Funding

Microsoft, Nationwide Invest $12 Million in SME Lender BlueVine

Microsoft, Nationwide Invest $12 Million in SME Lender BlueVine
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BlueVine, Funding

Small business financing specialist BlueVine has raised $12 million in new funding. Combined with the $60 million investment the company picked up last month, BlueVine’s Series E amounts to $72 million, and takes the company’s total funding to $590 million. Of this amount, $185 million represents equity financing.

This week’s investment comes from Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, and the venture arm of insurance and financial services company, Nationwide. M12 partner Elliott Robinson praised BlueVine’s “market traction to date,” while Nationwide Ventures’ Erik Ross highlighted the funding as emblematic of Nationwide’s commitment to serving SMEs. “This investment aligns with our strategy to co-create value for our members to help them protect what’s most important and to plan for a secure financial future,” Ross said.

BlueVine provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses, offering lines of credit up to $250,000 and invoice factoring up to $5 million. With rates as low as 4.8% and approvals as quick as 20 minutes, the company recently surpassed $1 billion in total funding volume.

“We had very limited resources when we began and we were up against bigger and more established competitors,” said BlueVine CEO and founder Eyal Lifshitz, who reflected on the company’s fifth anniversary as well as this week’s funding. He credited the company’s “cutting edge technology and product innovation” for its success and added, “these new investments will help us offer more financing to even more entrepreneurs.”

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, BlueVine demonstrated its SME online lending platform at FinovateFall 2014. This spring, BlueVine partnered with cross-border payments specialist, Veem, to make the process easier and less expensive for SMEs. Named one of the top 360 entrepreneurial companies in the U.S. by Entrepreneur, BlueVine added Women in Fintech Powerlist member Ana Sirbu as its new Chief Financial Officer at the beginning of the year.

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Flywire Raises $100 Million for Global Expansion

Flywire Raises $100 Million for Global Expansion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Flywire, Funding

Global payment and receivables company Flywire closed on $100 million in funding to facilitate foreign currency payments. The Series D round brings the company’s total funding to $143 million.

The financing was led by Singapore-based Temasek. Bain Capital Ventures and F-Prime Capital also contributed. While Flywire declined to disclose its new valuation, Forbes noted that the amount is significantly higher than Flywire’s 2015 valuation of $100 million, but falls short of $1 billion.

Flywire, which is headquartered in Boston and has operations in the U.K., China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Spain, will use the funds to advance its technology and expand geographically. The company also plans to invest in marketing by cross-selling its existing client base to new cross-border payment solutions for healthcare and business.

Flywire originally launched as peerTransfer in 2011, when the company set out to facilitate international tuition payments at colleges and universities. While this flagship market makes up 80% of Flywire’s revenue, the company has since rebranded and expanded to tackle international payments for healthcare and businesses. Flywire’s platform processes billions of dollars in payments every year in over 120 different local currencies, connecting more than 1,400 businesses and universities with their customers.

At FinovateSpring 2011, the company presented its original tuition payment platform. In June, Flywire partnered with UnionPay International to provide Chinese students and patients with discounted foreign exchange rates on cross-border tuition and healthcare payments. A few weeks earlier, EY named Flywire CEO Mike Massaro a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year.

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StockViews Announces New Investment from Fuel Ventures

StockViews Announces New Investment from Fuel Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, StockViews

A new round of funding will help equity research innovator StockViews invest in AI technology and grow its team of analysts. The London, U.K.-based company will also use the capital to open an engineering office in Hyderabad, India geared toward developing AI-based solutions.

“Our focus will be applying AI technology to identify misplaced securities in the mid-cap space,” company COO and Co-founder Sandeep Bathina said. “We are developing research tools to perform in-depth evaluation in support of our analysts.”

StockViews did not disclose the amount raised in the round, which was led by Fuel Ventures, a firm that specializes in early stage investment. StockViews raised $640,000 in funding last summer which, at the time, boosted its total capital above $1 million.

“We are excited to have Fuel on board and look forward to working with them during this next phase of the company’s growth,” StockViews CEO and Co-founder Tom Beevers said. “This funding will help us to expand the number of in-depth investment ideas we make available to our growing client base.”

In addition to the funding news, the company announced the hiring of analyst Jamie Fletcher, previously of Sarasin & Partners. StockViews noted that additional analysts are expected to be brought on board in the third quarter of 2018.

StockViews demonstrated its StockViews Signal solution at FinovateSpring 2015. Signal aggregates the recommendations of the platform’s best-performing analysts into a singular buy or sell notification. Instead of merely crowdsourcing market wisdom writ large, StockViews’ technology enables traders and investors to “crowdsource alpha” instead, focusing only on those analysts with a track record of outperformance.

A graduate of Startupbootcamp Fintech’s London program, StockViews is currently based out of Level39, the technology accelerator at London’s Canary Wharf. The company was founded in 2014.

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Personetics Scores Minority Stake Investment from United Overseas Bank

Personetics Scores Minority Stake Investment from United Overseas Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Personetics

Cognitive banking innovator Personetics announced an investment from United Overseas Bank (UOB) last week. The amount of the investment, which adds to the company’s previous $18 million in equity funding, was not disclosed. But The Business Times reports that UOB now holds a minority stake in Personetics.

“Today, UOB becomes the first bank in Asia to join this revolution in digital banking,” Personetics Co-founder and CEO, David Sosna, said. He praised the Singapore-based bank’s vision and “its commitment to the financial well-being of its customers.”

With more than 500 offices in 19 countries and territories in the Asia Pacific region, UOB will leverage Personetics’ technology to extend its own machine learning and data analytics capabilities. Dennis Khoo, UOB head of regional digital bank and strategic initiatives, added that Personetics’ technology will also enable it to improve customer engagement and “design more innovative, responsive and responsible digital banking services.”

Personetics cognitive banking solutions power personalized real-time guidance for more than 15 million digital users. With a combination of machine learning, natural language understanding, and AI-powered predictive analytics, the company’s technology enables FIs to provide their customers with highly-relevant, personalized insights and actionable advice to plan for their financial futures as well as manage everyday financial challenges.

Partnered with six of the top 12 banks in North America and Europe, and serving more than 50 million customers around the world, Personetics’ solutions provide FIs with conversational self-service (Personetics Assist), predictive insights and advice (Personetics Engage), and algorithm-based money management (Personetics Act). The company’s technology has analyzed more than 29 billion transactions and personalized more than 4.8 billion customer interactions.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Personetics demonstrated its Personetics Anywhere chatbot solution at FinovateFall 2016. Last month, the company unveiled a new offering designed especially for digital-only and challenger banks. This spring, Personetics announced that Banca Transilvania, the second largest bank in Romania with more than 2.2 million customers, will add its technology to its internet and mobile banking platform. Personetics began the year teaming up with Israel Discount Bank to power the $48 billion institution’s new digital financial assistant, Didi.

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OnDeck Scores $93 Million in Two Credit Facilities

OnDeck Scores $93 Million in Two Credit Facilities
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, On Deck Capital

Online small business lender OnDeck closed a pair of revolving credit facilities this week. The $93 million in asset-backed funds come from Credit Suisse, which contributed $55 million (AUD 75 million) to go to small businesses in Australia, and Crédit Agricole, which contributed $38 million (CAD50 million) for small business loans to Canadians.

“Securing cost-effective facilities that provide committed funding to support the loan growth of our international businesses reflects another step forward in the execution of our financing strategy,” said Ken Brause, Chief Financial Officer at OnDeck. “These two transactions provide additional capacity to support small businesses in Australia and Canada and help them to achieve their goals.”

OnDeck will use the Credit Suisse facility to refinance its loan book at a lower rate and to fund future small business loan originations. OnDeck will service the loans, which it will extend to OnDeck Australia and OnDeck Canada subsidiaries. The funds are expected to promote small business growth in Australia and Canada by burgeoning the amount of working capital available.

Both loans carry an initial weighted average interest rate of 5.6%. The Credit Suisse loan will mature in June 2020 while Crédit Agricole’s matures in June 2021. These credit facilities make a total of four funding events that the New York-based company has received this year, following a $100 million revolving credit facility and a $225 million securitization, both received in April.

Founded in 2007, OnDeck leverages its OnDeck Score that uses advanced analytics to make real-time lending decisions and deliver funds to small businesses in as little as 24 hours. Since launch, the company has deployed $8+ billion to customers in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada, and Australia. OnDeck demoed at FinovateSpring 2012 and gave a presentation at our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016.

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Algomi Picks Up Investment from Euroclear

Algomi Picks Up Investment from Euroclear
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Algomi, Funding

Fixed income liquidity matching innovator Algomi is the recipient of new funding courtesy of an investment from Euroclear Information Services (EIS). Existing investors Euronext, AllianceBernstein, and S&P Global also participated. The exact amount of the funding was undisclosed; the company’s previous total capital stood at $14 million.

“Our investment in Algomi is driven by client demand to access untapped liquidity pools,” Euroclear CEO Peter Holder said. “This venture represents an opportunity to transform our data into an asset to increase transparency and provide a substantial boost for global fixed income markets.”

Algomi’s fundraising comes just a month after the company appointed a new CEO, Scott Eaton, who was formerly EMEA COO at MarketAxess. In a statement, Eaton praised Euroclear as a “partner who understands the value of information and the importance of improving liquidity in the fixed income market.”

The investment will enable EIS to improve liquidity in the global fixed income market by leveraging Algomi’s bond liquidity matching system to make information about specific bond holdings available anonymously. Counterparties can use Algomi’s data aggregation tool, ALFA, to access Euronext’s Synapse Multilateral Trading Facility to query and trade these securities.

Writing about the funding news, Algomi Head of Marketing and Communications Tim Binnington noted this would help increase both trading opportunities and transaction volume in the more illiquid fixed income products, including corporate and government bonds. Algomi acquired ALFA from AllianceBernstein last May in a deal that gave AllianceBernstein an undisclosed, minority stake in the company.

Founded in 2012, Algomi demonstrated Honeycomb, its buy-side GUI at FinovateFall 2014. This spring, the company was included in the Tech Tour Growth 50 – its third year in a row making the list of top European private technology companies with a valuation of less than $1 billion. In 2017, Algomi was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 roster.

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Best of Show Winner Bambu Raises $3 Million in Series A

Best of Show Winner Bambu Raises $3 Million in Series A
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bambu, Funding

In a round led by Franklin Templeton Investments, B2B robo advisor Bambu has raised $3 million in Series A funding. The capital will be used to fuel the Singapore-based fintech’s global expansion.

“We are incredibly grateful for the support of all our existing and new investors and customers in helping us to build a leading global Robo-advisory technology company,” Bambu CEO and founder Ned Phillips said. He noted that the company already had topped growth targets for the year, and pointed to seven new clients in Asia and the U.S. that were slated to go live soon.

“This proves our B2B business model is working, as there is real global scalability without large capital requirements,” Phillips said. “Our next ambitious goal is to get a million end users on the platform by 2019.”

Also participating in the round were Singapore family office Octava and Japanese fintech investor Mamoru Taniya. Speaking on behalf of Franklin Templeton Investments, which made its first investment in the company last year, Managing Director and Head of Retail Harshendu Bindal praised Bambu’s ability to “drive constant innovation in the digital wealth management space” and called the company “a great long-term partner for us.”

The funding takes Bambu’s total capital to more than $4 million.

Bambu won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2017 for its demonstration of People Like Me, a machine learning model that goes beyond traditional roboadvisory to make it easier for users to identify and reach their financial goals. The previous year, the company made its Finovate debut with a demo of its Robo and Intelligent Digital Advisory platform. The platform reimagines robo advisory by providing specific solutions for different market segments: a mobile private banker for the rich, a traditional robo advisory portfolio tool for the mass affluent, and a “robo saver” for retail customers.

This spring, Bambu opened offices in London and announced a number of new additions to its team – including a new Managing Director in Europe, Nick Wakefield. The company also made a trio of new hires who will fulfill roles in AI, design, and front-end development.

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More Than $1.5 Billion Raised by 37 Alums in Q2 2018

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings

 

Best funding quarter for Finovate alums to date.

There’s no other way to put it. With more than $1.5 billion raised by 37 alums, the second quarter of 2018 is twice as large as the previous year’s Q2. Not only that, but this year’s second quarter is also the biggest quarter for equity funding in Finovate history, ranking among our “unicorn” quarters of more than $1 billion raised.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q2 2017: More than $726 million raised by 25 alums
  • Q2 2016: More than $510 million raised by 23 alums
  • Q2 2015: More than $840 million raised by eight alums
  • Q2 2014: More than $458 million raised by eight alums

Previous Billion Dollar Quarters

  • Q1 2018: More than $1.32 billion raised by 26 alums
  • Q3 2017: More than $1 billion raised by 31 alums
  • Q3 2015: More than $1 billion raised by 40 alums

Which alums topped the funding ranks in the second quarter? There were a number of triple digit investments over the past few months, including a pair of quarter billion dollar investments picked up by digital bank Revolut and business commerce innovator Tradeshift. But the biggest alum funding in Q2 2018 was the $360 million raised by low code app development platform OutSystems, which presented its technology at our developers conference, FinDEVr, last year.

Combined, the top ten equity investments for the quarter add up to $1.3 billion, representing 86% of the total alum funding for Q2.

Top Ten Equity Investments for Q2 2018

  • OutSystems: $360 million
  • Revolut: $250 million
  • Tradeshift: $250 million
  • LendStreet: $117 million
  • Signifyd: $100 million
  • BlueVine: $60 million
  • WorkFusion: $50 million
  • Unison: $40 million
  • Tango Card: $35 million
  • Qapital: $30 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q2 2018. Interestingly, the amount raised in June 2018 alone – more than $716 million – is greater than all but two previous second quarters.

April 2018: More than $370 million raised by 11 alums

May 2018: More than $434 million raised by 11 alums

June 2018: More than $716 million raised by 15 alums

f you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2018, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Top Image Designed by Freepik

 

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New Investment Takes ThetaRay’s Total Capital to More than $60 Million

New Investment Takes ThetaRay’s Total Capital to More than $60 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, ThetaRay

Advanced cyber security solution provider ThetaRay has raised $30+ million in funding courtesy of investors including Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), GE, Bank Hapoalim, OurCrowd, and SVB. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to more than $60 million.

“In this era when criminal activity and money laundering are increasing and becoming more sophisticated and also regulation is on the rise, there is a greater demand for our solutions,” ThetaRay CEO Mark Gazit explained. “As the amount of digital information grows, you just can’t protect it without artificial intelligence systems. ThetaRay offers the most advanced and mature solutions to detect threats before they happen. We thank the existing investors, especially JVP, for their confidence in ThetaRay, and welcome the new ones joining in this round.”

ThetaRay, which has doubled in size every year in its five years of operation, will use the new funding to grow its presence in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., and “significantly increase” its workforce to scale operations to meet growing demand. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in Israel and New York City, and has offices in the U.K. and Singapore.

Combining machine learning, artificial intelligence, and “the wisdom of the algorithm crowd,” ThetaRay enables financial institutions to detect in real-time the kind of anomalies that typically indicate fraud, while reducing the number of false positives. The company provides financial services companies with anti-money laundering, fraud detection, and ATM solutions that leverage unsupervised machine learning instead of outdated rule-based systems and pre-defined thresholds.

“Existing systems fall short of addressing the agility and innovation of rogue organizations, fraudsters and hackers,” JVP General Partner Yoav Tzruya said. “ThetaRay is uniquely positioned to address this significant market pain, through its no-rules, holistic, AI-driven solution to identify such events, while significantly reducing the operating cost for banks.” Tzruya is also a founding investor in ThetaRay.

ThetaRay demonstrated its fraud and credit risk technology at FinovateFall 2015. Last month, the company announced that it was teaming up with ABN AMRO in a five-year project to improve the AML and counter-terrorist financing capabilities of the Dutch bank. Also in June, ThetaRay was honored with the Next Generation ATM Security Award from ATMIA.

In addition to financial services, ThetaRay’s anomaly detection technology has also been deployed in Industrial Internet of Things (Industrial IoT) contexts to help protect critical assets such as turbines, sensors, aircraft engines, and more.

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ezbob Lands Undisclosed Investment from Honeycomb Investment Trust

ezbob Lands Undisclosed Investment from Honeycomb Investment Trust
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: EZBOB, Funding

Alternative business lending company ezbob closed a round of equity funding this week. The amount of the financing was undisclosed and boosts the U.K.-based startup’s total combined debt and equity funding higher than its previous total of $136 million (£103 million). Of that amount, $50.3+ million (£38.2+ million) is equity and $81.9 million (£62.2 million) is debt.

Today’s Series C funds come from Honeycomb Investment Trust, which is managed by Pollen Street Capital, one of the leading investors focused on lending startups. Lindsey McMurray, Pollen Street founding partner, will join ezbob’s Board of Directors. ezbob will use the funds to build out a more robust automated lending portfolio and to expand into new geographical territory.

Regarding McMurray’s involvement, Tomer Guriel, founder and CEO of ezbob said, “Our initial focus is on the SME community, many of whom struggle to acquire the financial support they need to achieve their personal and professional business development goals. My vision is to create a portfolio of innovative solutions which streamline and accelerate the entire lending process for both the borrowers and loan providers. With the support of highly experienced individuals like Lindsey, together with the new funding, there is nothing to stop us from turning our shared vision into a sustainable reality.”

“We have watched ezbob develop from being a niche player into a leading lending platform provider,” said McMurray. “ezbob are pioneers in this space and I believe both the financial institutions, and the businesses they support will derive significant benefits from this new and innovative approach to lending,” she added.

In addition to lending directly to small businesses in need of capital, ezbob offers banks a lending-as-a service platform for their small business banking customers. Esme Loans and Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank are among the company’s clients.

Founded in 2011, ezbob has 70 employees across offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Bulgaria. At FinovateEurope 2014, Guriel demonstrated ezbob’s online application process. The company started this year off on the right foot with the announcement of a $21 million funding round. Late last year, ezbob won an award for “Best Technology Initiative” at the Financial Innovation Awards.

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Paysend Seals Deal on $20 Million Financing

Paysend Seals Deal on $20 Million Financing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, PaySend

 

In a round led by MARCorp Financial, global money transfer platform Paysend has raised $20 million in new funding. The company said that the capital, which takes the company’s total to $23 million, will help it launch new services and expand globally.

“Paysend has created the first integrated B2B and B2C global payments business which is already disrupting the market,” said MARCorp Financial Chairman Michael Fazio. “Their three businesses – Global Transfers, Global Account, and Global Processing – are leaders in their respective fields. We look forward to being a part of the next stage of Paysend’s growth.”

Paysend CEO Europe Ronald Millar demonstrating the Paysend Global Account at FinovateSpring 2018.

Via its Global Transfers service, Paysend enables card-to-card money transfers from customers in more than 60 countries. With the recipient’s name and a 16-digit card number, cardholders can make fast, secure, low-cost money transfers 24/7. Paysend charges a fixed rate for international transactions regardless of the amount transferred. Recipients can withdraw cash from millions of ATMs around the world, and pay by card at any merchant that accepts Visa or Mastercard. The service is accessible via both an iOS and Android app as well as online.

Global Account, demonstrated live at FinovateSpring 2018 in May, provides a digital wallet for both fiat and crypto currencies. The solution enables fund transfer between currencies as well as sending money to other Global Accounts or crypto wallets, and making online and in-person payments. The account comes with a prepaid card, physical and virtual, that can be linked to any of the currencies in the account, enabling the user to pay with both fiat and crypto currencies. Cardholders can also withdraw cash from the account in 125 different currencies.

Paysend’s Global Processing division processes credit and debit cards, and helps boost revenue for merchants by taking what the company calls a “data-driven approach to customer shopping.”

“I am proud of what we have achieved to date, and what we have planned for the future,” Paysend CEO Europe Ronald Millar said. “We are the only global card-to-card platform, and the technological and operational expertise required to create that could only have come from an executive team with special knowledge, creativity and ambition – our team.”

London, U.K.-based Paysend announced a number of major service expansions this year including launches in Turkey in June, in Israel in May, and in both Canada and the UAE in April. Nigeria was added in February. Paysend’s partnership with China UnionPay, announced back in December, enabled card-to-card transfers to China.

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Veridium’s $16.5 Million Series B Led by Michael Spencer

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Veridium

Exactly one week after pocketing a $150k grant, Veridium has made headlines again after the company reported a Series B funding round totaling $16.5 million. Because Veridium’s initial funding round was unreported, the company’s total funding is unknown.

U.K. entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael Spencer led the round, contributing $14.2 million of the total financing. Other contributors include Citrix Systems, and investor Michael Powell. Both Spencer and Powell will join Veridium’s board of directors.

The company will use the capital to boost product development and to scale its sales and marketing efforts across the Americas, Europe, and Asia in order to meet demand. Veridium already boasts customers in multiple industries across the globe, having recently added several large financial services organizations. In February, the company onboarded the largest bank in the Nordic region, Nordea, and last month, it signed a deal with a multinational Swiss bank to replace passwords, tokens, and swipe cards to create a more user-friendly authentication process.

“In today’s digital age, global organizations are challenged to secure their most critical assets against advanced threats in a way that’s both convenient and secure,” said Spencer. “Veridium is unique in the industry because it provides organizations with an enterprise-ready authentication solution to address those problems with the adoption of biometrics – while increasing security and convenience.”

Veridium offers biometric authentication solutions available through a software-only biometrics platform. The identity access management technology allows users to replace passwords, tokens, and swipe cards with their own facial and fingerprint biometrics that can be read on the sensors already available on their smartphone.

At FinovateEurope 2017, Veridium showcased 4 Fingers TouchlessID, a multi-finger touchless biometric authentication that works on smartphones with a camera. Headquartered in London and Boston, Veridium was founded in 2015. James Stickland is CEO.

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