Finovate Global

Ximena Aleman on Open Banking and Financial Access in Latin America

Ximena Aleman on Open Banking and Financial Access in Latin America
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Mambu, Nubank

The fintech industry in Latin America is among the world’s most vibrant. From the initiatives in Mexico to provide a legal framework that will enable local fintechs to flourish, to the innovations in central bank digital currencies in the Caribbean, to the rising fintech giants like Nubank in Brazil, financial technology is making a major difference in the lives of a growing number of Latin Americans.

For this week’s Finovate Global: Voices, we caught up with Ximena Aleman, co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Prometeo, to discuss fintech in Latin America and the power of open banking to improve financial wellness and create opportunity in the region.

Please tell us a little about Prometeo and what drove you to co-launch the company.

Ximena Aleman: Prometeo is a fintech company striving to create an open and connected financial market in Latin America (LATAM). We are building a huge highway of financial information across financial institutions and countries in LATAM. Prometeo is the largest Open Banking API platform in the region disrupting the financial sector in México, Colombia, Brazil, and six more countries. We provide a single point of access to information, transactions, and payments across more than 30 financial institutions and 45 APIs in nine countries of LATAM. 

As LATAM entrepreneurs, we are well aware of the tech gap in the financial sector between underdeveloped and developed countries. In particular, the lack of adequate tech infrastructure. So we decided to approach this as an opportunity to build not only a great solution but also a path towards financial access for the region. 

What are the drivers of open banking in Latin America?

Aleman: Open Banking is a disruptive innovation that reframes the way banking is carried out. Transactions and communications between customers and institutions are going from taking place behind closed doors to transparent exchanges in the public square. It is no wonder that traditional financial institutions initially viewed the practice with a measure of bemusement or even suspicion.  

However, there has been a marked shift in their thinking. Adoption has been slower in Latin America than in other parts of the world, but most of the open banking biggest names in the region have headquarters abroad. Open banking has been a hot topic globally; Latin American associates have taken note and ushered in the conversation.

Another factor that has changed the playbook is the COVID-19 pandemic. The restrictions on daily life and public interactions have forced even the most hard-rooted, traditional financial institutions to review their digital transformation strategies. If customers can’t visit branches, digital channels become the sole venue of exchange. 

What do you think it will take to get more women in leadership and founding roles in fintech?

Aleman: I think that as we move forward to a more “gender-balanced” society we have to rethink our financial exchanges from a gender perspective, too. There’s little offered in the financial sector for women and little by little some female fintech entrepreneurs are developing solutions for this segment (for instance, Emma Sanchez’s neobank for women, Jefa). If the startup ecosystem understands that half of the world’s population has been historically financially underserved, and the huge opportunity this is, it won’t take long for women to start developing custom-made products for that segment.

You have said two of the biggest challenges to diversity in fintech are funding and technical training. What can and should be done about this?

Aleman: The gap between VC investments in startups led by women is significant versus those led by men. In the last 10 years, fintech companies led by women have raised 1% of the total investment in fintech. The disparity is really significant.

I believe this gap is multifactorial: historically, the financial and the technology worlds were dominated by men. Also, among VC funds, women in the decision-making process are just a few in number and, per my own experience, men really value having another man as their counterpart. 

There’s a lot we can all do: all the stakeholders involved in the fintech sector should make their own changes and push to close the gap. As women, we have to create our support network on every front, talk to mentors, female start-up groups, and above all, be confident and trust your knowledge, your experience, and your ability to navigate through hostile environments. If you feel you are not strong enough in certain areas, seek training. Technical training and really knowing your business is key to build confidence and close this gap.

One of the biggest reasons why women receive less VC investment than men is that so few of them make up decision-makers in VC funds.

How has the pandemic impacted the work you do and the communities you serve?

Aleman: Open Banking has seen a rise in LATAM in the past year, so our business vertical – as everything related to digital transformation in the financial sector – has been benefited by how the pandemic reshaped human interactions. However, no one in LATAM can be a stranger to the economic challenges we are facing today and ahead. There have been huge increases in unemployment, debt, etc. In Uruguay, a year after the pandemic, surfing what might be the country’s second wave of COVID-19 cases, early in the morning in the small towns in the countryside, you will bump into people waiting in line just in one shop, in the local microfinance branch, to ask for credit or pay their debt.

There are many who do not know much about Uruguay. What do you think more people should know about the country?

Aleman: Of course. I’m very proud of my country. We are a small country down in South America, between Argentina and Brazil. We are popular for the quality of our meat and football players, but as noticeable as that is, we are a growing tech hub, in particular for financial services. Uruguay has a long history of providing high-tech software to the financial sector, for instance, we host four banking core software companies (Infocorp, Topsystems, Bantotal, and Mantentia – that was recently bought by Technisys). Most recently, we joined the fintech wave with great B2B solutions like Bankingly or our first local unicorn, dLocal. I think it is worth mentioning the government’s efforts to promote entrepreneurship through the Innovation Agency (ANII) and Development Agency (ANDE). We are well aware that Prometeo was possible thanks to their support and as a startup, we are a result of the whole ecosystem pushing us to grow.

What can we expect from Prometeo over the balance of 2021?

Aleman: We are pushing hard for Open Banking adoption in Brazil, México, and Colombia. For those countries, it’s a challenging shift so we want to provide the best possible solution. That’s why we are releasing a payment feature that allows automated payments across banks in those countries. At the same time, we are on a mission to provide full coverage across LATAM. So this year it’s all about expansion, coding, and growth! 

Learn more about fintech in Latin America and the work of Prometeo.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

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Fintech Innovation and Open Banking in the Nordics

Fintech Innovation and Open Banking in the Nordics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week we learned that Norway-based Finovate alum Signicat has teamed up with a German software company Cryptshare to market a new B2B identity verification solution. The technology combines email encryption and secure file transfer with trusted sender and recipient identities to make business communications safer and more accountable.

In other fintech news from the Nordics, Santander Consumer Bank in Norway went live with a new PFM app that leverages open banking solutions from Nordic API Gateway. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Nordic API Gateway made its Finovate debut last month at our all-digital fintech conference, FinovateEurope.

At the event, co-founder and CTO Gudmundur Hreidarsson demonstrated how the company’s platform simplified open banking payments and access to financial data, offering powerful account-to-account payment services through a single API. More than 40 financial institutions in Europe – including Lunar, Danske Bank, OP Financial Group, and Checkout Finland – rely on Nordic API Gateway’s open banking services.

“Current payment rails such as cards are very expensive for businesses and and increasingly inconvenient for consumers,” Hreidarsson said during his presentation last month. “Open banking changes that. It enables payments with low fixed fees per transaction rather than the high percentage fees of cards which can mean very significant cost savings for businesses – and is very convenient for consumers.”

“But getting into open banking and using open banking is hard,” he added. “It’s really hard. The APIs of the banks are slow to mature and there is still quite some way to go. Businesses are just starting to realize what kind of use cases can be solved with open banking. And consumers are only now discovering the convenience of paying with their accounts. That’s why we built Aiia, to offer an open banking platform that simply works.”

Companies from the Nordics (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Greenland) have been well represented at FinovateEurope of late. This year alone featured – in addition to Nordic API Gateway – two companies from Sweden: Stockholm’s Dreams and Gothenburg’s Econans. Our most recent in-person FinovateEurope conference – held in Berlin, Germany – featured three companies from the region, as well: ReceiptHero and NordCheck of Finland, and Subaio of Denmark. Other Nordic fintechs that have demonstrated their technologies live on the FinovateEurope stage over the years include BehavioSec, Tink, and Klarna (Sweden); Encap Security, EVRY, Monobank, and Spiff (Norway); Meniga and Trustev (Iceland/U.K. and Iceland); and Mistral Mobile (Finland).

“It certainly seems that Schumpeterian destruction, where creating new markets is preceded by old ones being challenged or even destroyed, applies in the Nordics,” the team of Frida Jonsdottir, Olli Toivonen, Visa Jaatinen, Arttu Utti, and Richard Lindqvist wrote in the introduction to their FinTech in the Nordics: A Deloitte Review. “The Nordic FinTech market is rapidly growing and diversifying, with more companies and new technologies being created. This is happening regardless of the fact that the incumbent financial institutions are challenged by the lagging economic growth rates and ever changing regulatory burden, both of which afflict those who are looking to enter the market.”

Read the rest of the Deloitte report on fintech in the Nordics. For more about fintech in the region, check out:

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

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Fabrick, Open Banking, and an Update on Fintech in Italy

Fabrick, Open Banking, and an Update on Fintech in Italy
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, MODIFI

Last week, we leveraged the occasion of French alum Ledger’s new, cryptocurrency-focused, business division to bring readers up to speed on the latest in French fintech. This week, news from Fabrick, a financial services company based in Milan (and a sponsor of the just-concluded FinovateEurope Digital) offers us a similar opportunity to catch up with innovations in fintech in Italy.

Fabrick announced this week that it had forged a partnership with Microsoft Italia. The collaboration will enable the open banking financial services provider to leverage cloud computing and other new technologies to develop solutions that help accelerate digital transformation in financial services. As part of the alliance, Fabrick’s offering will become a part of the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace and enable the company to better market its technology to the enterprise sector. Fabrick’s personal financial management solution is already available on Microsoft’s marketplace.

“For us, the partnership with Microsoft represents an extraordinary opportunity to grow and strengthen our positioning in the market,” Fabrick CEO Paolo Zaccardi said. “We have found a valuable ally who, like us, has seen in technological evolution and Open Finance a new way to innovate the delivery of corporate services for the end user.”

Founded in 2017, Fabrick is an open banking ecosystem and a regulated TPP. Within digital payments, channel innovation, and open banking, Fabrick helps enrich the offerings of banks, processors, and fintechs. With customers including Bankart, HDI Assicurazioni, and illimity, Fabrick made fintech headlines earlier this year via collaborations with DizmeID Foundation for a hackathon based on innovations in digital identity, and with Banca Progetto and Faire to help the Italian challenger bank offer an instant lending service for small and medium-sized businesses.

“We are particularly enthusiastic about this collaboration because it testifies to the validity of the ecosystem proposed by Fabrick,” Zaccardi said when the partnership was announced last month. “On the one hand (we have) the capacity of our platform, through which the service will be implemented, and on the other the important synergies that arise within our community Fintech District, of which Faire is part and through which we have begun to collaborate with them.”

Like France, which we looked at last week, Italy has a fintech industry that is often overlooked in the broader conversation on European financial technology. To this end, this week’s Finovate Global Reports turns to the Fintech District and its The Italian Fintech Guide 2020 for a peek into “the most promising fintech companies operating in Italy.”

According to Fintech District, Italy had 345 fintech startups as of the end of 2019. It is a young industry – with most startups at an intermediate stage of growth and with less than one million in capital raised. Additionally, these fintech teams have members who are, on average, less than 32 years old. As with most regions, fintechs in Italy have increasingly been looking to enhance the digital capabilities of incumbent banks and insurance companies – as well as developing B2C solutions for Italian consumers. Open banking has helped accelerate this trend, and companies like Fabrick have been among those helping banks and third party solution providers connect and innovate together.

To learn more about fintech in Italy, check out IBS Intelligence’s 5 Italian FinTech companies transforming the financial sector from last fall. For a more inclusive look, consider Italian entrepreneur Claudio Bedino’s Top 100 FinTech leaders and influencers in Italy that appeared a year before IBS Intelligence’s roundup.

In recent years, our FinovateEurope conferences have featured a number of alums headquartered in Italy, as well. Ten of these companies, along with the year of their most recent Finovate appearance and their home city, are listed below.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • Gimo, a fintech startup that serves underbanked workers in Vietnam, received seed funding from ThinkZone Ventures, BK Fund, and others strategic investors.
  • Jakarta, Indonesia-based insurtech, Qoala, acquired Thai insurech FairDee in bid to expand into the Thailand market.
  • Malaysia Debt Ventures and Kenanga partnered to launch a new $73 million fund to back new fintechs and stimulate the VC industry in Malaysia.

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Austria’s BitPanda Reaches Unicorn Status; A Look at the Latest in French Fintech

Austria’s BitPanda Reaches Unicorn Status; A Look at the Latest in French Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

Still looking for evidence that cryptocurrencies have arrived? The $170 million raised this week by Austrian digital asset neobroker Bitpanda is a testament to both the surging interest in cryptocurrencies as well as the vitality of fintech innovation in the CEE countries.

Bitpanda’s Series B round earned the company a valuation of $1.2 billion, giving Austria its first fintech unicorn. The Vienna-based company, founded in 2014 by co-CEOs Eric Demuth and Paul Klanschek, along with CTO Christian Trummer, plans to use the capital to add to the types of investments available on its platform, as well as expand to more markets in Europe.

This latest funding round was led by Valar Ventures and featured participation from partners of DST Global. The round is more than triple the amount raised by Bitpanda in its Series A financing back in September, which was also led by Valar Ventures (SpeedInvest of Vienna was an investor in the round, as well). The capital arrives the same week that Bitpanda announced that it had reached a new milestone of more than two million registered users on its Bitpanda and Bitpanda Pro platforms.

Bitpanda enables cryptocurrency investors and traders to buy, sell, save, and send more than 50 digital assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum. The neobroker also offers the world’s first real crypto index and a Bitpanda Card that enables Bitpanda accountholders to spend their digital assets as easily as they spend their cash.

With FinovateEurope right around the corner, we’ve got more than a little continental fintech on the mind these days. This week we take a quick look at fintech news from France, a country whose fintech industry is often overlooked in the broader conversation on European fintech.

Earlier this week, we learned that Finovate alum Ledger was launching a new business division dedicated to taking advantage of growing institutional interest in cryptocurrencies. Headquartered in Paris and founded in 2013, the company announced that its Ledger Enterprise Solutions unit will support enterprise adoption of the company’s core custody technology, Ledger Vault, as well as advise institutional clients with regards to technology implementation, security, and governance of digital asset portfolios.

On the French fintech funding beat, PayFit, a payroll and HR platform launched in France in 2016, announced that it has secured $107 million (EUR 90 million) in Series D funding. The investment was led by Eurzeo Growth, Large Venture, and BPI France, and featured participation from the company’s existing investors Accel, Frst, and individual investor Xavier Niel.

The company said that the capital will help support its comprehensive HR solution for SMEs and enable the company – which also operates in Spain, Germany, the U.K., and Italy – to “increase headcount from 550 to 800” by the end of 2021.

PayFit serves more than 5,000 small businesses, and includes Revolut, Starling Bank, and Treatwell among its customers. The company experienced growth of 40% in 2020 – a pace PayFit anticipates doubling this year – and credited much of this “hypergrowth” to the digital imperative brought on by the COVID-19 crisis.

“As a result of the pandemic, HR professionals have faced a much higher workload and unfamiliar challenges,” PayFit co-founder and CEO Firmin Zocchetto said. “They have had to deal with various issues, including supporting the company’s management with the implementation of remote work policies and ensuring employee wellbeing through new initiatives.”

Zocchetto said that there are “tens of millions of SMEs” that are ready for digital transformation. “The market is huge, and our ambition remains the same: to become the point of reference for payroll and HR management for all SMEs,” he said.

Striking another note in the funding beat, French fintech Silvr announced a EUR 3 million seed investment this week. The company, launched last year by Nima Karimi and Gregory Tappero, provides financing for digital businesses that cannot access traditional bank financing and want to raise equity capital.

Silvr offers a revenue-based financing model based on the performance of the financed company, an approach that contrasts with both traditional asset-based lending and fundraising models. Karimi has said that Silvr’s strategy offers a new option for SMEs in France, calling it simpler and more transparent.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • SEON, a Hungarian startup helps companies weed out false accounts and prevent fraudulent transactions, secured $12 million (EUR 10 million) in funding. The round is Hungary’s largest Series A funding to date.
  • Lithuanian fintech FINCI has gone live with Temenos’ Payments and Transact core banking solutions.
  • Estonian financial services company LVH invested GBP 4.45 million in U.K.-based B-North, which is building a SME lending bank.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

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Dubai Showcases Seed Stage Fintech Startups from MENA and Beyond

Dubai Showcases Seed Stage Fintech Startups from MENA and Beyond
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Finovate Global, List series, NTT Data, Temenos

This week for our Finovate Global Lists feature we congratulate the graduates of Startupbootcamp FinTech Dubai. Eleven startups successfully completed the MENA-based accelerator program in late February, wrapping up the three-month experience with a pitch opportunity before an audience of investors, corporate partners, mentors, and industry analysts.

“As the Demo Day has passed and the 11 startups of our third cohort continue their growth journeys – we are incredibly proud to welcome the 23 amazing founders of these startups as part of our global @sbcFinTech family!” Startupboootcamp Dubai announced via Twitter.

The graduates are:

  • Finllect: a UAE-based financial wellness app for Gen Zs.
  • Flaist: a digital transformation platform for banks.
  • Singular Capital: a digital asset mobile wallet based in Malaysia.
  • Open CBS: a Hong Kong-based, open and scalable, cloud-based core banking system for smaller FIs.
  • Absolute Collateral: a digital B2B capital markets trading platform based in the U.K.
  • Tajjir: a Jordanian startup that offers a stock trading software solution for retail investors.
  • Aura Technologies: an insurtech firm that enables non-insurance businesses to sell insurance to their customers.
  • CaaS (Compliance-as-a-Service): a regulatory reporting platform based in the U.K.
  • Stornest: a UAE-based digital legacy planner to support end of life planning.
  • Raseed: an investment platform that enables users in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to buy and sell U.S. stocks.
  • Kilde: a global private debt marketplace headquartered in Singapore.

Startupbootcamp FinTech is conducted in partnership with Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Visa, HSBC, and Mashreq Bank. The program is open to fintech startups throughout the MENA region, as well as around the world, and offers expert-led Master Classes, tailored mentorships, as well as coworking space and living expense support for the duration of the program. Participants also benefit from access to corporate partners and an alumni growth program that helps startups remain networked after the program ends.

Since its launch in 2018, more than 30 fintech startups innovating in payments, lending, and Islamic digital banking count themselves as alumni of the accelerator. Startupbootcamp FinTech Dubai is part of an international network with more than 20 industry-focused programs for technology startups. The network boasts 950 startups accelerated – 41% of which were female-led – that have raised a combined $869 million (€ 727 million) in total funding.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Berlin, Germany-based financial crime risk quantification company, Elucidate, secured EUR 2.5 million in pre-Series A funding.
  • Hellenic Bank unveiled its new mobile banking app, which was developed in partnership with Backbase.
  • Mobile payments company Settle launched in Bulgaria.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

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Canadian Fintech Embraces Real-Time Payments, Challenger Banking

Canadian Fintech Embraces Real-Time Payments, Challenger Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Finovate Global, Women in Fintech

As our recent conversation featuring Boss Insights founder and CEO Keren Moynihan, reminds us, the fintechs (and “TechFins”) of the Great White North are engaged in some of the most forward-looking innovation on the continent.

This week brings an above average volume of news from Canada’s ambitious real-time payments industry. For one, the Vancouver Bullion & Currency Exchange (VBCE) announced a partnership with EMQ to bring “near real-time” cross-border payments to businesses and consumers across Canada. A PSP as well as a foreign currency exchange, VBCE hopes that its partnership with the global financial settlement network will give its customers the ability to move money faster and more efficiently. The firm also anticipates being able to use EMQ’s network to bring new services to market and scale existing ones.

“The speed and reach of EMQ’s global network allows us to pilot new services in one market and scale them rapidly across others to meet the evolving customer needs,” VBCE VP of Business Development Kevin Ma said. “This is especially important for our business with a diverse product portfolio.”

Elsewhere on the Canadian real-time payments beat, Payments Canada announced a collaboration with debit network Interac to support real-time payments in the country. Interac will serve as the exchange solution provider for Real-Time Rail, the real-time payments systems operated by Payments Canada and regulated by the Bank of Canada. RTR, scheduled to go live in 2022, will enable Canadians to initiate payments and receive funds in seconds.

Payments Canada President and CEO Tracey Black said that RTR will be the “foundation for faster, data-rich payments” and will serve as a “platform for innovation.” Black also praised Interac as a “well-suited partner” with the requisite infrastructure and connectivity to support “the rapid adoption of real-time payments in Canada.”

Last, some developments on the Canadian neobank front. Toronto, Ontario-based challenger bank KOHO added a no-fee savings account to its offerings this week. KOHO Save gives account holders 1.2% interest on their entire balance. There are no teaser rates and no minimum balance is required to acquire an account, which is available on the KOHO app.

“We’re excited to add KOHO Save to our product line as a simple and valuable money earning tool for Canadians,” KOHO CEO and founder Daniel Eberhard said. “We’ve been able to build a savings tool that doesn’t follow the same restrictions of most other savings products on the market. People just want to access their money freely and earn a great interest rate. We think Save is a wonderful step in that direction.”

KOHO also offers a savings and checking account and gives users a minimum of 0.5% (up to 10%) cash back on all purchases. KOHO Premium account holders get an additional 2% cash back on three major spending categories. The company, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, has raised $57.5 million in funding from investors including Drive Capital and Portag3 Ventures.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

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Latvian Gen Z Neobank Scores Pre-Seed Funding; Top Philippine Fintechs

Latvian Gen Z Neobank Scores Pre-Seed Funding; Top Philippine Fintechs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Finovate Global, MasterCard, NetGuardians

Zelf, a messenger-based challenger bank based in Latvia and focused on Generation Z customers, announced earlier this week that it has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Austrian venture capital firm 3VC, and featured participation by Seed X, Hard Yaka, Goldfinger, and angel investor Chris Adelsbach.

The company, founded by CEO Elliot Goykhman, will use the capital to fuel growth and expansion throughout Europe, particularly in Spain, Germany, Poland, and Italy. Zelf also sees the funding as an opportunity to establish itself in the U.K. and the U.S., as well. Most recently, the company launched operations in France and said it has 13,000 people currently using its Zelf Cards there.

“We started building ZELF in 2018 with a vision of a cashless and contactless society of the future,” the Zelf Team noted on its blog in a look back at 2020. “and the shockwave of COVID-19 in 2020 proved that it was the right path not only businesswise, but also sadly healthwise.”

Zelf accountholders get a digital Mastercard and an IBAN account which can be used to send and receive money on instant messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber. Zelf also features an AI-powered voice interface that can be used to perform basic PFM functions like requesting money, sending invoices, and checking account balances.

“We are confident that our business model of eliminating cumbersome banking apps, as well as physical plastic cards, will prove to be the winning strategy,” Goykhman said.

This week’s Finovate Global Lists takes a look at the fintech industry in the Philippines. IBS Intelligence recently leveraged the Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report to analyze the adoption of digital financial services in the country and pick five companies to keep an eye on this year.

The Philippines, as the article noted, is an interesting case study insofar as the country’s capital of Manila has signficant English-speaking population and what IBS Intelligence called “a more western inclined culture” that is a “natural fit for the growth of fintech.”

Compared to larger neighbor Indonesia and smaller neighbor Malaysia, the Philippines is younger and has a faster growing population. The Philippines also has a marginally higher literacy rate, as well as higher real GDP growth and greater per capita mobile phone penetration (based on subscriptions).

Looking specifically at the country’s fintech industry, Startup Genome noted that fintechs comprise 15% of the startups in Manila, the Philippine capital. The report gave the country’s fintech market a transaction value of $10 billion in 2019 and anticipated a growth of 24% in 2020. Among the fintechs highlighted in the report are digital wallet and exchange Coins.ph (recently acquired by Indonesia mobility company Go-Jek for $72 million) and online financing platform for SMEs, First Circle.

For more, check out IBS Intelligence’s selection of their 5 Top Fintechs in the Philippines to Watch Out for in 2021.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

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ING’s Czech Exit; Meet Germany’s Platform-as-a-Service Innovator Payever

ING’s Czech Exit; Meet Germany’s Platform-as-a-Service Innovator Payever
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

After 20 years as a player in the retail banking market of the Czech Republic, ING is calling it quits. The firm announced this week that it plans to withdraw from the country’s retail banking scene and is encouraging its customers to consider Raiffeisenbank Czech Republic as their alternative bank going forward.

ING expects to end its operations in the Czech Republic by the end of this year. The company has approximately 375,000 retail banking customers in the country and has worked with Raiffeisenbank to ensure the smoothest possible transition for ING customers to take advantage of the opportunity to transfer their savings and investments. This agreement is pending regulatory approval.

ING Group said that the decision in part reflects an assessment of whether or not operations “are likely to achieve the preferred scale in their market within a reasonable time frame. ING has more than 39 million retail and wholesale customers in 40 markets around the world.

We will stay in the CEE for this week’s Finovate Global Profile, which features payever, a German platform-as-a-service commerce solution for banks and insurance companies. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Artur Schlaht, payever made its Finovate return last fall at our all-digital FinovateWest event. At the conference, the Hamburg, Germany-based company demonstrated its Commerce Infrastructure that enables banks and insurance companies to connect to hundreds of thousands of businesses – as well as million of consumers – online as well as at the point of sale.

Payever offers a variety of Business Apps that cover the entire sales cycle. The company’s Checkout solution gives customers wide access to a range of payment options without requiring the merchant to undergo complex integrations. With Shop, merchants can build their own online store in without needing any coding experience. The solution features design template as well as cloud hosting and support.

Payever’s PoS technology enables its partners to offer cashless payment acceptance using QR codes instead of expensive hardware. Other solutions offered by payever include a Studio to help merchants better display their wares digitally and Mail, an e-mail marketing solution for building newsletters, sending personalized offers and more – all without needing to code.

Check out payever’s demo from FinovateWest last year.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Daniel Frank from Pexels

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India’s BharatPe Nears Unicorn Status; A Look at Fintech in MENA

India’s BharatPe Nears Unicorn Status; A Look at Fintech in MENA
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

In a Series D round led by existing investor Coatue Management, Indian financial services company BharatPe has secured $108 million in new funding. The investment, which also included participation from all of the firm’s current institutional investors, boosts the company’s total to $268 million and gives BharatPe a valuation of $900 million.

The company highlighted that the oversubscribed round in its statement was “one of the fastest round closures for any startup in India.” But the company’s co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover was quick to underscore what part of the news deserved the most attention. “We, at BharatPe, do not celebrate fund raises – it is akin to procuring raw material. We are super excited though to have returned INR 125 crores of capital to angels and all ESOP holders, earning them one of the highest returns on investment.”

Grover added that the company has experienced 5x growth in its payments business and 10x growth in its lending business in the last 12 months. “This growth reiterates the trust that the small merchants and kirana store owners have showed in us.” He said BharatPe remains committed to the goal of building “India’s largest B2B financial services company” and a “one-stop destination for small merchants.”

Founded in 2018, BharatPe was launched to bring better financing and payments services to Indian SMEs. The company was the first to offer a UPI interoperable QR code, first to offer a ZERO MDR payment acceptance service, and first to provide a UPI payment backed merchant cash advance service. More than five million merchants rely on BharatPe’s platform, which handles an annualized total payment volume of $7 billion.

For this week’s FinovateGlobal Reports, we turn to a 2021 forecast of fintech in the Middle East published by Finextra earlier this month. The report features contributions from a number of sources, including S&P Global, Findexable and its Global Fintech Index, the WEF Global Competitive Report, as well as a 2019 analyst overview published by Clifford Chance, Fintech in the Middle East – Developments Across MENA.

“Fintech continues to transform the delivery of financial services across the region and remains high on the agenda of industry participants and governments seeking to develop and modernize and, for GCC governments, to diversity from natural resources,” the report noted. Among the key takeaways on a region that (according to Accenture) is expected to see its fintech market grow to $2.5 billion in value by 2022 are:

  • Public and public institutions are helping reinforce a “collaborative approach to fintech.”
  • Regional leadership in fintech remains seated in the UAE “both in respect of the number of participants and forward-thinking approaches.”
  • Wariness toward cryptocurrencies and digital assets remains even as some regions, such as Dubai, have begun to “embrace blockchain” technology.
  • Embedded fintech products into governmental services and banking have improved efficiencies and increased opportunities for fintech innovation.

Read the full report.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

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Mambu and Signicat Team Up to Digitize Identity Management in Europe

Mambu and Signicat Team Up to Digitize Identity Management in Europe
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global, Mambu, Signicat

A just-announced partnership between two Finovate alums – Mambu and Signicat – will bring digitized identity management services to banks, fintechs, and financial service providers across Europe. The collaboration between the SaaS banking platform and the digital identity company is designed to help institutions in the region leverage innovations in identity management to boost customer acquisition, enhance the customer experience, and defend against identity fraud.

The single-API integration between Signicat’s identity platform and Mambu will enable users to apply a variety of digital identity verification solutions to a range of processes, including onboarding, identity authentication, and e-signatures. In their joint statement, both companies highlighted abandonment as one challenge the new integration will help companies meet. They noted that 63% of consumers in Europe quit at least one financial app in the last year, citing research conducted by Signicat.

At the same time, the integration also will help companies deal with the new environment for cybercrime, particularly identity fraud, which has flourished in the work-from-home, COVID-19 era. “Identity fraud continues to be a major threat to businesses across the globe and damages trust,” Mambu Managing Director for EMEA Eelco-Jan Boonstra said. “And with everyone working from home – the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this. Therefore financial service providers are relying on customer trust and loyalty more than ever.”

Asger Hattel, who took over as Signicat’s CEO in January of last year, underscored the way the pandemic had accelerated pre-existing trends toward digitization. “Global lockdowns have turned a desire for digital services into an urgent need,” Hattel said. “Our research into consumer attitudes towards onboarding show that financial service providers are struggling to keep up with consumer’s digital demands – and it is costing them customers.”

Mambu’s partnership with Signicat comes in the wake of the Mambu’s $132+ million (€110 million) fundraising last month – which brought the company’s total valuation to more than $2 billion (€1.7 billion). Also last month, Mambu announced the addition of new Chief Financial Officer Langley Eide. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Mambu is an alum of both our Finovate conferences – debuting in 2013 at FinovateAsia – and our event for developers and engineers – FinDEVr New York, in 2016.

Based in Trondheim, Norway, Signicat specializes in providing identity assurance worldwide, enabling banks to leverage existing customer identity to accelerate onboarding, improve access to services, and connect users, devices, and more across channels and markets. A Finovate alum since 2017, Signicat has raised $8.8 million in funding from investors including Horizon 2020, Viking Venture, and Secure Identity Holding.

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Yoco Reaches 120,000 Served Milestone; Five Top Insurtechs in Vietnam

Yoco Reaches 120,000 Served Milestone; Five Top Insurtechs in Vietnam
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Yoco

The rise of insurtech – entrepreneurs and innovators looking to do for insurance what fintechs have done for financial services – is a global phenomenon. And one of the areas where insurtech is beginning to take hold is Vietnam. The country experienced a fintech mini-boom from 2017 to 2019 which, among other things, helped put the country’s nascent insurtech market on the map. This week’s Finovate Global Lists shares Fintech News Singapore’s roundup of insurtechs operating in the APAC market of Vietnam that are leveraging everything from mobile to machine learning to bring digital insurance to the more than 97 million citizens of the country.

INSO. Founded in 2018. Headquartered in Hanoi, INSO offers insurance products online as well as the ability to make claims online. The company was among the first in the country to offer flight delay insurance. Vũ Nguyễn Thuỳ Vân is CEO.

OPES. Founded in 2018. Headquartered in Hanoi, OPES Insurance Joint Stock Company is a pioneer in Vietnam’s digital insurance industry. OPES specializes in providing personalized insurance solutions to empower customers rather than brokers.

Papaya. Founded in 2018. Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, Papaya offers a one-stop shop for employee benefits to promote health and wellness. Hung Phan is co-founder and CEO.

Save Money. Founded in 2013. Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, Save Money is a B2B2C digital insurance platform for banks, hospitals, and telecommunication companies. Trần Quang Ninh is founder and CEO.

Wicare. Founded in 2018. Headquartered in Hanoi, Wicare is a lifestyle insurance company that leverage gamification to boost engagement and encourage customers to exercise. Quang Ngoc Nguyen is founder and CEO.

It’s been more than two years since Finovate launched its first conference on the African continent. In that time, we’ve seen a number of alums from FinovateAfrica in the fintech news headlines: Best of Show-winning digital wealth technology company Bambu raised $10 million, credit decisioning solution provider RISQ teamed up with Aion Digital, and this week, small business solution provider Yoco, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, reported that it has reached a major milestone: more than 120,000 small businesses served.

“Through our platform and the results of a recent merchant survey, we have seen up to a 90% decrease in in-person transactions since the lockdown began,” Yoco CEO told TechGist Africa last year when it launched a trio of new payment solutions to support online transactions for small businesses. “We knew that the best way to support our merchants was to develop products that would enable them to do business online and keep money coming in through this period.”

This week for Finovate Global Voices we present Bradley Wattrus, Yoco CFO and co-founder, and Clayton Brett, Capital Product Owner, demoing the Yoco Capital solution for SMEs at FinovateAfrica 2018.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Photo by Arnie Chou from Pexels

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Neobanks in South America; Swedish Payments Firm Trustly Eyes $11 Billion IPO

Neobanks in South America; Swedish Payments Firm Trustly Eyes $11 Billion IPO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: EyeVerify, Finovate Global, Nubank, Trustly

Earlier this week we reported on the $400 million Series G closed by Brazilian neobank – and Finovate alum – Nubank. The firm, founded in 2013 and based in Sao Paulo, serves more than 34 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and offers a digital savings account, a no-fee credit card, as well as personal loans. This week’s investment boosts the company’s total capital to $1.2 billion and gives the Brazilian digital bank a valuation of $25 billion.

We also suggested that Nubank’s news was a good opportunity for fintech fans to “brush up” on fintech in general when it comes to Latin America – and the region’s challenger banking industry in specific. To this end, for this week’s Finovate Global Reports, we are sharing this look at neobanks in South America, courtesy of Fintechnews Switzerland.

“South America has seen an exceptionally dynamic evolution of its neobanking landscape,” the authors wrote, “with now more than 30 live neobanks and digital banks that serve over 50 million customers out of the region’s 430 million+ population (+11%), data from Dutch fintech consultancy firm Fincog shows.”

An Overview of South America’s Booming Neobanking Sector is a great way to get to know how and why challenger banks are finding fertile ground in countries ranging from Brazil and Colombia to Peru and Argentina.

Swedish payments company Trustly, which made its Finovate debut back in 2013 at FinovateEurope in London, is betting that even after a year that featured a record number of initial public offerings, the investing public is hungry for more.

Reuters reported earlier this week that Trustly is planning an initial public offering in Q2 of this year that could earn the company a valuation of $11 billion (EUR 9 billion). Nordic Capital, which acquired Trustly in 2018, is said to be working with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Carnegie, with additional banks to be brought onboard as well. According to Reuters, the company is targeting “late April or early May” for an IPO. Both Trustly and Nordic Capital have not commented on the IPO rumor.

Headquartered in Stockholm and founded in 2008, Trustly specializes in enabling payments directly from customer online bank accounts. Trustly processes more than four million payments a month and reported revenues of EUR 130 million in 2019. The company estimates 2020 revenues of EUR 200 million. Trustly has more than 7,600 bank partners and 600 million consumers in Europe and North America who rely on its account-to-account network to bypass the card networks simply and securely.

In 2019, Trustly merged with PayWithMyBank, a U.S.-based company, to provide what Trustly CEO Oscar Berglund called “the first and only online banking payments network with transatlantic coverage.” Berglund added that the union of the two firms was “transformative” and said it would “accelerate” Trustly’s goal of reaching global coverage.

“Together we’re thrilled to be able to offer merchants and billers a unique alternative to card payments, allowing them to accept payments from 600 million consumers across Europe and the U.S.,” he said.

Earlier this month, Trustly announced the appointment of new Group Chief Financial Officer Mats Backman. Backman comes to Trustly after a tenure as CFO at publicly-traded automotive technology company Veoneer. Last fall, the Swedish payments innovator added a number of executives to its ranks, including Karim Ahmad as its new Global Chief Technology and Product Officer. Ahmad was formerly the Chief Product and Transformation Officer at Paysafe Group.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • EyeVerify, which twice won Finovate Best of Show awards for its biometric authentication technology, may be on the market after being acquired by Ant Financial in 2016 for $100 million.
  • Malaysian-based supply chain finance and P2P financing platform CapBay raises $20 million in Series A.
  • Robowealth, a fintech based in Thailand, secures Series A funding from Beacon Venture Capital, Kasikornbank’s corporate VC arm.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Mobile banking startup Spot Money launches in South Africa, billing itself as the country’s first open banking platform.
  • Kenya-based Safaraicom goes live with its M-Pesa bill management service.
  • Synthesis launches Halo, the first of its kind tap-on-phone contactless payment solution for the African market.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

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