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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
FinovateEurope 2025 kicks off this week at the Intercontinental O2 in London. Learn more about the conferences’s keynote speakers, power panels, demoing companies and more in our pre-show briefing.
In the meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the news making fintech headlines as the week begins. Be sure to check back all week long for more updates.
Payments
Backbase and MeaWalletteam up to bring advanced tokenization solutions to Australia and New Zealand.
Payments orchestration platform Yunopartners with Invest Qatar to as the company opens its new Middle East headquarters in the country.
Digital banking
Digital banking experience systems provider Plumeryannounces partnership with African digital identity verification provider, Smile ID.
As part of the Eastern U.S. prepares to enjoy the total solar eclipse today, fintech enthusiasts can also eclipse the competition with the latest news and updates in the fintech world. Check back for real-time updates on how the fintech landscape evolves this week.
Payments
Business payments and financial platform Airwallexlaunches its Borderless Visa card in Canada.
Mexican BNPL provider Kueskiintroduces in-store mobile payment solution.
Kyriba and Onyx by J.P. Morgan (Onyx) leverage the blockchain to streamline cross-border payments.
Arizona Financial Credit Union (AZFCU) selects NCR Atleos’ ATM as a Service (ATMaaS) to increase operational efficiencies within the self-service banking channel.
The Clearing House’s RTP experienced a record 76 million transactions valued at $42 billion in the first quarter of this year.
Corlyticsreceives investment from Verdane for its compliance technology.
Wealthtech
Investment research platform Teguslaunches its AI chat tool, AskTegus.
Open banking
Open banking powered account-to-account payment infrastructure provider Token.iointroduces new Chief Commercial Officer Ronnie d’Arienzo, new Chief Financial Officer Tatiana Okhotina, and new Chief Operations Officer Tim Corke.
Atto, a credit risk solutions provider based in the U.K., teams up with analytics software firm FICO to bring open banking data into U.K. credit scoring.
We’re starting off the week with a major acquisition in the U.K. lending space, as well as fintech funding news in payments, wealth management, and financial education.
Digital banking
Missouri-based Central Bank leveragesPersonetics’ AI-driven engagement platform to enhance financial wellness.
SaaS core modernization and transformation solution provider for banks Zafinunveils new tools – Dynamic Cohorts and Signals – to enhance customer personalization and engagement.
Digital banking experience platform Plumeryannounces availability on Google Cloud Marketplace.
Emporia State Federal Credit Union launches new app courtesy of a partnership with digital banking solution provider Bankjoy.
Bank integration provider AccessPaysecures $24 million in equity and debt financing.
Integrated payments company Bluefinadds 23 new devices, 6 new applications, and three new key injection facilities (KIFs) to its Encryption Management Services P2PE Component listing.
Germany payment management platform NX Technologiesraises $23.8 million (EUR 22 million) in Series B funding.
Stripeteams up with Amazon to power payments for Just Walk Out technology in Australia and Canada.
Desjardins partners with cloud banking firm nCino to leverage its Automated Spreading Solution to enhance lending.
Open banking
Dwollaexpands its partnership with MX to power account aggregation and verification.
Open banking platform Link Moneyforges partnership with Silicon Valley Bank to enhance ACH processing and money movement for merchants.
Wealth management
Online trading and investing platform Robinhoodlaunches rewards credit card for its Robinhood Gold subscribers.
Wealth-building platform Belongsecures $3.7 million (£2.95 million) in pre-seed funding.
Multi-asset class investment accounting platform FundGuardraises $100 million in Series C funding.
Financial education
Wealth building and financial education platform Goalsetterclosed a $9.6 million Series A extension round.
Cash management
Cash-flow management platform SettlelaunchesAutomatic 3-Way Matching for Purchase Orders.
Fraud prevention
Plaidforges partnerships with Sandbox Banking and RealPage to help fight fraud in the customer experience.
AI-powered fraud and risk platform DataVisorlaunches its end-to-end anti-money laundering (AML) solution.
Financial crime compliance company Napier AI reports that its customer Banco do Brasil has won the Celent Model Risk Manager 2024 Award for combatting financial crime.
Visaadds three new AI-powered risk and fraud prevention solutions.
Cryptocurrencies / Blockchain
Revolut and Layer 1 blockchain Sui team up to boost blockchain education and adoption.
Trading and investing platform eToroadds 12 new altcoins to its cryptocurrency offerings.
Identity management / verification
ID verification company AU10TIXunveils expanded Digital ID solution.
Insurtech
Rewards credit card company Yonder to offer its members a new travel insurance experience courtesy of a partnership with embedded insurance orchestration firm Qover.
New Jersey’s largest credit union, Affinity Federal Credit Union, partners with Insuritas to launch Affinity Insurance Agency.
PayPal Ventures and MassMutual Ventures lead $47 million Series C funding round for Indonesian insurtech Qoala.
Mortgagetech
Equifax UKteams up with Homely to help first-time homebuyers become “mortgage-ready.”
Shift4partners with Atlante to provide payments solution for electric vehicle charging.
Cryptocurrency / Blockchain
African-based blockchain payments network Zoneraises $8.5 million in seed funding.
Figure TechnologiesunveilsFigure Markets, a single platform where investors can trade a wide range of blockchain-native assets from crypto to stocks to alternative investments.
Financial inclusion
Building society Nationwideintroduces new digital service using British Sign Language (BSL) for deaf and hearing-challenged customers.
Insurtech
iPipeline, a digital solutions provider for the insurance industry, launched its OneView solution that tracks the progress and status of annuity orders in real-time.
Taxation / Accounting
Free Agentexpands its smart tax calculation functionality to all NatWest Group customers via their business banking app.
Equifax is launching a new consumer credit scoring model called OneScore.
OneScore leverages alternative data, such as telecommunications, utility, and speciality finance data found in the Equifax Cloud.
OneScore offers traditional credit history and payment data on more than 191 million consumers.
Data analytics and credit scoring company Equifax is launching a new consumer credit scoring model. OneScore, the new model, aims to increase the scorable population of credit-seeking consumers.
To accomplish this, the firm is leveraging alternative data, such as telecommunications, utility, and speciality finance data found in the Equifax Cloud. Equifax anticipates this increase in data will provide lenders with a more comprehensive financial picture of consumers.
OneScore offers traditional credit history and payment data on more than 191 million consumers and provides Equifax DataX and Teletrack finance data on 80 million consumers. Because the majority of U.S. consumers have at least one cell phone or utility bill in their name, these tools have the potential to increase credit scores by up to 25 points. This increase translates into a 20% rise in the number of scorable consumers; a population of 8.8 million people.
“Equifax has invested billions of dollars into unique data, verification insights, fraud reduction tools, powerful modeling techniques and cloud-based technology solutions that empower our customers to bring greater access to financial opportunity to more people in more places,” said Equifax CEO Mark W. Begor. “OneScore is a testament to the power of the Equifax Cloud in driving innovation that can increase the visibility of consumers to help expand access to credit and create new, mainstream financial opportunities.”
Founded in 1899, Equifax employs nearly 14,000 employees across the globe. The company earned $5.1 billion in revenue last year by offering its credit, identity, fraud, marketing, and workforce management tools to both individuals and businesses. Equifax has made OneScore available to U.S. lenders and service providers.
The financial services industry has been using alternative data to underwrite risk for some time now. However, what’s continually evolving in this space is the ability of scoring models to gather valuable data from diverse sources and derive meaningful insights from it. As AI advances, we can expect to see more significant strides in underwriting that will enable loans for borrowers who were not previously considered creditworthy under traditional models.
Data and analytics company Equifaxannounced its acquisition of digital identity player Kount this week. The deal, which is pending regulatory approval, is set to close for $640 million in the first quarter of this year.
Kount was founded in 2007 and offers a range of products and solutions, including chargeback protection, account takeover and bot protection, ecommerce fraud protection, and friendly fraud prevention. The company’s identity network, the Kount Identity Trust Global Network, leverages AI to link trust and fraud data from 32 billion digital interactions, 17 billion devices, and five billion annual transactions across 200 countries and territories.
All of Kount’s products will be integrated into Equifax’s Luminate Platform, a fraud platform that combines the company’s solutions with machine learning to give clients the information they need to make better decisions about fraud.
Kount has more than 9,000 clients across the globe, including Barclays, Staples, PetSmart, and Chase. Equifax anticipates the purchase will expand its global prevalence in digital identity and fraud prevention solutions.
“The acquisition of Kount will expand Equifax’s differentiated data assets to bring global businesses the information and solutions they need to establish identity trust online,” said Equifax CEO Mark W. Begor. “Equifax is taking advantage of our strong 2020 outperformance and cash generation to make this strategic acquisition. Our data and technology cloud investments allow us to quickly and aggressively integrate new data and analytics assets like Kount into our global capabilities and bring new market leading products and solutions to our customers.”
Kount employees will continue to work from the company’s headquarters location in Boise, Idaho, and will join Equifax’s U.S. workforce.
When it comes to taking advantage of the best that the world’s fintech has to offer, you won’t find financial services companies in Canada sleeping on the job. This week in the country’s payments space, Toronto, Ontario-based Versapay announced its acquisition of Solupay, a contactless payments company based in Ohio. We also learned that FinovateEurope alum unblu, which offers a digital conversational platform for FIs from its headquarters in Basel Switzerland, had teamed up with Calgary, Alberta-based digital technology solutions provider Celero.
By the end of the week, Canada’s largest credit education company, Borrowell, announced that it was partnering with multiple Finovate Best of Show winner MX. Borrowell, the first company in Canada to offer free credit scores via its partnership with Equifax, has launched a new bill tracking feature called Boost on its app. The company will use MX’s data cleansing technology to improve Boost’s analysis of user spending behavior to help users make better financial planning decisions.
“With MX, Borrowell is giving its customers greater clarity into how they can become more financially strong as a means to increasing credit strength,” MX Chief Customer Officer Nate Gardner said. “It is exactly this kind of innovation, partnership and money experience that MX loves to enable through our powerful data platform.”
Last week we featured an extended Q&A with Eric Rosenthal, Vice President and Managing Director for the Americas with Rapyd. If you’re interested in learning more about the fintech ecosystem in one of the most overlooked regions of the world, our conversation with Eric Rosenthal is a great place to start.
With that in mind, congratulations to Mexican challenger bank Klar, which raised $15 million in Series A funding in a round led by Prosus Ventures this week. Founded in 2019, Klar now has approximately $72 million in total debt and equity financing, and noted that the new capital will help the company build its engineering capabilities in its hubs in Berlin and Mexico.
“Klar is making credit accessible to all Mexicans, including those with no credit history,” Klar co-founder and Chief Financial Officer Daniel Autrique said. “We help people build credit by looking at how and where they spend their money, instead of being stuck with traditional credit scores that are backward looking and obsolete.” The company said that, since inception, it has issued more than 25,000 lines of credit among its 200,000 customers.
Here is our look at fintech around the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Stripe makes inroads in Africa with acquisition of Paystack.
A partnership between Standard Bank, Mastercard, and Google will help SMEs in Africa offer their services online as well as accept digital payments.
Trading Technologies teams up with Cape Town-based Applied Derivatives, which will distribute the TT platform from South Africa.
Central and Eastern Europe
PayRay, a factoring company based in Lithuania, receives banking license and begins banking operations in its home country.
Lithuanian online payments firm Interpaylink partners with iDenfy to provide remote user identification.
Advapay, a digital core banking platform provider based in Estonia, teams up with U.K.-based identity verification platform Sumsub.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Cairo, Egypt-based financial wellness platform NowPay raises $2.1 million in seed funding.
Central Bank of Bahrain launches the region’s first digital fintech lab, FinHub 973.
Commercial Bank of Dubai introduces cards and accounts for low-income consumers courtesy of partnership with Now Money.
Central and Southern Asia
Indian payments processor Razorpay secures $100 million in Series D funding, earning a valuation just over one billion.
Mastercard announces partnership with Indian regtech Signzy to bring the company’s video KYC technology to its banking customers.
Indian fintech Open partners with Equitas Small Finance Bank and Visa to offer business debit card.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazilian payment solutions provider Ebanx announces expansion of operations into five countries in Central and South America.
Venio, a mobile app that provides financing to the unbanked, goes live in Mexico.
Chile’s third largest bank, Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), partners with Temenos to launch new corporate bank in Peru.
Asia-Pacific
The People’s Bank of China holds lottery to distribute millions in digital yuan valued at $1.5 million.
Vietnamese online payment portal AppotaPay scores payment intermediary license from State Bank of Vietnam.
PayMaya, a mobile payments platform based in the Philippines, launches new mobile payment device PayMaya One Lite, that enables acceptance of a range of digital payment types.
Lendit Fintech announced the winners of its fourth annual Lendit Finitech Industry Awards this week. And out of the 500+ entries competing for awards in 13 different categories, Finovate alums left the stage with nearly half of them.
Taking the highest honor as Fintech Innovator of the Year was Stash. The New York-based mobile-first investment platform made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017, demonstrating its Stash Retire solution. This year marks the second year in a row that Stash has picked up Lendit’s top prize in this category. Fellow Finovate alum Marqeta was among the category’s finalists.
“Our purpose at Lendit Fintech is to elevate and celebrate the achievements of others,” co-founder and CEO of Lendit Fintech Bo Brustkern explained in a statement. “This year has been a hard year for many bank and fintechs, and the many enterprises that support them. Now more than ever we need a reason to come together – even if it’s virtually – to recognize and applaud excellence in these circumstances.”
Other companies earning awards were Upstart for Top Consumer Lending Platform, PeerStreet for Top Real Estate Platform, BlockFi for Emerging Lending Platform of the Year, Orrick for Top Law Firm, and Branch for Excellence in Financial Inclusion. Two individuals were also recognized: Colin Walsh, founder and CEO of Varo Money, as Executive of the Year and Nicky Goulimis, COO and co-founder of Nova Credit, as Fintech Woman of the Year.
A number of other Finovate alums earned finalist spots in this year’s competition. Both Lending Club and SoFi competed as finalists in the Consumer Lending Platform category. And BlueVine provided a strong Finovate alum showing in the Small Business Lending Platform group.
Credit is also due to Finovate alum Mambu as a finalist (along with Stash) in the Innovations in Digital Banking category, and to both Finicity and Ocrolus, which competed in the finals of the Top Technology Service Provider category.
Consumer insights company Equifax is partnering with U.K.-based Credit Ladder, a rent reporting service.
Under the partnership, Equifax will leverage data from Credit Ladder to help tenants who pay their rent on time access fairer credit rates. This data is especially important in the U.K., where 29% of residents rent their residences. Of those, many have a limited borrowing history that results in thin credit files. This typically underserved group ultimately finds it difficult to gain access to reasonable rates for credit cards and loans.
“The inclusion of rental data in credit assessments is a huge lift to improve financial inclusion and fairer access to the right financial products. This data insight provides lenders with a much more reflective picture of the amount renters can afford to borrow,” said Janice Rudd, Data Director at Equifax. “Renters who make full and timely monthly payments should see a significant benefit in proving their ability to repay a commitment, just like mortgage payers. We’re pleased to work with CreditLadder to unlock better financial outcomes for consumers and lenders alike.”
CreditLadder was founded in 2016 and currently has “thousands” of tenants reporting their rental payment history on its platform. CEO Sheraz Dar said that the company’s mission is to “deliver financial fairness” to users and help them access credit when they are ready. “Working with Equifax to add tenants’ payment track records to their reports is a major enhancement for our users, and for our platform,” Dar said.
CreditLadder, which is also partnered with credit reporting agency Experian, provides its rent reporting services for free for both landlords and tenants. The company also offers a paid product, CreditLadder Plus that comes with mobile phone insurance and discounts at retailers including Argos, Caffe Nero, and Tesco. CreditLadder Plus costs users around $11.50 (£8.99) per month or $102 (£79) per year.
Tinkhires Stripe’s former head of EMEA banking as its new Country Manager for the U.K. and Ireland.
DemystDatamakesEquifax data assets available on its marketplace in expansion of current partnership.
Fenergoearns recognition from Chartis Research in its RiskTech 100 2020 report as a category leader for Client Lifestyle Management and Know Your Customer.
RISQ Intelligent Software International and Compliywin finalist spots in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Global FinTech Hackcelerator.
Sensibillnamed a “Company to Watch” in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Awards.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
PlaidlaunchesInvestments to give developers and financial institutions the ability to build holistic views of customer investment accounts.
Equifaxforges strategic alliance with GIACT Systems.
PayPal COO Bill Ready to leave company at the end of the year to “pursue entrepreneurial interests” beyond PayPal.
CurrencyFairannounces its Come Home campaign offering Irish nationals living abroad the opportunity to win a €30,000 relocation package to return to Ireland.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
