Finovate Global

Finovate Global Europe: Competition, Profitability, and a Reckoning Year for Regulation

Finovate Global Europe: Competition, Profitability, and a Reckoning Year for Regulation
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, NCR Corporation, PayPal, Thought Leadership

Last week, Finovate Global looked at how key trends are shaping fintech innovation in the UK. This week, our Friday column crosses the channel to consider the most significant forces shaping fintech innovation on the Continent, especially among advanced industrial economies in the West and Baltic north.

In our examination of the UK, we highlighted navigating regulatory complexity, accelerating technological transformation, and meeting rising customer expectations as three key issues facing banks and financial services providers there. These issues are also important to markets in the advanced markets of Europe. However, there are additional themes that distinguish the concerns of bankers in developed Europe from their colleagues in both the UK and the US.

Profitability and Competitiveness in the Shadow of NIRP

One of the challenges that European banks are still dealing with is the legacy of negative interest rates. Just as the US economy was emerging from its post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC)-initiated ZIRP or zero interest rate policy, the EU was plunging into what would be a seven-year experiment in negative interest rates (NIRP). A response to the threat of deflation in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and, more acutely, the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, the EU’s NIRP policy lasted longer and was more extreme, with rates falling to -0.50%.

The impact on EU banks has been significant. Even as interest rates have normalized since NIRP ended in 2022, net interest income for EU banks has remained squeezed, impeding profitability. Additionally, European banks suffer from structural challenges to greater profitability that extend beyond the legacy of NIRP. Among them is one fundamental issue: there are a lot of banks in Europe, arguably too many, all chasing too few customers. Considered on a per capita basis, countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy have a very large number of banks and similar financial institutions relative to their populations. By comparison, the UK is significantly less “bank dense,” and even the US, which is often accused of having “too many banks,” is considered only moderately bank dense.

Along with excess capacity, issues of market fragmentation and high cost-to-income ratios all contribute to an environment in which achieving profitability as an EU bank remains a challenge. Banks struggling to make money often hesitate to make the necessary investments in technology that can help them reach new customers, access new markets, and offer new products and services.

A More Integrated Union? Overcoming Fragmentation to Enable Innovation

Both the EU and UK face challenges when it comes to digital transformation. But the differences between the two regions are significant and in some ways related to the issues of market fragmentation that plague EU bank profitability. When it comes to digital transformation and investing in technology, fragmentation and diversity between member states make the task more difficult and more expensive. Larger EU banks often have country- and product-specific legacy cores—sometimes even different cores built in multiple decades. These legacy cores not only fail to communicate well with each other, but also often exist in increasingly outdated mainframe environments. On the other hand, smaller banks and financial institutions in the EU often simply can’t afford major core replacements.

Uneven development and country-specific challenges often hold back fintech innovation in the EU. Even where the EU has effectively encouraged innovation, such as PSD2, which mandated open banking, adoption and implementation has varied widely by country. While open banking adoption rates in parts of Europe, such as the Baltics, are exceptional, many other countries, including Western European countries like France, Germany, and Spain, have had more modest rates of implementation. In this context, it will be interesting to see how the different countries embrace Wero, the new pan-European instant payments and wallet scheme currently being introduced throughout the EU. Here, countries like France, Germany, and Belgium are experiencing strong implementation and user adoption trends, while others, including Spain, Italy, and Switzerland are lagging.

How are some of the other enabling innovations—such as AI and DeFi—shaping banking and financial services in Western Europe? The European Banking Authority characterizes adoption of AI in its industry as “widespread but cautious.” Unsurprisingly, use cases in customer service are the most common, as is the use of AI to help in AML/CFT screening. In addition to customer service, streamlining internal workflows is another popular use case for AI among EU banks. Generally speaking, the larger markets of the EU—Germany, France, the Nordics—are experiencing the most robust use of AI in banking and financial services.

The story is similar with DeFi and blockchain technology adoption in banking: the larger countries tend to have more banks engaged in activities such as digital asset custody services, tokenization, and trade finance. One especially interesting development is the pursuit of a euro stablecoin, an effort led by a consortium of EU banks including ING, UniCredit, and SEB that is expected to lead to a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin launch later this year.

A Regulatory Year of Reckoning for Payments, Crypto, and AI in the EU

There is a variety of regulatory events coming this year. Some of them are the latest chapters in policies that were enacted last year, while others will make their compliance debut here in 2026. With regard to the former, regulations such as DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Regulation) which was passed in 2025 and deals with ICT, third-party, and operational risk, will continue to have an impact as institutions look to ensure compliance with resilience requirements for governance, testing, and incident reporting. Elements of the Basel III reforms, initially designed to help fortify banks in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, have been postponed from scheduled implementation this year to 2027. Speaking of postponements, another significant regulation, the Enhanced Operational Risk Reporting Deadline, has been moved forward to June of this year.

Other key regulatory developments to anticipate for EU banks and financial services providers include the rollout of new payment regulations including PSD3, which focuses on licensing and institutional requirements, and PSR (Payment Services Regulation), which deals with day-to-day operational issues. PSD3, in particular, will be an important mandate insofar as it seeks to correct a number of problems with the previous open banking directive, PSD2. PSD3 features significant guidelines and requirements with regard to fraud prevention and liability, and also paves the way for open finance.

What about the enabling technologies highlighted in the previous section? With regard to DeFi and crypto, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) comes fully into effect in 2026. Among the requirements are that cryptocurrency firms must have MiCA licenses to operate by the middle of the year. While this will address centralized service providers (CASPs) in the DeFi market, it does not specifically define the parameters of DeFi, including what services should be subject to MiCA. This conversation will be key for EU policy-makers in 2026.

As for AI, 2026 will be a big year, as well. Enacted in 2024, the EU AI Act will require AI systems designated as “high risk” to adhere to new guidelines with regards to creditworthiness, loan origination, risk evaluation, and automated decisioning. Additionally, the Act will require these systems to use strong governance, risk management documentation, transparency, human oversight, and quality control. Note that the Act categorizes AI systems by risk: minimal/no risk, which is virtually unregulated; limited risk, where compliance consists largely of transparency obligations; high risk, which is strictly regulated; and banned AI, which includes capabilities such as social scoring by governments and real-time remote biometric identification. Another key development is the launch of national AI regulatory sandboxes in each EU member state by August of this year, as mandated by the Act. Here, both Denmark and Spain have been credited as being ahead of the game in terms of getting these initiatives underway.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based Airwallex acquired Paynuri in bid to enter the South Korean market.
  • Indonesian fintech UangCermat raised $26.4 million in a combination of equity and credit facilities.
  • Vietnam announced that crypto firms that want to participate in the country’s pilot digital asset market will need a minimum capitalization of VND 10 trillion ($400 million).

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Payment software firm Akurateco forged a strategic partnership with African digital payments service provider Payaza.
  • Two South African fintechs—Johannesburg’s RelyComply and Cape Town’s Ozow—teamed up to enhance security for digital payments in the country.
  • The Africa Report profiled SycaPay, the first fintech to be licensed by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO).

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German KYB/KYC lifecycle management platform Sinpex raised €10 million in Series A financing.
  • Greece-based Epirus Bank teamed up with NCR Atleos to modernize and expand its ATM network.
  • Berlin-based climate fintech Cloover secured a $1.2 billion debt facility and raised $22 million in Series A funding.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • PayPal acquired Israel-based agentic commerce innovator Cymbio.
  • Financial infrastructure and payment solutions provider Montran opened a new office in Dubai.
  • Saudi Arabia’s EdfaPay, a payment infrastructure solutions company, secured approval to launch SmartPOS service in the Kingdom.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Indian digital payments giant PhonePe secured approval from the country’s financial regulator to launch an IPO, slated for mid-2026.
  • Pakistan-based fintech Neem raised an undisclosed sum in Pre-Series A funding in a round that featured participation from Epic Angels, the largest all-female investment collective in the world.
  • Kazakhstan enacted a range of new laws to regulate digital assets and to allow banks to expand into fintech, AI, and digital payments infrastructure.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Uruguayan cross-border payment platform dLocal teamed up with international AI device ecosystem company HONOR to launch local payments in Peru.
  • Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit launched Bybit Pay in Peru via integrations with the country’s Yape and Plin digital payment platforms.
  • UK-based stablecoin infrastructure company Noah partnered with Brazil-based digital wallet and investment platform Picnic.

Photo by Marco

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global UK: Regulatory Complexity, Tech Innovation, and Keeping Consumers Safe

Finovate Global UK: Regulatory Complexity, Tech Innovation, and Keeping Consumers Safe
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Temenos, Thought Leadership

Heading into 2026, there are some challenges to banks, fintechs, and financial services companies that are almost universal. How can firms navigate regulatory uncertainty? What is the most sustainable pace for the adoption of enabling technologies like blockchain and AI—much less basic modernization and digital transformation? What do consumers expect from banks and financial services providers in 2026 and how can these institutions do a better job of serving them?

With FinovateEurope coming to London in less than a month, this week’s Finovate Global will examine these issues in the context of fintech in the United Kingdom. Future editions will look at how these trends are playing out in Western and Southern Europe, the Baltics, as well as Central and Eastern Europe.

Navigating Regulatory Complexity: Balancing Innovation and Risk

More than a decade later, the consequences of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union continue to reverberate throughout the region: and its financial sector is no exception. In the years since Brexit, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has created and implemented its own financial regulations, including guidelines for the use of enabling technologies like crypto assets and AI, that diverge from those in the EU.

The UK’s Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA), for example, regulates stablecoins through use cases related to payments, whereas the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, is broader, including asset-based tokens as well as e-money tokens. Policies in both regions have been credited for their emphasis on consumer protections. Nevertheless, some have suggested that the UK’s approach, by comparison, is more focused on balancing innovation with risk management, in alignment with the UK’s efforts to position itself as an international hub for digital finance.

Unsurprisingly, this pattern is also apparent in the differing approaches the UK and the EU have taken toward AI regulation in financial services. Whereas the UK’s approach seeks to grant more space for financial institutions and fintechs to experiment with AI technologies and relies on existing regulators (i.e., the FCA) to ensure compliance, the EU approach, with its AI Act, puts a primary focus on risk management. The Act itself categorizes AI systems by “risk levels” (high, limited, minimal) and mandates risk assessments, transparency disclosures, and compliance with other technical standards.

Accelerating Technological Transformation: Early Embrace Leads Broad Adoption

The UK’s early embrace of open banking has helped the region not only develop a robust open banking and finance ecosystem, but also has fueled its embedded finance industry. The combination of an active regulator in the FCA, innovations such as standardized APIs, and the availability of regulatory sandboxes have helped the UK reach a point where analysts believe its embedded finance market alone could double from 6.5 billion pounds ($8.7 billion) in 2024 to 15.8 billion pounds ($21 billion) by 2029. This far surpasses the EU’s embedded finance growth expectations of $194.6 million by 2030.

While fraud and cybersecurity threats are as much a concern in Europe as they are in the UK, the UK’s status as a major international financial hub also means that it suffers from a disproportionately high rate of cybercrime and fraud. Even innovations like Faster Payments have had the unfortunate consequence of making certain types of fraud—such as Authorized Push Payments (APP) scams—easier for cybercriminals to pull off. It is true that the UK does an exceptional job when it comes to fraud reporting; in the UK tracking and analyzing fraud data is more centralized compared to the EU where this data is predictably more fragmented. However, this alone does not account for the difference in fraud rates.

One area of transformation that still haunts much of the UK banking and financial services sector is the reliance on outdated infrastructure. The persistence of outdated core systems significantly limits the ability of banks and other financial services providers to innovate and scale. Successfully modernizing and digitizing their systems is key to enabling them to take advantage of some of the enabling technologies noted here: from AI and blockchain technology to faster payments and tougher cybersecurity protections.

It is true that both the UK and the EU suffer from more mainframe-based core banking infrastructure and layers of middleware than is beneficial to either region’s financial sector. This is especially true when the less developed areas of both—the UK’s north and the EU’s east—are taken into account. What is interesting is that the demand for modernization is greater in the UK, where there is both strong pressure from regulators and from increasingly digitally savvy consumers. The dominance of a few major banks in the UK also puts significant constraints on modernization, and encourages a tendency to innovate and modernize “around the core” rather than engage in wholesale replacement.

Meeting Customer Expectations: Incentivize Innovation, Increase Engagement

The UK banking and financial services customer is sophisticated, digitally savvy, and is willing to experiment with new banking and fintech innovations across payments, lending, investments, and more. Because of this, the UK enjoys a relatively high trust in banks, creating a virtuous circle that, along with these other factors, incentivizes innovation in financial services and a higher degree of engagement among financial services consumers.

As such, it is no surprise that the chief concern for UK banking consumers is financial crime and fraud. If anything, it is refreshing that a population open to new technologies and methods in an area as delicate as finance is similarly focused on ensuring that these new financial products and services are secure. Moreover, because fraud fears are a consistent, but not necessarily dominant concern, it is worth noting that much of what drives concerns over financial crime involve recent developments such as faster payments and greater personalization. In this light, it is clear that the key to ensuring continued adoption of innovations in fintech and financial services—for individuals as well as businesses—lies in a path to adoption that is accessible, transparent, regulated, and safe.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • WeLab, a Pan-Asian fintech that operates a number of digital banks in the region, raised $220 million in a debt and equity round involving HSBC and Prudential.
  • Liminal Custody, a digital asset custody firm, joined the Fintech Association of Japan.
  • Temenos and Myanmar Citizens Bank partnered to fortify core banking operations and facilitate real-time payments.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Capital.com secured a license from Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA).
  • Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations de Côte d’Ivoire announced an investment in local fintech GREEN-PAY.
  • US fintech PayServices filed a lawsuit in US federal court against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over a failed banking and payments infrastructure modernization project.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Payment orchestration platform MoneyHash teamed up with Spare to promote open banking payments in the UAE.
  • Oman’s first licensed payment service provider Thawani Technologies inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Oman-based fintech Monak.
  • Floss, a fintech based in Bahrain, secured a $22 million credit facility arranged by UAE-based investment company Shorooq.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Leading banks in India announced a plan to deploy more than 17,000 ATMs across the country’s banking network to promote cash recycling.
  • Crowdfund Insider looked at how Pakistan’s fintech industry is dealing with a payments ecosytems that is still dominated by cash.
  • TBC Uzbekistan introduced its TBC Plus subscription service to expand its range of financial and lifestyle offerings.

Photo by Deeana Arts 🇵🇷

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Egypt: New Partnerships, New Products, New Markets

Finovate Global Egypt: New Partnerships, New Products, New Markets
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from Egypt.

Valu Launches Platform in Jordan

Egyptian fintech Valu has secured final approval from the Central Bank of Jordan to begin operations in Jordan. Valu was granted a Specialized Finance license that will enable the company to launch financial services in the Kingdom. Valu said it would being offering services in Q1 of 2026, providing consumers with flexible financing solutions across retail, healthcare, electronics, and education. Former Jordanian Minister of Investment and Digital Economy Mothanna Gharaibeh will serve as Chairman of the new entity, with fintech executive Mohammad Al Yousef serving as CEO.

“Securing final approval from the Central Bank of Jordan under a Specialized Finance license is a pivotal moment for Valu and a testament to the strength of our platform, governance model, and long-term vision for the market,” Valu Chief Market Expansion and Strategy Officer Habiba Naguib said. “Jordan is a key pillar in Valu’s regional expansion strategy.”

The decision to launch in Jordan reflects Valu’s determination to further financial inclusion and deepen its presence in the region. Valu secured initial regulatory clearance in 2025, the same year it was listed on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX), and strengthened its partnership with Amazon. Amazon purchased a 3.25% stake in the Egyptian fintech last spring.

“As we prepare to begin operations in the first quarter of the year 2026, our focus remains on driving financial inclusion through innovative, customer-centric products while investing in local talent and contributing meaningfully to the Jordanian financial ecosystem,” Naguib added.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Sheikh Zayed City, Egypt, Valu is a lifestyle-enabling fintech platform and a pioneer in offering Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) solutions in the MENA region. Valu offers flexible, customizable financing plans across more than 5,000 points of sale and more than 600 websites. The company also offers investment products, savings solutions, HR payroll services for businesses, and Sha2labaz, an instant cash redemption program.

Bank NXT Teams Up with IBM

Egypt-based Bank NXT has selected a trio of solutions from IBM to accelerate its digital banking transformation. In collaboration with Inspire for Solutions Development, the financial institution will implement IBM’s Instana, Turbonomic, and Cloud Pak solutions to enhance real-time observability, automated resource optimization, and advanced integration. The addition of all three technologies reflects Bank NXT’s integrated approach to boosting resilience, minimizing downtime, optimizing IT resources, and delivering better banking experiences for customers.

“This progress strengthens the reliability of the bank’s digital platform and boosts operational efficiency,” Bank NXT Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Tamer Seif said. “It accelerates service delivery and expands the range of digital solutions we offer, ultimately leading to a better customer experience and faster, more responsive service.”

IBM Instana will provide the financial institution with real-time observability across digital banking applications to support proactive monitoring and faster issue resolution. IBM Turbonomic offers automated, intelligent resource optimization across hybrid cloud environments, helping maximize IT utilization while keeping costs low and performance consistent. IBM Cloud Pak—both for Integration and for Business Automation—runs on Red Hat OpenShift to create a unified digital platform that streamlines operations, reduces complexity, and promotes faster development and deployment of new solutions and services.

“Our collaboration with IBM and Inspire for Solutions Development is a crucial part of the bank’s transformation strategy,” Seif said. “By adopting the DevOps model and improving our business automation capabilities, we have enhanced the flexibility of our technology infrastructure. This advance prepares us to integrate with fintech companies through an API-driven ecosystem, fostering a more open and innovative environment.”

Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Cairo, Bank NXT serves both retail and business customers with services ranging from basic bank accounts and loans to wealth management.

AFS Launches SoftPOS

Arab Financial Services (AFS) announced that its subsidiary in Egypt has secured a SoftPOS license from the country’s central bank. The approval makes AFS Egypt one of the first fintechs in Egypt to bring a fully licensed SoftPOS solution to market.

AFS’s SoftPOS solution transforms any NFC-enabled smartphone into a secure and fully functional payment terminal. The solution provides merchants with a fast, low-cost, and highly scalable option for accepting payments. The technology eliminates the need for expensive hardware and supports all types of contactless cards, making digital commerce more accessible for both merchants and their customers.

“Going live with SoftPOS in Egypt is a transformative milestone for AFS and the Egyptian market,” AFS CEO Samer Soliman said. “This fully licensed solution allows us to instantly turn any NFC-enabled Android smartphone into a secure payment terminal, eliminating hardware costs and making digital acceptance accessible to businesses of all sizes. We view this launch as the foundation, and our immediate plan is to continuously expand its feature set and introduce innovative use cases that will further accelerate financial inclusion and power a digitally empowered economy.”

AFS Egypt is a subsidiary of AFS, which was formed in 1984 to provide banks and merchants with payment services, solutions, and expertise. Today, the company is owned by 37 banks and financial institutions, serving more than 60 clients in 20+ countries throughout the MENA region. A leading digital payment solutions provider regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain, AFS boasts a portfolio that includes digital mobile wallets, merchant acquiring services, digital payroll solutions, contact centers, and more.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based digital nano-lending platform Daira announced a strategic partnership with Infinix Pakistan, itel Pakistan, and Tecno Mobile Pakistan to deliver Buy Now, Pay Later services.
  • Bangladesh’s largest private commercial bank Pubali Bank PLC and payments solution provider BPC teamed up to modernize the bank’s card management infrastructure.
  • Forbes profiled recent fintech developments in countries in “South Asia beyond India” including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • South Korean digital life insurance provider Kyobo Lifeplanet forged a partnership with cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com.
  • Japanese aggregated payment platform Netstars announced a pilot program to accept Circle’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin.
  • Airwallex acquired Indonesia fintech PT Skye Sab Indonesia as part of its expansion strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African fintech giant Flutterwave acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono.
  • Nigeria’s Sterling Bank announced plans to join Thunes’ Direct Global Network.
  • News Ghana looked at the growth of the country’s digital banking and fintech sectors.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Payments intrastructure provider Banking Circle joined the Czech Fintech Association.
  • Buy Now, Pay Later firm Zilch acquired Lithuanian lender Fjord Bank in bid to secure European banking license.
  • Czech digital banking solutions provider Finshape, which won Best of Show at FinovateEurope 2022, introduced new CEO Neil Budd.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Photo by J R

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global: A Salute to Our 2025 International Alums

Finovate Global: A Salute to Our 2025 International Alums
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

Before heading out for the holidays, Finovate Global shared a look back at the entrepreneurs and innovators we interviewed in 2025.

Today, as the new year begins in earnest for many, we are officially saluting those companies hailing from outside the US that made the journey to our fintech conferences in London, San Diego, and New York in 2025. As you can see, Finovate continues to attract innovative fintech talent from around the world to be a part of our unique events.

Want to join the roster? FinovateEurope is currently accepting applications for the upcoming February conference in London, February 10 and 11. Wherever you and your team call home, we are happy to learn more about you and your ready-to-demo innovation. Check out our FinovateEurope Apply to Demo page to learn more!

APIMatic

Founded in 2014, APIMatic is a developer experience platform for APIs that enables organizations to drive fast, widespread adoption of their APIs. The platform supports every stage of the API journey, from design and dynamic SDKs to code sample generation and end-to-end automation. Headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, APIMatic made its most recent appearance on the Finovate stage at FinovateSpring 2025.

AQ22

Founded in 2024, AQ22 offers an Agentic Orchestration Banking platform that enables banks to deploy AI agents to automate core banking processes and operations. Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, AQ22 made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Aurem

Founded in 2022, Aurem offers an intelligent operating system for retirement and wealth providers. Their platform helps institutions unify and optimize their products, processes, and data and deliver them globally in days. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Aurem made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025.

b-next

Founded in 1989, b-next is a corporate software provider specializing in capital markets trading surveillance and compliance solutions. Headquartered in Herford, Germany, b-next made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Cinareo Solutions

Founded in 2022, Cinareo Solutions offers a capacity planning platform that provides pro-active resource planning and financial analysis to cost-efficiently manage front- and back-office team members, as well as support staff. The company is a winner of Finovate’s Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship Program. Headquartered in Oshawa, Ontario, Cinareo Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025.

Copla

Founded in 2023, Copla is an ICT security and compliance automation platform that transforms paper compliance into real-world resilience. The platform provides the capabilities of a full cybersecurity and compliance department at a subscription cost. Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, Copla made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Deriskly

Founded in 2020, Deriskly provides AI-driven communication intelligence that deciphers customer feedback, automates compliance, and enhances trust by transforming complex regulations into actionable insights. Headquartered in London, England, Deriskly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Dimply

Founded in 2020, Dimply enables organizations to optimize operations, enhance customer engagement, uncover growth opportunities, and accelerate digital transformation. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Dimply most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2025.

Doshi App

Founded in 2021, Doshi App empowers financial institutions to deliver engaging, rewarding, and scalable financial education experiences that build money confidence. Headquartered in London, England, Doshi App most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2025.

ebankIT

Founded in 2014, ebankIT empowers financial institutions to innovate quickly, reduce costs, and deliver personalized services across all channels, accelerating growth and future-proofing their digital strategy. Headquartered in Porto, Portugal, the two-time Finovate Best of Show winner most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2025.

FintechOS

Founded in 2017, FintechOS enables banks and credit unions to launch any product faster, modernize customer experiences, and adapt quickly to market and regulatory changes—without replacing their core systems. Headquartered in London, England, FintechOS made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2025.

Homely

Founded in 2021, Homely is an AI-powered platform that empowers the journey to homeownership by combining education, spend management, and financial rewards in a hyper-personalized way. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Homely made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Hyperdesk

Founded in 2022, Hyperdesk provides an AI-powered search engine that helps credit unions and community banks grow their loans and deposits by better engaging with local businesses.  Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and Mexico City, Mexico, Hyperdesk made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025.

ID-Pal

Founded in 2016, ID-Pal facilitates business growth with AI-powered identity verification and AML screening, increasing operational efficiency and customer trust. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ID-Pal most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2025.

Intrepid Fox

Founded in 2024, Intrepid Fox leverages GenAI to make KYC 10x faster for banks and fintechs. The company’s technology streamlines onboarding by instantly processing documents and engaging in value-added interactions. Headquartered in London, England, Intrepid Fox most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2025.

Intuitech

Founded in 2018, Intuitech uses agentic networks to automate complex workflows, maximize efficiency, and elevate the customer experience for companies in financial services. Based in Budapest, Hungary, Intuitech made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Keyless

Founded in 2019, Keyless replaces outdated MFA with biometrics, improving UX and saving millions. One bank saved $3.5 million by eliminating call centers for OTP-based recovery. Based in London, England, Keyless won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025. The company returned to the Finovate stage later in the year for FinovateFall 2025.

LemonadeLXP

Founded in 2018, LemonadeLXP’s InsightAI improves staff and customer education while driving significant operational efficiencies. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, LemonadeLXP won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2022 and again at FinovateFall 2025.

MDOTM

Founded in 2015, MDOTM specializes in analytical and GenAI solutions for banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and wealth management companies. Headquartered in London, England, MDOTM made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Mifundo

Founded in 2022, Mifundo provides a data solution that offers cross-border credit information and standardized credit scores to help lower banks’ credit risk for international customers by up to 7x. Headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, Mifundo made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

MoneyPlanned

Founded in 2021, MoneyPlanned empowers institutions to offer intelligent, automated financial planning—boosting advisor efficiency, reducing cost-to-serve, and delivering personalized client experiences at scale. Based in Bengaluru, India, MoneyPlanned made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025.

Moonjelly

Founded in 2024, Moonjelly offers a scalable, transparent, and reliable GenAI platform that enables businesses to leverage AI agents and custom AI solutions to retrieve information, derive insights, and complete tasks. Headquartered in South Holland, Netherlands, Moonjelly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Offset Labs

Founded in 2022, Offset Labs (formerly Byne) enables companies to build secure LLM agents and host LLM applications within their secure perimeter (on premise or private cloud) to ensure safe handling of sensitive data and integration with internal systems. Headquartered in London, England, the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

OPL

Founded in 2015, OPL’s cash-flow-based lending helps banks transform their operations through agile lending, AI-driven insights, and intelligent credit underwriting—expanding credit access to SMEs. Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, OPL made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025.

PayIP

Founded in 2021, PayIP is a specialized fintech provider that helps banks and financial services companies optimize both interchange and Visa and Mastercard billing costs. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, PayIP made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Plumery

Founded in 2016, Plumery offers a cloud-native digital banking experience platform that empowers financial institutions to build distinctive and customer-centric mobile and online experiences. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Plumery made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Primer

Founded in 2023, Primer is an AI-powered financial analysis platform for investment professionals at banks, hedge funds, and asset management firms. Headquartered in London, England, Primer made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

PromoComply

Founded in 2024, PromoComply offers a comprehensive platform for financial promotions compliance. The company helps financial sector companies ensure their financial promotion campaigns are continuously compliant with UK FCA regulations. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, PromoComply made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

R34DY

Founded in 2019, R34DY helps organizations transform their business by taking the pain out of integrations and making it easy for business owners to create use cases and reduce time to market. Headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, R34DY won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025 and returned to the Finovate stage later in the year for FinovateFall 2025.

Regsearch AI

Founded in 2019, Regsearch AI offers a regulatory compliance solution that leverages AI agents to streamline compliance processes. Headquartered in Luxembourg, Regsearch AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Torus

Founded in 2021, Torus is a SaaS intelligence platform for banks and fintechs that enables them to enhance profits on card transactions by up to 50%. Headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, Torus most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2025.

Tweezr

Founded in 2024, Tweezr is an AI-powered developer assistant tailored for legacy environments that helps accelerate time-to-market and boost developer productivity. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tweezr won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Xaver

Founded in 2023, Xaver offers a sales platform that enhances advisory quality and efficiency for financial institutions by delivering an AI-enabled, personalized, omnichannel customer journey. Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, Xaver made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Commercial Bank of Dubai and Pay10 launched Open Finance services under the UAE’s Open Finance Initiative, AlTareq.
  • Middle East Economy looked at the potential for growth in the Oman fintech market.
  • The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) inked a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a pan African Gold bank.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Paytm secured approval from the Indian central bank, RBI to expand its payment aggregator license to include offline and cross-border transactions.
  • Freedom Bank Kazakhstan added eSIM services to its Freedom SuperApp courtesy of a partnership with Boxo.
  • VEON’s Mobilink Microfinance Bank launched Islamic banking operations in Pakistan.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Ecuadorean transactional network COONECTA teamed up with BPC to deploy the SmartVisa platform across 90 credit unions and 75 member institutions.
  • International IT solutions provider JMR Infotech joined the Caribbean Association of Banks (CAB) as a Service Member.
  • Zigi, the digital innovation unit of Guatemala’s Banco Industrial, expanded its partnership with core banking software provider Thought Machine.

Asia-Pacific

  • South Korea’s KakaoBank announced a deepened partnership with Indonesian digital bank Superbank.
  • Mastercard introduced its Open Finance Business Solutions offering in Australia.
  • Singapore-based fintech Fingular opened a new hub in Malaysia and launched a new Smart Limit financing solution.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Tech in Africa reviewed 2025 investment trends for startups in Africa, noting Nigeria’s lead in fintech spending.
  • Zawya profiled South African SME lender Bridgement.
  • Disrupt Africa looked at how Nigerian fintech Pay4Me is helping students make international payments.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Lithuanian regtech iDenfy introduced an automated identity verification app for Shopify that triggers ID verification checks on high-risk orders.
  • Romania’s Banca Centrală Cooperatistă CREDITCOOP deployed Allevo’s FINTP-Instant payments solution.
  • German savings and investment platform Raisin announced plans to enter the US market in 2026.

Photo by Saj Shafique on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global: Our Top Interviews of 2025

Finovate Global: Our Top Interviews of 2025
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Boku, Cinareo Solutions, Dimply, EverC, Finovate Global, List series, Torus

Our Finovate Global interview series provides deep dives and extended conversations about fintech innovation around the world—especially in countries outside of the US. This year, we have featured seven different discussions on fintech topics ranging from payments and regtech to Islamic finance and workforce management solutions. Click the headlines below to access the interviews.

If you are a Finovate alum headquartered outside the US and would like to share your story with our readers, then consider being a part of our Finovate Global interview series in 2026. Reach out to me at [email protected]—we’d love to have you join us!

With that, we hope you enjoy these conversations and maybe even find one that you might have missed. And thanks to Jac, Karen, Kirill, Stav, Stuart, Maya, and Dilshod for being a part of our Finovate Global interviews of 2025.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German fintech Trade Republic reached a valuation of €12.5 billion following a €1.2 billion secondary share sale.
  • Mastercard unveiled its WhatsApp chatbot for users in Azerbaijan.
  • Deutsche Bank has gone live with digital wallet and payments app, Wero.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Israel VC firm Viola Ventures launched a pair of new funds totaling $250 million to invest in Israeli fintechs innovating in AI and fintech.
  • UAE-based Lucid Capital raised $2.5 million to expand AI-powered algorithmic trading.
  • PayTabs Egypt teamed up with Edita Trade, a subsidiary of Edita Food Industries, to integrate a unified cash collection and payments solution across the company’s distribution network.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Bangalore, India-based tax management infrastructure startup Prosperr.io raised $4 million in seed funding.
  • Google introduced its UPI-linked credit card in India.
  • Unlimit secured final authorization from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate with a payment aggregator-cross border license.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican fintech Plata secured a $500 million line of credit courtesy of an arrangement with Nomura Securities International.
  • Payment infrastructure company Juspay launched Visa’s Click to Pay in Brazil.
  • Contxto looked at recent venture capital investment trends in Latin America, with an emphasis on the rebound in fintech investing.

Asia-Pacific

  • Fintech holding company Fingular established a new hub in Malaysia.
  • Invoice Lifecycle Management company Basware acquired Australian AP automation vendor Redmap.
  • A debate over which entities can issue KRW stablecoins will determine how the digital asset is regulated in South Korea, CCN reported.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Payments, cash management, and capital markets solutions company Montran opened its African regional headquarters in Kenya.
  • Zawya profiled South African SME financing company Bridgement.
  • Ghama officially legalized cryptocurrency trading as the country’s Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill is passed.

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Sweden: Tap to Pay, Pay by Bank, and Investments in Nordic Fintech

Finovate Global Sweden: Tap to Pay, Pay by Bank, and Investments in Nordic Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Klarna, Salt Edge, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features news from fintechs headquartered in Sweden.

Klarna Brings Tap to Pay to 14 Markets in Europe

Swedish digital bank and payment provider Klarna has introduced Tap to Pay across 14 markets in Europe. The new features bring flexible payments to the brick-and-mortar retail world at scale, and help to transform Klarna’s app into a contactless wallet ready for everyday use.

“Tap to Pay brings us closer to our vision of Klarna being everywhere for everything,” Klarna Chief Product & Design Officer David Fock said. “Now you can set up a flexible payment plan and tap to pay in seconds, all inside the Klarna app. It makes everyday shopping moments significantly smoother for our Klarna customers across Europe, giving them even more flexibility and choice at checkout.”

At a time when 80% of shopping in Europe is still conducted in physical stores, Klarna’s Tap to Pay solution offers consumers the seamless experience of online commerce when shopping at brick and mortar retailers. Tap to Pay is currently live for Klarna customers in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden.

Klarna’s Tap to Pay announcement follows the introduction of the company’s stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, in late November. Klarna is the first bank to launch a stablecoin on Tempo, the new independent blockchain purpose-built for payments, that was started by Stripe and Paradigm. Currently live on Tempo’s testnet, KlarnaUSD is scheduled to launch on Tempo’s mainnet in 2026.

“With 114 million customers and $118 billion in annual GMV, Klarna has the scale to change payments globally: with Klarna’s scale and Tempo’s infrastructure, we can challenge old networks and make payments faster and cheaper for everyone,” Klarna Co-Founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said. “Crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale. This is the beginning of Klarna in crypto, and I’m excited to work with Stripe and Tempo to continue to shape the future of payments.”

A Finovate alum since 2012, Klarna is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Tink Brings Pay by Bank Top-Ups to Fidelity International Investors

As Senior Analyst Julie Muhn reported earlier this week, Fidelity International has partnered with Sweden-based open banking platform Tink. The partnership will enable Fidelity to offer account top-ups via Pay by Bank, making it easier for investors to fund their ISAs, SIPPs, cash management, and general investment accounts.

A two-time Finovate Best of Show winner that was acquired by Visa in 2021, Tink enables financial institutions, fintechs, and merchants to leverage financial data to design and create personalized financial management tools, products, and services. With a single API, Tink empowers its customers to access aggregated financial data, use smart financial services, including risk insights and account verification, and build personal financial management tools.

Pay by Bank is one of the fastest-growing use cases for open banking. With analysts anticipating that total open banking users will top 645 million worldwide in 2029—a 3.5x increase from 2025’s 183 million users—options such as Pay by Bank are likely to become increasingly widespread as a modern, secure payment alternative with reduced friction.

“Pay by Bank represents the next evolution of open banking payments, delivering a fast, secure way to pay directly from your bank account,” Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin said. “As adoption accelerates, we’re thrilled to see leading institutions like Fidelity put open banking at the heart of their payment experiences to make topping up investment accounts more seamless.”

Founded in 2012, Tink is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The fintech offers 3,000+ connections to the major banks across Europe, processes more than 10 billion transactions a year, and boasts 10,000 developers using its platform. Co-Founder Daniel Kjellén is CEO.

Swedish VC Incore Invest Secures €15 Million Second Closing

Incore Invest, an investment firm based in Stockholm, has raised €15 million in a second closing of its Incore Invest II fund. The fundraising brings the fund’s total capital to €40 million to help SaaS and fintech companies throughout Europe grow.

“Incore Invest’s strategy has always been to back proven tech companies with strong growth potential,” Incore Invest Founder and CEO Nicolai Chamizo said in a statement. “Investors’ continued confidence in Incore Invest is very encouraging and with this second close, the round is fully equipped with capital to back the most promising European technology companies. It allows us to continue identifying and supporting the next generation of category-defining technology companies shaping the future of the industry.”

Incore Invest’s successful fundraising comes at a time when a number of European venture capital firms, especially those that have targeted growth-stage or early-stage technology companies, are raising or closing new funds. For example, four funds alone—Backed VC, Notion Capital, Armilar Venture Partners, and henQ—have raised more than €300 million in capital combined this year.

Among the companies in Incore Invest’s portfolio are several of innovative fintechs including Brite, a Swedish payments platform that leverages open banking to process instant payments; Mynt, a Swedish fintech that simplifies expense management via smart company cards; and Froda, a Swedish fintech and embedded finance company.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Kenyan fintech Jahazii raised $400,000 to provide earned wage access and payroll infrastructure technology for Africa’s informal economy.
  • Wise secured conditional regulatory approval to go live in South Africa.
  • Business AM looked at how Nigeria’s FairMoney Microfinance Bank expanded beyond digital lending into a full-service bank.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Embedded finance infrastructure company YouLend announced a strategic partnership with digital financial management solution Qonto to help the firm enter the German market.
  • Salt Edge teamed up with Romanian financial management platform, Finlayer, to bring open banking to small businesses in the country.
  • Former Polish President Andrzej Duda joined the board of fintech firm ZEN.COM.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Developed in partnership with Mawarid Finance, UAE-based fintech platform Huru launched its microfinance solution, Quick Cash.
  • Egypt’s Money Fellows topped $1.5 billion in transactions.
  • Israel’s Haaretz profiled Matan Bar, CEO of Israel-based fintech Melio.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Financial Times interviewed Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, on the rise of Indian fintech.
  • The Express Tribune looked at the current state of fintech innovation in Pakistan.
  • India’s Paytm launched a new AI-powered travel app, Paytm Checkin.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Episode Six forged a strategic partnership with Mexico’s Xepelin to launch digital financial products in the country.
  • São Paulo, Brazil-based fintech Cumbuca launched this week to help international companies participate in the Brazilian payments market.
  • Colombian fintech Movii entered the Peruvian market this week.

Asia-Pacific

  • Vietnamese neobank Circle Asia Technologies launched its AI-powered PayLater card, in partnership with Pismo and Visa.
  • South Korea’s NH NongHyup Bank conducted a blockchain-based cross-border payments pilot project.
  • Thunes secured In-Principle Approval (IPA) for a variation on its Major Payment Institution license (MPI) from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Photo by CARTIST on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Ireland: Building Personalized CX in Finance with Jac Dunne of Dimply

Finovate Global Ireland: Building Personalized CX in Finance with Jac Dunne of Dimply
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Dimply, Finovate Global

How can banks and other financial institutions offer their customers dynamic, AI-powered experiences that provide better, faster, more personalized solutions and services compared to the generic, static interactions of the past?

In this extended conversation, Finovate Global talks with Jac Dunne, Founder and CEO of Dimply, about what her company is doing to help financial services companies design, deploy, and optimize embedded journeys for their customers.

Dimply offers a no-code solution that enables non-technical teams to transform data into hyper-personalized, embedded journeys in apps, websites, portals, and more. Dimply’s technology combines data orchestration, personalization, and seamless integration to help firms boost engagement, enhance trust, and deliver customer value.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Dimply was founded in 2020. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 and subsequently demonstrated its technology before Finovate audiences at FinovateEurope 2025 and FinovateFall 2025.

What problem does Dimply solve and who does it solve it for?

Jac Dunne: Financial institutions hold vast amounts of customer data, but struggle to translate this into experiences people find helpful. The gap is widening. Customers now expect the personalization they experience with consumer apps, but financial services organizations move too slowly to meet these expectations.

The problem sits at the intersection of strategy and execution. Product managers understand what customers need. Designers know how experiences should work. But both depend on engineering teams to make anything real. Simple changes take quarters. Testing ideas means filing tickets. By the time something launches, priorities have shifted.

Dimply gives product practitioners the ability to build and deploy customer experiences without engineering dependencies. Product managers, designers, marketing specialists, and business analysts work directly on the platform to create journeys across web and mobile.  We empower them to launch in weeks instead of quarters. Changes go live in hours, not development cycles.

We solve this for banks, insurers, wealth managers, and pension providers. These are organizations where engineering bottlenecks prevent product teams from acting on what they learn about customers. Where the backlog of journey improvements grows faster than IT resources to address them.

Tell us more about Dimply’s primary customers? How do you reach them?

Dunne: Dimply’s primary customers are financial institutions such as global banks and leading insurers, whose key stakeholders are Product Managers and Digital Transformation teams. These customers are primarily located in the B2B enterprise space and are seeking to solve the pain point of slow, costly digital CX development due to complex legacy IT systems and onerous development cycles. Dimply enables speed to market by letting teams build, manage, personalize, and embed experiences directly into their own infrastructure, or as a stand-alone solution, if required.

Dimply reaches these customers through a direct, B2B enterprise sales model involving direct engagement with C-suite and product leadership, heavy participation in fintech industry events, and building strategic partnerships with core technology providers, consulting and system integration firms who can work with Dimply as a solution during large-scale digital transformation projects.

What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Dunne: Financial services used to move faster before the weight of legacy systems, compliance layers, and endless IT queues—teams turned customer insights into action quickly. Product people built experiences. That speed has been lost.

We spent many years both working inside and collaborating with these organizations: major insurers, pension providers, and banks. Our founding team observed brilliant product managers drafting requirement documents rather than building journeys. Designers handed off static mock-ups only after understanding the complete flow. Business analysts documented processes they should have managed end-to-end.

This pattern repeated everywhere. Teams had data showing where customers struggled. They knew which experiences would succeed. They understood what needed to change. Then they filed tickets, waited for sprints, and competed with other priorities. By the time anything launched, the market had already moved.

This gap between knowing and doing frustrated everyone. Not because people lacked skill or the ideas were wrong, but because the tools forced the wrong workflow. Technical teams became bottlenecks for non-technical problems. Simple changes took quarters, and testing ideas required development resources.

Frustrated with this reality, we decided to build something better. Something that would give product practitioners the same level of autonomy that software engineers have. What started as a journey flow builder has evolved into a complete financial experience platform (FXP). Teams describe what they want, and the system builds it. AI handles the technical complexity. Product managers own outcomes without engineering dependencies.

We don’t think of Dimply as a better tool. We think of it as a better way to build financial service experiences. One where the people closest to customers have the power to act on what they learn.

We care deeply about the quality of our work. Every feature ships purpose-built for financial services. Our background gave us conviction about the problem. Our experience gave us clarity about the solution. Financial services deserve tools built for modern customers’ expectations.

What role do enabling technologies like AI play in helping you empower teams to build compelling, dynamic experiences for customers?

Dunne: AI accelerates two parts of the experience creation process:

First, building journeys. Teams describe what they want in natural language, and the AI generates working experiences. A product manager explains the flow of a pension calculator in plain English. The AI produces the complete journey with conditional logic, branching paths, and data integrations. No templates, no technical knowledge required.  AI has reduced the amount of technical expertise and training needed for Dimply Hub for product owners and designers to use it. Teams test ideas in minutes instead of weeks.

The AI learns from every journey built in the system. Results improve as more experiences are created. Complex workflows with conditions, loops, and parallel paths emerge from conversational descriptions. This means product practitioners spend time refining customer outcomes rather than wrestling with tools.

Second, personalizing experiences. AI nodes can sit inside customer journeys and adapt what people see based on their circumstances. These nodes generate facts in real time, which can be used to tailor the experience.

The combination removes friction; business teams build faster, and customers receive experiences tailored to their financial situation and behavior. AI handles the technical complexity while product practitioners focus on outcomes.

Can you talk more about the connection between of AI and delivering greater personalization?

The demand for personalization and customer engagement solutions is paramount, and Dimply is perfectly positioned to cater to that. Our personalization extends far beyond basic demographic segmentation or transaction categorization. We are developing what we call intelligent, behavioral personalization that takes into account not just what customers have, but how they behave, their financial goals, and their emotional connection with money, all in real-time.

Our AI continuously learns and adapts in real-time. If someone’s financial situation changes, our AI detects these shifts and modifies the experience to suit their new circumstances.

The outcome is that we can iterate and deliver new insights, content, and tools specifically tailored to each customer’s situation and goals. This transforms generic financial services into personally relevant experiences that encourage genuine engagement and promote financial well-being.

At Finovate Fall, Dimply demoed its Dimply Hub. Can you tell us a little about the solution and how the demo was received at the conference?

Dunne: What we demoed was our AI Builder in planning mode.  This allowed us to describe a journey in conversational language and watch the platform construct the experience. The demo showed someone requesting a protection journey for high-net-worth clients, with all the logic and recommendations. The AI generates the complete flow with all the business logic intact. 

After the demo, we got great engagement with high-ambition banks, particularly around how they can change their current workflows using Dimply.

Can you tell us about a particularly interesting deployment or feature of your technology?

Dunne: AIB Life reaches 3.2 million customers through embedded journeys in their AIB retail mobile banking app. The deployment demonstrates how the platform works at scale within existing digital channels.

The fact engine sits on top of AIB Life’s core systems, stitching together data from policy administration, CRM, and transaction history. This creates real-time customer profiles without moving sensitive data. When someone logs into the app, the platform knows their complete financial picture and serves a personalized experience accordingly. Journeys adapt dynamically. Life events trigger recalibration.

Dimply has racked up number of awards and recognitions from impressive forums, including Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50. What are these organizations seeing and liking about Dimply?

Dunne: They appreciate how we embody innovation, efficiency, and customer-centricity through our award-winning platform, particularly our speed-to-market and our ability to support any type of financial data and deliver truly personalized customer experiences, enabling us to support all areas of financial services.

Our platform is proven, live, and deployed within major financial institutions, driving measurable strategic impact in the real world. Our journey illustrates not just where we’ve been but where we’re headed; towards a future where financial services are more accessible, engaging, and secure for everyone, everywhere.

Ireland is one of those countries that seems to produce a disproportionately high amount of fintech innovation for its small population. Do you agree?  

Dunne: Yes, the talent, technical agility, regulatory maturity, and global reach from its open borders are why, in my opinion, Ireland is considered a world leader in producing scalable, enterprise-grade fintech.

Ireland’s fintech sector punches above its weight because it combines a large, mature financial services sector with a world-class founder, technology, and talent ecosystem, together with the unique geopolitical advantage of being the EU’s English-speaking gateway. This, coupled with a landscape of strong investment partners to support innovation and growth, significantly contributes to the vast fintech innovation here in Ireland.

What accounts for that success?

Dunne: Ireland’s strategic geography and EU membership, combined with an English-speaking, common law legal system, simplify international scaling and business operations.

We offer an attractive tax and business environment alongside a mature financial services industry that supports new fintechs to build on existing infrastructure. Bolstering this foundation is the availability of a skilled workforce, the co-location of major technology players, and proactive investment and support for innovation and R&D from state agencies

The ecosystem benefits from a strong mix of experienced startups and multinationals, access to global capital, and regulatory openness to innovation, fostering a culture where firms are built to focus globally rather than just domestically.

What is the fintech scene like in Ireland right now?

Dunne: The fintech sector in Ireland is currently dynamic, resilient, and expanding, establishing the country as a key international fintech hub. Over the past five years, the sector has attracted significant investment, and despite the global slowdown in fintech investment, Ireland—in 2024, according to KPMG Ireland—experienced over 290% growth in investment compared to the previous year, continuing to demonstrate growth and resilience.

What can we look forward to seeing from Dimply in the months to come?

Dunne: Our near-term strategic focus is twofold: Product-Led Growth (PLG) and the rapid advancement of our AI capabilities. We are implementing the PLG model to ensure our technology is easily accessible and immediately beneficial, effectively putting the platform into the hands of as many people as possible. Importantly, we are also intensifying our investment in AI, using cutting-edge machine learning to deepen personalization, improve predictive insights, and automate complex financial journeys.

This combined approach—maximizing distribution through PLG and delivering unparalleled intelligence through AI—is central to our mission: to enable demonstrably better, more confident financial decisions for every user.

Photo by Gregory DALLEAU on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features the latest fintech news from Egypt.

Fawry and Wadi Degla Partner to Offer Integrated Digital Payments

A strategic partnership between leading Egyptian fintech Fawry and real estate development company Wadi Degla Developments will bring integrated digital payment solutions to Wadi Degla customers. Wadi Degla will leverage Fawry’s online payment gateway and POS network, simplifying and accelerating payment processes, to enhance the customer experience and help drive digitization in the real estate sector.

The alliance fortifies Fawry’s status as a trusted technology partner for the country’s real estate developers and underscores Wadi Degla’s determination to increase operational efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. The partnership will also feature new value-added solutions including the Fawry Business Corporate Card and digital loyalty programs.

“This partnership marks a key milestone in our mission to drive digital transformation across Egypt’s vital real estate sector,” Fawry Chief Business Officer Heba El Awady said. “At Fawry, we aim to empower developers to provide modern, integrated payment services that cater to the growing demand for digitization. We continuously strive to develop innovative solutions tailored to the evolving needs of various sectors, and our collaboration with Wadi Degla Developments is a prime example of constructive partnerships between technology and real estate, enhancing operational efficiency and creating tangible value for customers.”

Headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, and founded in 2008, Fawry offers a digital transformation and fintech platform that delivers more than 1,186 financial services to consumers and businesses. With more than 29 million customers across Egypt, Fawry is the country’s largest payment network, processing more than three million operations a day. Ashraf Sabry is founder and CEO.

Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures Makes Second Non-Egyptian Investment

Our last look at fintech in Egypt highlighted the launch of a new $31.5 million fund from HSBC Egypt that is dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the fintech sector. Today, there’s another Egypt-based fund making fintech headlines: Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures, which just made its second investment outside of Egypt and its first for a Moroccan fintech with its funding of Chari.

Founded by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj and backed by Y Combinator, Chari offers a fintech platform that transforms thousands of small neighborhood shops into access points for digital payments and other financial services. Chari’s payment institution license enables the company to empower small businesses to serve as financial hubs for their communities. Chari brings digitization to Morocco’s informal economy, helping businesses quickly access working capital, and embedding financial services including insurance and payment options into merchants’ daily operations. Launched in 2020, the company has onboarded more than 20,000 retailers to its platform.

“Our investment in Chari is a milestone for DisrupTech,” Managing Partner at DisrupTech Ventures Mohamed Okasha said. “Chari is redefining how financial services are delivered at the grassroots level. By empowering small shops to act as financial gateways, Chari is creating the foundation for a new, inclusive fintech infrastructure in Morocco. This is exactly the kind of transformative model we seek to support across Africa.”

The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The funding is part of Chari’s Series A extension round, which included raising $12 million and featured leadership from SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. Along with its investment, DisrupTech Ventures will also join Chari’s board of directors.

DisrupTech Ventures is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 2021, the company is the country’s leading fintech venture capital firm with an emphasis on early stage fintech and fintech-enabled startups.

Egypt’s Students Top Arab Fintech Talent Competition

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)’s FinYology initiative introduced the third edition of its FinTech Got Talent 2025 competition this year. In partnership with the Federation of Egyptian Banks (FEB) and the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI), the fintech talent competition seeks to identify and support fintech innovation among university students.

This year’s competition was won by ESLSCA University for its mobile app, Tapay, that transforms an ordinary smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. Taking second place was the team from the British University in Egypt (BUE), which offered a financial literacy app called Money Adventure, that leverages gamification to help children learn about the importance of learning how to manage their money. Coming in third was the team from Cairo University, which presented AgriDawar, a digital platform that uses e-payment technology and e-wallets to connect farmers to buyers of agricultural surplus residues.

All three teams represented Egypt at the Arab FinTech Challenge 2025 last month, with the ESLSCA University and BUE teams again taking first and second, respectively, topping teams from universities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Morocco.

FinTech Got Talent was initially launched in 2024 as part of the FinYology initiative. This effort is designed to integrate academic learning with hands-on fintech applications. FinYology includes more than 30 Egyptian universities, has supported more than 900 student-led projects, and featured the participation of 19,000 students. Eighteen partner banks have also provided continuing backing to the FinYology initiative.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian fintech Kanastra secured $30 million in Series B funding for its capital markets infrastructure and services offering.
  • Binance launched QR code payments in Argentina.
  • Brazil’s central bank announced new capital and compliance rules for fintechs.

Asia-Pacific

  • Japan’s JCB International partnered with Agoda to enhance digital travel payments throughout Asia.
  • Hong Kong’s ZA Bank launched its StockBack x ZA Card, the first Visa card in Hong Kong to offer shares of stock as a purchase reward.
  • ISH acquired Sydney, Australia-based spend management software company ProSpend.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Financial services platform Mukuru teamed up with AI-powered banking technology provider JUMO to launch new fast loan solution.
  • UAE-based fintech Optasia raised $345 million in its IPO on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa.
  • Kenya’s mobile money market reached 91% penetration this year according to the Communications Authority of Kenya, a jump from 77% penetration last year.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg, Germany-based fintech Atrya locked in €1.5 million in funding for its stablecoin payment network.
  • Estonian fintech Creem raised €1.8 million in pre-seed funding for its “programmable finance layer” the helps startups manage payments, taxes, compliance, and more.
  • Embedded financing platform YouLend and business management platform Tide take their partnership to the German market.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by David McEachan

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends

Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Coinbase, Finovate Global, Nubank, Salt Edge, Tink

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech news from Canada.

Wealthsimple secures $750 million at valuation of $10 billion

Canadian fintech Wealthsimple has raised CAD $750 million at a post-money valuation of CAD $10 billion. The funding round includes both a CAD $550 million primary offering and a secondary offering of up to CAD $200 million. Dragoneer Investment Group and GIC led the round, which also featured participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) as well as existing investors Power Corporation of Canada, IGM Financial Inc. ICONIQ, Greylock, and Meritech.

“This raise reflects deep confidence from new and returning investors in our mission and our role as a defining Canadian company,” Wealthsimple Co-Founder and CEO Michael Katchen said. “We were intentional in choosing partners committed to the long-term future of Wealthsimple. These are well-respected, global leaders with a proven track record (of) scaling category leaders, and who believe in our vision for the future of financial services.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Wealthsimple offers a suite of low-cost financial solutions to help Canadians build wealth. The company’s platform features self-directed investing, managed portfolios, digital asset investing, tax filing, advisor services, and more in a single, integrated experience. Wealthsimple serves three million Canadians and has $100 billion in assets under administration.

“Few companies have achieved what Wealthsimple has in the last few years,” Dragoneer Investment Group Partner Christian Jensen said. “The Wealthsimple team has built an expansive financial platform that millions of Canadians trust. They’re not just participating in Canada’s financial services industry; they’re redefining it.”

Earlier this year, Wealthsimple unveiled a waitlist for its first credit card, which topped 300,000 Canadians in the first six months. The company’s fundraising news follows a profitable 2024 and current profitability in 2025, as well. The capital infusion will help Wealthsimple accelerate its product roadmap in investing, spending, and credit, as well as support the company’s efforts to expand its platform.

Fintech investment slows in H1 ahead of potential rebound in H2

Speaking of investment and Canadian fintech, KPMG’s Canada Fintech Investment Report is a great way to get up to speed on the investment trends that are supporting fintech innovation in Canada. The report was published in August, and focuses on investment trends from the first half of 2025.

While the report indicates that Canadian fintech investment fell significantly compared to international trends, the report authors suggest that the first half of 2025 represented a normalization in the wake of record high levels of investment in 2024. Areas of investor interest include AI, especially agentic AI, and digital assets, which represent a continuation of trends from 2024. A more positive regulatory tone toward cryptocurrencies—especially stablecoins—in the US has been credited for this rebound in interest in digital assets. The report also noted some interest in quantum computing among insurers.

“Last year was exceptionally strong for fintech investment, thanks to two major take-private deals,” Dubie Cunningham, a Partner in KPMG in Canada’s Banking and Capital Markets Practice, explained. “Since then, investment activity has dropped to more stable levels. In fact, when you consider the economic shifts such as tariffs affecting global trade, investment in the first half was quite robust compared to historical levels. There’s still a lot of dry powder ready to be deployed by investors, but they are demonstrating more selective behavior than in previous years. They’re looking for quality companies and we’re seeing longer tails for maturing mid-to-large stage private equity deals.”

Read the full report.

Coming to Canada: Atlanta’s Rainforest and Lebanon’s Whish Money

This week reminds us of how attractive Canada is to a growing number of fintechs around the world. Rainforest, a embedded payments company based in Atlanta, Georgia, announced recently that it is looking to expand to Canada. The company, founded in 2022, secured $29 million in funding in September, taking its total capital raised to $57.5 million. The idea of expanding to Canada, as Rainforest Founder and CEO Joshua Silver explained to Global Atlanta, represents more than a regional expansion for the company itself. The move would also help Rainforest’s platform client expand their offerings in a new market.

Rainforest specializes in payments partnerships with software providers that target businesses in underserved industry sectors. These software providers themselves are an underserved segment of the industry—processing $50 million to $2 billion in annual payments. Rainforest offers an embedded payments solution that enables software platforms to provide a robust payments experience for their end merchants without having to register as a payment facilitator with card networks.

Hailing from even farther away than the Peach State where Rainforest resides is Whish Money. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and regulated by the country’s central bank, Whish Money announced this week that it had secured financial services licenses in Canada. The regulatory approvals are the first for the company outside of the MENA region, and is part of a global expansion that includes entering markets in the US, the UK, the EU, and Australia.

“Securing our Canadian license is a monumental step that validates our compliant, customer-focused model and sets the foundation for our international expansion,” Whish Money board chairman Toufic Koussa said. “This move is about more than just entering a new market; it’s about strategically connecting high-diaspora communities with reliable financial infrastructure, beginning with North America. We are committed to building a regulated, transparent global ecosystem that truly serves our users.”

Whish Money offers a range of digital financial services including payroll, fund transfers, and billpay. Founded in 2019, the company’s e-wallet, money remittance, and e-distribution platform has a user base of more than 1.5 million. The company’s global expansion is being supported by partnerships with companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Ria, and Terrapay.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based fintech startup ZAR raised $13 million for its technology that enables consumer to convert cash into stablecoins.
  • Indian fintech infrastructure company Falcon announced a partnership with technology consulting firm Tech Mahindra.
  • Alipay+ and HUMO, Uzebekistan’s national payment system, teamed up to facilitate cross-border payments.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Blockchain infrastructure and cryptocurrency provider Binance unveiled QR code payments in Argentina
  • Kueski and dLocal team up to bring Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services to merchants in Mexico.
  • Nubank and OpenAI partnered to launch ChatGPR Go in Brazil to give individuals greater access to ChatGPT’s advanced capabilties at a lower cost.

Asia-Pacific

  • Remittance provider Viamericas partnered with Dong Phuong Money Transfer to expand access to remittance services throughout Vietnam.
  • Japanese fintech JPYC launched the country’s first yen-denominated stablecoin.
  • Malaysian fintech Instapay earned a spot on CB Insights’ Global Fintech 100.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech SME Snapshot launched updated version of its business management dashboard.
  • Nigeria’s Flutterwave partnered with Polygon to launch a stablecoin payment network across 34 African countries.
  • Kenya’s Choice Bank teamed up with Safaricom to power cross-border money transfers.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Coinbase and Tink teamed up to bring Pay by Bank crypto payments to customers in Germany.
  • Lithuanian regtech IDenfy partnered with Australian remittance service provider J Forex Money Transfer.
  • Finlayer and Salt Edge annnounced a partnership to bring open banking to small and medium-sized businesses in Romania.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabian Buy Now Pay Later firm Tabby boosted its valuation to more than $4.5 billion in the wake of a secondary share sale.
  • Israel-based Viola Credit closed its third credit fund at $2 billion, topping its original target of $1.5 billion.
  • Lebanon-based fintech Whish Money secured financial services licenses in Canada.

Photo by Harrison Haines

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Mexico: Plata Doubles Valuation; Revolut, SumUp Announce Expansion; and More!

Finovate Global Mexico: Plata Doubles Valuation; Revolut, SumUp Announce Expansion; and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global examines recent fintech news from Mexico.

Earlier this month, ResearchAndMarkets.com published its Mexico Embedded Finance Databook Report for 2025. The 230-page report noted that the embedded finance market in Mexico is expected to reach more than $18 billion this year and top $22 billion by the end of 2030. Among the key takeaways from the report is the increasing traction of embedded credit products such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and the growth of embedded payments in mobility, food delivery, and social commerce driven by growing smartphone use and government support for digital, real-time payments options. Embedded finance solutions such as lending are enabling non-fintech businesses in Mexico to leverage APIs and BaaS to expand their offerings, the report notes. This is helping bring more financial services to underserved communities in the country. It is also creating greater competition for companies in both the lending and payments spaces.

Mexican Fintech Plata Double Valuation on Latest $250 Million Fundraise

Mexican digital financial platform Plata has secured $250 million in new equity funding. The round, which includes both a primary equity raise and a secondary equity transaction, was led by Kora and featured participation from Moore Strategic Ventures, Audio Ventures, Spice Expeditions, Hedosophia, as well as several US and European family offices. The funding builds on an earlier investment by Televisa-Univision and boosts Plata’s valuation to $3.1 billion.

“The growth we have achieved in such a short time demonstrates a clear strategy and a shared conviction: build a strong institution from its foundations,” Plata CEO and Co-Founder Neri Tollardo said. “This transaction reflects investors’ confidence, the strength of our technological model, and the talent we have assembled. We set out to create a digital bank built on innovation, operational excellence, compliance, and efficiency—and today, we are seeing the results of that effort.”

Plata received its banking license in December 2024 and is waiting for authorization to begin banking operations. The company boasts its own technological and operational infrastructure, including a core banking system that enables a fully digital, branchless model with automated risk management and 24/7 personalized customer service. Over the past 30 months, Plata has topped the two million mark in terms of active credit customers, making it one of the fastest-growing digital financial platforms in Latin America. The company’s Plata Card gives users two months to pay without interest and up to 15% of cash back in real money.

“We believe Plata represents the new standard for digital banking in emerging markets,” Kora Co-Founder Nitin Saigal said. “In a very short time, the company has demonstrated impressive execution, combining technological innovation with a clear vision for financial inclusion. We are excited to continue strengthening our partnership and to support Plata in this new phase of growth.”

Revolut obtains Mexican banking license; SumUp goes live

This week we learned that two Finovate alums—Revolut and SumUp—are actively exploring opportunities in Mexico. Revolut announced this week that it has received final regulatory approval to initiate banking operations in Mexico. The authorization came from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), with approval of the Bank of Mexico. Now a Multiple Banking Institution in Mexico, Revolut is the first independent digital bank to directly apply for and complete the full licensing and approval process in the country.

“We are exceptionally proud of our team and the bank we have built here in Mexico,” Revolut Bank S.A., Institución de Banca Múltiple CEO Juan Miguel Guerra said. “We are very grateful to the authorities for this vote of confidence and their commitment to fostering competition in the industry, and we are confident that our offering will benefit millions of people across the country.”

Revolut is a digital banking and financial services platform that offers a wide range of solutions, including multi-currency accounts with real-time exchange rates; stock, cryptocurrency, commodity, and ETF investing and trading; as well as business accounts, corporate cards, and expense management tools. Founded in 2015, Revolut serves as a financial services “super app” for more than 65 million customers around the world.

Meanwhile, payments platform SumUp announced its official launch in Mexico this week. The company has introduced its SumUp Go card reader to the Mexican market, enabling merchants to accept payments anytime, anywhere, with no monthly fixed costs. The card reader is compatible with all major credit and debit cards and features both exceptional battery life and unlimited 4G cellular connectivity due to its built-in SIM.

“Expanding into Mexico marks a pivotal step in SumUp’s strategic growth across Latin America,” SumUp North America CEO Andrew Helms said. “We see remarkable potential in the region and recognize a strong demand for accessible, user-friendly payment solutions that streamline business operations. At SumUp, our mission is to simplify business for our merchants and we’re delighted to bring this commitment to Mexico.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp counts more than four million merchants in 37 markets as users of its payment processing solutions and business management tools. These include mobile card readers and point-of-sale (POS) systems, as well as solutions for sales tracking and inventory management, customer loyalty programs, and financial reporting and analytics.

Revolut has been a Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope 2015. SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013. Both companies are headquartered in London.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Oman’s BankDhofar launched its new braille debit card.
  • The Cooperative Bank of Oromia, a regional bank based in Ethiopia, partnered with digital transformation company JMR Infotech to go live with Oracle Financial Services Crime and Compliance Studio.
  • Saudi National Bank subsidiary Samba Bank unveiled its new fraud detection system powered by BPC’s SmartVista Fraud Management.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Mongolian fintech AND Global raised $21.4 million in Series B funding in a round led by the International Finance Corporation and AEON Financial Service.
  • Karandaaz Pakistan and Walee Financial Services forged a strategic partnership to launch Pakistan’s first Shariah-compliant, digital asset financing solution for female entrepreneurs.
  • Did India ban discussion of cryptocurrencies at the world’s largest fintech conference in Mumbai?

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican digital financial platform Plata doubled its valuation to $3.1 billion upon securing a $250 million Series B funding round.
  • Uruguay-based cross-border payments platform dLocal teamed up with Alchemy Pay to streamline crypto-to-fiat payments throughout Latin America.
  • Payments platform SumUp announced its launch in Mexico this week.

Asia-Pacific

  • Three of Japan’s largest banks—MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsuio Banking Corp, and Mizuho Bank—announced plans to collaborate on the launch of a unified stablemcoin.
  • Tracxn’s recently released Southeast Asia FinTech Report noted that fintech startups in the region raised $839 million in the first nine months of 2025, a decline from previous years.
  • Fintech innovation in Pyongyang? A look at the growth in popularity of e-payments in North Korea.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African all-in-one financial platform Moniepoint secured more than $200 million in Series C funding.
  • Sanlam teamed up with TymeBank to build a co-branded fintech super app for consumers in South Africa.
  • Capitec Bank partnered with accounting software company Stub to provide South African small and micro-sized businesses with direct access to their transactional data.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German fintech Aifinyo AG announced that it was converting its balance sheet to bitcoin, becoming the first German firm to adopt a full bitcoin treasury model.
  • SoftPOS solutions company MineSec inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU with Turkish digital payments company Paymore.
  • Latvian fintech Eleving Group raised €275 million ($319.5 million) via a public bond issue.

Photo by Pyro Jenka on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums

Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Ripple, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India.

RBI pushes financial inclusion; launches digital currency sandbox

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra used the occasion of the 6th Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai to encourage technologies to emphasize financial inclusion as well as better trust and efficiency as they help build the future of the country’s financial ecosystem. Fintech will be able to participate by joining the sandbox directly or via their partner banks.

Malhotra credited Indian fintech for a range of innovations that have been the envy around the world. “India’s world-class digital public infrastructure, as symbolized by systems such as UPI, Aadhaar, and DigiLocker, has not only enhanced efficiency and service delivery, but also ensured that millions of Indians enjoy easy access to a wide range of financial services.”

UPI is India’s real-time payment system that enables instant fund transfer between bank accounts via mobile apps. UPI can be used with just a mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (VPA) and has enabled everything from peer-to-peer transfers to merchant payments. UPI processes more than 700 million transactions a day.

Aadhaar is the name of a biometric digital identity system that gives all residents a unique 12-digit identification. Aadhaar is the basis for digital KYC (Know Your Customer) processes and has use cases ranging from account opening and insurance enrollment in financial services to medical record access, government benefit disbursement, and more. DigiLocker is a cloud-based digital document storage platform that enables users to store and access official documents digitally. DigiLocker is estimated to have more than 465 million registered users.

In each case, the solution has been both a significant technological innovation and a way of bringing a wider range of financial services to a greater number of communities and businesses, and individuals.

Underscoring the compatibility between financial inclusion and technological innovation, Malhotra added, “serving the privileged will be a lucrative business, but companies must focus on serving the underserved sections of society. Build for inclusion. There may be higher profits to be made by deepening access to the haves and the privileged, but prioritize building systems to expand financial services to the unaccessed, the unreached, and the unserved segments of society.”

The RBI also made headlines with the launch of its digital currency sandbox. The initiative will enable fintech firms to build and test solutions using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of its ongoing pilot project. The RBI’s first retail e-rupee pilot (India’s central bank digital currency or CBDC) went live in December 2022, and currently has more than seven million users.

The announcement was made by Suvendu Pai, General Manager at the RBI. Pai said that the launch was designed to encourage innovation in digital payments and to grow the ecosystem for India’s CBDC.

“The CBDC retail sandbox will give innovators the space to experiment and build on top of the digital rupee,” Malhotra explained. “It will help create new use cases, improve customer experience, and add value to ongoing pilots.”

Meet Finovate’s Indian alums

Would you believe that outside of the US and the UK, the next largest group of Finovate readers are based in India?

As our previous story acknowledged, India is an under-recognized superpower when it comes not only to fintech innovation, but also when it comes to making sure that technological innovations are built to benefit as many people as possible.

Finovate has been happy to host a growing number of Indian fintechs at our conference both in the US and abroad. Our most recent event, FinovateFall 2025, featured a trio of India-based fintechs—MoneyPlanned, OPL, and Sequretek—on stage and a fourth, CloudBankin, in our Impact Zone. But these are only the most recently added alums. Here are some of the Indian firms that have demonstrated their latest innovations on the Finovate stage.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Google Payment Lithuania launched its bank account verification service.
  • Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) completed its acquisition of Berlin-based fintech lemon.markets.
  • Learn how the Latvian government is preparing to adopt the second edition of its national fintech development strategy.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco de Crédito del Perú, the largest bank in the country, has launched Criptococos, a digital asset-compatible banking platform, in partnership with BitGo.
  • Chilean HR tech firm Buk acquired fintech Bemmbo to provide financial services via the new Buk Finanzas offering.
  • Brazilian Buy Now Pay Later firm Pagaleve raised $30 million in Series A2 funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • Bank of Singapore unveiled a new agentic AI tool to automate components of the KYC process.
  • Binance Japan, a subsidiary of Binance, forged a digital assets alliance with financial services provider PayPay Corporation.
  • Singapore-based equity management platform Qapita raised $26 million in Series B funding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African AI-powered fintech Optasia announced plans to raise $375 million when it goes public on South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
  • Kenyan asset financing firm M-KOPA reported its first profit of $9.2 million in 2024. The startup experienced a $24.7 million loss in 2023.
  • Check out Greg Palmer’s Finovate Podcast interview featuring Bridgit Antwi, Head of Strategy and Planning at African payments company Flutterwave.

art credit

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Global Netherlands: Insurtech, SME Financing, and Digital Banking

Finovate Global Netherlands: Insurtech, SME Financing, and Digital Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, MasterCard, Nubank, VISA

This week’s edition of Finovate Global reviews recent fintech news from the Netherlands.

Dutch insurtech RISK acquires Amsterdam-based fintech Dyme

Dutch insurtech RISK has acquired Amsterdam-based savings app Dyme. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal will enable Dyme to boost its presence in the Netherlands as well as enter the German market. Courtesy of the agreement, both Dyme’s brand and management team will remain intact.

“From being featured on Dragon’s Den to becoming one of the largest finance apps in Europe and reaching profitability, our mission has always been the same: helping people take control of their money,” Dyme noted on its LinkedIn Page. “This step opens up some great opportunities for Dyme and its customers: expand the product, especially with great insurance packages and service, reach millions more people through the RISK ecosystem, and take Dyme international, beginning with Germany.”

Dyme currently has more than 600,000 consumers who have linked their bank accounts to the Dyme platform. The company’s app serves as a personal financial assistant to help users lower costs, and uses smart algorithms to automate subscription cancellations and provide financial guidance. Dyme announced its first profitable quarter in 2024, and has said that it has helped users save more than €40 million since inception. The acquisition will combine RISK’s market expertise and technological platforms with Dyme’s user-friendly financial solutions that enable users to easily manage their expenses, budgets, and more.

RISK offers an advanced IT platform, SureBase, that assists financial advisors, online labels, and insurers in product comparison and distribution. SureBase, according to RISK CEO Harm Vollmuller, will serve a key base for the new synergy between RISK and Dyme. “By combining that with our platforms and market knowledge, we can reach people at a time when financial breaking space is more important than ever,” Vollmuller said.

Factris raises €100m to power SME financing

A new funding partnership with Brand New Day Bank will enable Factris to expand its ability to provide financial support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Dutch fintech has secured a €100 million facility to support financing SME factoring across Europe. This will enable Factris to finance sellers in nine countries and manage receivables from debtors in 27 countries.

“This new facility is a testament to the trust and confidence Brand New Day Bank has placed in Factris and our vision for SME financing,” Factris CEO Brian Reaves said. “As we continue to scale across Europe, this partnership ensures we can meet the increasing demand for alternative financing and provide SMEs with the liquidity they need to thrive.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Amsterdam, North Holland, Factris specializes in invoice factoring for small and medium-sized enterprises. The company offers selective factoring to enable companies to decide which specific invoices to factor, fund availability within 24 hours of invoice submission, credit insurance to protect against customer non-payment or bankruptcy, and debtor management for collections and account receivables.

Brand New Day Bank is a Netherlands-based digital-first, challenger bank and fintech that began operating in 2010. The financial institution serves both individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses with savings accounts, investment and pension products, tax-advantaged savings and investment solutions, and annuity payment services. Brand New Day Bank has more than €8 billion in assets.

Dutch fintech Plumery unveils Canada-based solutions

Digital banking experience platform Plumery announced a suite of new features and integrations designed especially for credit unions in Canada. These new capabilities will give these institutions the ability to provide personalized, compliant, and modern digital banking experiences for their members.

The Amsterdam-based fintech leveraged a collaboration with Aequilibrium, a digital services and technology consultancy headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, to make sure its Canadian-ready platform is built based on the way that Canadian credit union members prefer to bank. This includes not just hyper-personalized, mobile-first, and intuitive digital journeys, but also support for everyday payments and transfers including billpay and Interact e-Transfers, and Canadian savings and lending products like GICs.

Plumery’s move comes as Canadian banks and credit unions face a range of challenges including evolving customer expectations, fintech competition, and the pressure to modernize their legacy systems. More immediately, Canadian credit unions are scrambling in the wake of Central 1 Credit Union’s announcement that it will wind down its digital banking platform Forge (formerly MemberDirect). More than 170 credit unions across Canada had been relying on the technology.

“With Forge winding down, Canadian institutions have a rare opportunity to modernize on their own terms, rather than being tied to outdated systems,” Plumery CEO and Founder Ben Goldin said. “Our platform provides an immediate, future-ready option that puts control back in the hands of credit unions. By working with Aequilibrium, we are combining global banking innovation with local expertise to deliver experiences that meet the unique needs of Canadian credit unions’ members.”

Founded in 2016, Plumery enables financial institutions to offer unique mobile and online experiences on top of either their modern or legacy core banking platforms up to 80% faster. Plumery’s technology features foundations that are pre-integrated into its digital banking journeys that accelerate app development and shorten time-to-market while maintaining complete control over both design and functionality.

Check out my interview with Plumery’s Goldin from earlier this year.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Mastercard teamed up with African fintech Smile ID to introduce new digital identity solutions across the continent.
  • South African mobile payment platform Street Wallet partnered with Plush Car Wash to deliver secure, cashless payments.
  • Visa and digital payments network Onafriq launched Visa Pay in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Lithuania-based identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy launched its Criminal Background Check tool.
  • Hungarian payment service provider Barion Payment completed its acquisition of PSC CEE Ltd, the company behind the SmartKassa brand.
  • Turkey’s Türk Ekonomi Bankası (TEB) partnered with Provenir for its AI-powered decisioning platform.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s Bank of Baroda launched its eRUPI Person-to-Person (P2P) gifting solution.
  • TBC Uzbekistan extended financial services to non-residents.
  • Indian fintech Kiwi unveiled its interest-backed EMI on UPI.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian digital banking giant Nubank has applied for a US national bank charter.
  • Unlimit announced securing Principal Membership with Mastercard and Visa in Peru.
  • Brazi-based proptech Lastro raised $15 million in Series A funding in a round led by Prosus Ventures.

Asia-Pacific

  • Cambodian MSME-focused bank Chief Bank teamed up with payment solutions provider BPC to launch its new Chief Mobile 3.0 mobile app.
  • The People’s Bank of China opened a digital yuan operation center in Shanghai.
  • The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) launched IADS Developer Hackathon to promote bank-fintech collaboration.

Photo by Javier M. on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook