sacrificing risk management regulatory rigour. This will speed up lending, increase customer satisfaction, reduce operational costs and drive economic activity.”

Open-Finance.ai anticipates the move will help remove human bias from lending decisions, improve risk decisions, and expand access to credit to more people.

FICO’s Blaze Advisor gives businesses a solution to make smarter, more transparent business decisions by offering companies multiple methods for rule authoring, testing, deployment, and management. To make this work, Blaze Advisor provides decision trees, scorecards, decision tables, graphic decision flows, and customized templates. The technology also supports business performance monitoring.

“Manual processes, a conservative approach and significant regulation have been a drag on growth of the Israeli market,” said Open-Finance.ai Co-founder Shay Basson. “Now, we have an ability to manage risk instantly, based on multiple data sources to provide an instant, yet risk-aware decision to credit and insurance consumers.”

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in California, FICO offers decisioning tools used by more than 650 clients, including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and eight of the top 10 EMEA banks. Last year, FICO launched a new loan origination solution called FICO Originations Solution that seeks to automate the entire customer journey.

Photo by Anna Popović on Unsplash

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