Funding Archives - Page 54 of 89

Payworks Completes $14.5 Million Series B Round

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 14, 2018
Categories: Funding, payworks

Point of sale (POS) technology company Payworks has reeled in its second round of funding. The Germany-based company closed a $14.5 million round from CommerzVentures and Visa, with contributions from existing investors Speedinvest and Finparx. Today’s financing brings Payworks’ total funding to $19 million.

Explaining the firm’s reasoning behind the funding, Stefan Tirtey, Managing Partner of CommerzVentures said that it “invests in founders with a passion for innovation and proven ability to execute.” He added, “We back businesses that can have a significant impact on the financial services industry. We believe that Payworks has both, a great team, and an offering that can have real impact in the fast-changing world of card payments.”

Payworks will use today’s financing to fulfill demand for its solutions and fuel global growth, scale operations, and focus on increasing R&D and product teams across its offices in Munich, New York, London, and Barcelona. In the press release, Christian Deger, Payworks founder and CEO said, “We are on a great mission to build a new operating system for the Point of Sale and are very excited to have CommerzVentures and Visa join us on that journey. With the additional funding we are fully equipped to further develop our technology and product and support the demand coming from leading payment players looking to modernize their solutions.”

Founded in 2012, Payworks focuses on POS technology. The company’s payment gateway technology, Pulse, is a set of SDKs and APIs that remotely update card readers and set up in a couple of minutes to make developers and their merchants EMV certified, PCI compliant and P2PE ready. The company’s partners include First Data, TSYS, Stripe, and American Express. Additional products include Accept, a white-label mPOS solution for merchants, and Engage, a customer data and CRM platform.

At FinovateEurope 2015, the company’s CEO Christian Deger demonstrated how Payworks builds payment solutions and checkout options. Late last year, the company extended its partnership with Verifone, integrating the Verifone e355 mPOS and the VX 820 onto the Payworks platform.

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Payfone Receives $23 Million in Funding from Synchrony Financial

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 14, 2018
Categories: Funding, Payfone

Digital identity authentication company, Payfone raised $23 million today. This Series F round brings the company’s total funding to $93.6 million.

Payfone will use the financing to expand its user experience by enhancing security services in retail, insurance, and healthcare. The round was led by an institutional investor with participation from Synchrony Financial, MassMutual Ventures, as well as individual investors Anil Aggarwal, Jonathan Weiner, and Andrew Prozes.

In a press release, Rodger Desai, founder and CEO of Payfone explained that consumers will increasingly expect that transactions are mobile-first, secure, and fast. He added, “The days of using quizzes, questions and one-time codes to verify identity are numbered. Payfone is ushering in a new world where authentication is instant, passive and continuous using the most advanced cybersecurity. Our mission is to help clients across the financial, retail, insurance, healthcare, and technology industries use authentication to not only thwart fraud but drive revenue.”

Payfone, which was founded in 2008 as a mobile payments company, demoed 1-Touch Checkout at FinovateFall 2012. The New York-based company has since pivoted to focus on authentication solutions.

Among Payfone’s product offerings are Instant Authentication for Mobile, a frictionless two-factor authentication solution, and Instant Authentication for Voice, an API that uses the caller’s phone number to authenticate them. The company also offers a Trust Score that provides a measurement of the reliability and risk of each mobile device.

Managing director at MassMutual Ventures, Eric Emmons, said, “Payfone enables service providers across the financial, retail, insurance, healthcare and technology sectors to offer a frictionless mobile and online experience to their customers, which substantially improves conversion rates and dramatically reduces the cost of call center operations.”

Payfone, whose technologies are currently used by six of the top 10 U.S. banks, processes millions of signals per day to authenticate and score transactions; the company currently authenticates 10 million transactions per day. Earlier this year, Payfone partnered with O2, a U.K.-based mobile network operator, in an effort to protect mobile users from digital fraud. Last spring, the company announced it would power mobile ID authentication for Zelle.

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Dwolla Lands $12 Million

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 12, 2018
Categories: Dwolla, Funding

In a short, three-sentence blog post, Dwolla CEO Ben Milne announced that the company closed a $12 million round of funding. The investment, which brings the Iowa-based company’s total to $51.4 million, was led by Foundry Group with participation from Union Square Ventures, Next Level Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, High Alpha, and Firebrand– all existing investors.

The funds will be used to support the financial platform’s growing capital requirements and to expand its team. Founded in 2008, Dwolla is growing. “We have more than 40 openings to fill this year,” Milne noted in his blog post announcing the funding. “As we build our team, we do so knowing that the best teams are built by the inclusion of diverse ideas, experiences, and people,” he added.

Dwolla offers a white-label payments API that allows firms to credit or debit any U.S. bank account the user has connected. The company integrates with Sift Science to offer real-time identity verification to help reduce fraud. And in May of 2017, Dwolla integrated with Plaid to instantly verify and authenticate customers’ bank accounts using tokenization.

Dwolla, which most recently demoed FiSync at FinovateSpring 2015, is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Last summer, the company added a multi-user feature to its Access API dashboard. In January, Dwolla began powering identity verification for Yahoo!’s Tanda savings app.

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Stash Raises $37.5 Million, Launches Custodial Accounts

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 12, 2018
Categories: Funding, Stash

Mobile-first financial platform Stash closed $37.5 million in funding today to help Americans rethink how they invest and save. Union Square Ventures led the Series D round, with contributions also coming from existing investors Breyer Capital, Coatue Management, Entree Capital, Goodwater Capital, and Valar Ventures.

“Through customer focus and a data-driven mindset, Stash has been able to create a powerful consumer brand, with unprecedented growth, on its journey to fix the inequities plaguing financial opportunity across the U.S. We’re excited to join them on this mission to shake up the status quo,” said Rebecca Kaden, Partner at Union Square Ventures.

Today’s round brings Stash’s total funding received in its three-year history to $116.3 million. After last October’s $40 million round, Business Insider estimated the company’s value at $240 million. The New York-based company will use the funds to support the launch of its newest batch of products, including Custodial Accounts, which will be rolling out this week. Custodial Accounts will allow Stash clients to open new accounts for minors to give them a head start on their finances.

Additional new features include Smart-Save (pictured right) and Stash Coach. Smart-Save studies a user’s spending habits and uses an algorithm to determine where they have spare cash, then moves a portion of that amount into a savings account, from which clients can withdraw at any time for free. Stash Coach provides financial recommendations and challenges, while providing guidance and support for accomplishments.

“Stash’s goal since day one has been to help the masses of underserved Americans jump start their journey towards building a healthy and prosperous future,” said Brandon Krieg, co-founder and CEO of Stash. “Through intelligent products and an emphasis on education, we’ve been able to meaningfully improve the financial lives of nearly two million clients. We’re proud of what our customers have accomplished, but we’re even more excited for what’s ahead.”

Stash currently serves over 1.7 million clients on its investing platform, which allows users to choose from a selection of over 40 curated ETFs, and is showing strong growth– approximately 40,000 new clients join its investing platform weekly. The company counts 5 million subscribers to Stash Learn, a financial education content newsletter.

The company’s mobile investing platform doesn’t collect add-on commissions or trading fees, and charges $1 per month for accounts under $5,000. Users with portfolios over that threshold pay 0.25% per year. For all accounts, Stash has lowered the overdraft fee to $0.50 for returned deposits. This is significantly lower than the $35 average overdraft fee that traditional banks charge.

Krieg debuted Stash Retire at FinovateFall 2017. In November of last year, KPMG and H2 Ventures named the company on its 2017 Fintech 100 list. The month prior, Stash announced plans to expand its platform from investing to a more robust banking service. This is part of the rebundling of fintech trend that many analysts predicted would dominate 2018.

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Trunomi Closes $3.5 Million Round from CloudScale Capital

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 6, 2018
Categories: Funding, Trunomi

Consumer consent and data rights company Trunomi closed a $3.5 million round of funding today. This investment brings the Bermuda-based company’s total funding to $10.5 million.

Trunomi will use the funds to manage demand for its technologies and to continue its global expansion. And with the E.U. GDPR deadline coming up, the company will likely see a boost in banks and companies vying for its services, which helps businesses request, receive, and capture customer consent to the use of their personal data.

“Customer data rights and privacy are quickly becoming major issues of concern for companies, especially financial institutions, due to new regulations such as EU GDPR, U.K. Open Banking and marketing opportunities,” said Kim Perdikou, CloudScale Partner. “Trunomi enables businesses to comply with these new regulations by demonstrating compliance and accountability in customer data use and immutably proving the legal basis of processing. With Trunomi, businesses can empower their customers with control and transparency in how their data is used and turn regulation from a burden into a competitive advantage.”

“We are thrilled that CloudScale Capital Partners are part of this financing,” said Trunomi CEO Stuart Lacey. “CloudScale brings significant strength to our investor base, and its partners bring with them a wealth of industry connections with the largest players in the global customer and data markets.”

Founded in 2013, Trunomi has offices in Bermuda, Dublin, the U.K., and Silicon Valley. At FinovateEurope 2015 in London, Lacey launched TruMobile, a customer-focused “consent engine” that creates privacy policies to allow the sharing of consumer PII data across platforms. Last March, Trunomi was named to the RegTech top 100 power list. In December of 2016, the company began collaborating with FIS on the E.U. data protection rules.

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Ohpen Raises $31 Million to Support Global Expansion

By David Penn Posted on February 6, 2018
Categories: Funding, Ohpen

Cloud-based core banking technology innovator Ohpen has just sealed a Series C round led by private equity firm Amerborgh that will bring an additional $31 million (€25 million) in funding to the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based fintech. The company said that the investment will help it prepare for expansion into new markets, including the addition of a third headquarters in Germany, France, Canada, Australia, or the United States. The financing takes Ohpen’s total capital raised to $50 million (€40 million), and adds to a $17 million Series B investment the company secured from Amerborgh in July of last year.

“We’re just scratching the surface,” Ohpen founder and CEO Chris Zadeh said. “Ohpen is changing the core banking software industry, advocating a totally digital solution that is based on one version of the platform for all clients and countries.” He added, “This has never been done before; it requires creativity, commitment and also the necessary capital to implement our vision.”

Calling Ohpen’s core banking technology “the future of the core banking industry,” Amerborgh Nederland MD Michel Vrolijk emphasized the company’s ability to turn ideas into action. Vrolijk said the fintech’s ability to execute was “unparalleled” and added that expansion will be a key next step for the company. “Launching the third country is crucial for Ohpen’s strategy and Amerborgh is thrilled to support them at this decisive point in their growth story.”

Founded in 2009, Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. The company sees itself as part of the solution for financial services companies riddled with outdated legacy banking technology. Its core banking engine provides both BPO services and SaaS solutions to banks, insurance companies, and asset managers. With more than 150 employees, the company has offices in the Netherlands, the U.K., and Spain.

Last November, Ohpen announced that De Volksbank, a retail and small business bank in the Netherlands had migrated more than 120,000 investment accounts to Ohpen’s platform. This followed a July partnership with multinational financial giant, Aegon through which the two firms will develop a new platform to support “the full scope of Aegon’s services in the Netherlands.”

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Behalf Lands Equity Funding and Secures $150 Million in Debt Financing

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 5, 2018
Categories: Behalf, Funding

Alternative lending startup Behalf just received more fuel to help power small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The New York-based company received $150 million in debt financing and an undisclosed amount of equity funding this week.

The debt round was led by a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management, with previous investor Viola Credit also participating. Both investors also contributed to Behalf’s equity round; the company’s equity funds now total more than $156 million.

Benjy Feinberg, founder and CEO of Behalf said that the funding is a significant step forward that will allow Behalf to “expand our fast-growing e-commerce B2B financing platform and enhance our ability to provide the best business terms to customers, in a fraction of the time of a traditional business lender.”

Behalf extends short-term purchase financing to underserved SMBs by using technology and big data to assess the creditworthiness of the business and its owner. Unlike other alternative SMB lenders such as Kabbage or OnDeck, Behalf does not issue funds directly to the SMB. Instead, the startup pays the small business’ vendors on the SMB’s behalf (hence the name Behalf). Having flexibility in repaying their suppliers helps merchants increase their production and ultimately grow their business.

Uri Galai, partner at Viola Credit said Behalf’s technology “will change the landscape of business lending.” He added, “Behalf understands that the buyer-seller relationship has changed, and is providing an unparalleled solution to the increased demands from vendors and their customers seeking financing.”

Feinberg showcased Behalf’s vendor payment platform at FinovateFall 2014. Since it was founded in 2012, the company tripled its revenue and now counts Lenovo, Best Buy and PCM in its network of accepting partners. Last year, the company partnered with Utah-based FinWise Bank to offer SMBs a broader range of financing solutions.

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Finect Raises Capital as BME Takes Minority Stake

By David Penn Posted on February 1, 2018
Categories: Finect, Funding

Spanish fintech Finect announced today that Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) has acquired a 9.7% stake in the company in a transaction valued at “lower than one million euros.”

Finect provides a social trading community for investors to communicate with and learn from financial professionals. Nearly two million users take advantage of Finect’s solutions, including its financial aggregator for portfolio tracking, interactive “pildoras” to respond to specific user questions, and a knowledgeable community of both private and professional investors.

“The transaction is a milestone in our mission to assist investors in their financial decisions,” Finect CEO Antonio Botas said. “BME will bring us experience and leadership, both financial and technological, which are of great help towards our goal of improving the finances of investors.”

BME CEO Javier Hernani added, “This investment and the alliance with Finect is another step forward in the company’s diversification policy and growth of the business’ technological area. The objective of BME is to offer its clients and investors a wide range of services and products so that they can compete in the complex financial and digital environment in which they operate.”

BME’s investment comes amid a major digitalization initiative for the Spanish stock market operator, which is moving to increase the role of technological consultancy services among its offerings. BME integrated its IT, consulting, regulation, and innovation value-added services into BME Inntech last year, as part of this process.

With origins as a social network for financial advisors, asset managers, and their clients, Finect was launched by founder Nicolas Oriol in Spain in 2008 and in the U.S. in 2012. The company demonstrated its Global Library and Pros on Products solutions at FinovateFall 2013. Global Library facilitates content sharing between financial advisors and their customers. Pros on Products makes it easy for financial professionals to track investment products on the Finect platform, along with peer opinions, real time news, and social media. We highlighted the company in our RegTech Reality Check back in October 2016.

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nCino Reels in Investment from Salesforce Ventures

By David Penn Posted on January 31, 2018
Categories: Funding, nCino

The amount of the funding was undisclosed. But cloud-based banking innovator nCino has just picked up a fresh infusion of capital courtesy of a round led by Salesforce Ventures. The investment adds to the company’s known total capital of more than $81 million, which includes a $17 million private equity round back in August.

“From day one, our vision has been to be the worldwide leader in cloud banking,” nCino CEO Pierre Naude said. “We are successfully executing on that vision and empowering financial institutions around the globe to grow their business and better serve their customers. Our strong alignment with Salesforce has been a key factor in our growth and success.”

nCino will use the funds to help drive its global expansion, as well as speed innovation on its Bank Operating System technology. The solution is built on the Salesforce platform and is integrated with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. nCino has been a Salesforce partner since it was founded in 2012.

SVP and GM of Financial Services for Salesforce, Rohit Mahna highlighted the long-term relationship between the two companies. “nCino extends the power of the Salesforce platform, enabling banks to get closer to their customers than ever before,” Mahna said. “The investment from Salesforce Ventures is the latest evolution in our strong partnership, and we’re thrilled to help fuel nCino’s global growth and innovation.”

The company’s Bank Operating System integrates with core banking and transactional systems. The technology combines CRM, deposit account opening, loan origination, workflow, enterprise content management, digital engagement, and real-time reporting to enable financial institutions to provide the kind of personalized, streamlined experience customers and bank employees alike have come to expect. nCino notes that on average its client institutions have experienced:

17% reduction in operating costs
19% increase in loan volume
22% increase in staff efficiency
34% decrease in loan closing time
54% reduction in policy exceptions

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, the company began the year with a major new partnership with Navy Federal Credit Union, the largest credit union in the world with more than $87 billion in assets, more than seven million members, and 300 branches. 2017 was a big year for nCino, with deployments of its Bank Operating System announced with CFCU Community Credit Union in December, Iberiabank in November, and Pacific Western Bank in August – to name just a few recent wins. The cumulative result was that nCino ended the year with 10 of the 30 largest U.S. banks by asset size as customers and 180 financial clients around the world.

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London-based Lender EZBOB Raises $21 Million in New Funding

By David Penn Posted on January 31, 2018
Categories: EZBOB, Funding

Small business online lender EZBOB has raised $21 million in new funding (£15 million) courtesy of an investment from Moscow-based PE firm Da Vinci Capital Management. The funding puts the company’s total capital at more than $146 million (£103 million).

Founded in 2011, EZBOB demonstrated its lending platform at FinovateEurope 2014. The company provides small and medium-sized businesses with up to £120,000 in financing in minutes. There are no pre-payment penalties, and borrowers are offered a flexible repayment schedule of up to 24 months and an APR as low as 18%.

What will EZBOB do with the additional financing? Some clues hinted at in a Forbes interview with EZBOB co-founder and CEO Tomer Guriel from last summer suggest that new products (“such as a consumer lending platform and a mortgage platform”) may be in the offering. The idea is to model any new lending product after the company’s current SME lending platform.

So it was no surprise that when asked by interviewer Omri Barzilay what EZBOB’s advantage is in the SME lending space, Guriel answered “technology” and discussed the company’s commitment to improving the customer experience. But he segued quickly to the “fin” part of “fintech,” adding that:

“Our advantage is that we are solely focused on digital lending solutions. We live and breathe the lending space. Lending is at the heart of the bank’s business and our experience in lending has given us phenomenal insight into what works for a customer and from a lender perspective.”

So far, so good. EZBOB ended 2017 winning “Best Technology Initiative” from the Financial Innovation Awards. In November, Yorkshire Bank said that it would deploy technology from EZBOB to speed the loan application process from two weeks to less than 24 hours. Back in August, the company announced that it would extend its contract with AU10TIX for ID authentication and automating customer onboarding. The Royal Bank of Scotland has also used EZBOB’s technology to launch its automated lending platform, Esme.

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BehavioSec Closes $17.5 Million Series B

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 29, 2018
Categories: BehavioSec, Funding

Behavioral biometrics company BehavioSec landed $17.5 million in funding today. This brings the company’s total funding to almost $26 million.

The Series B round was led by Trident Capital Cybersecurity with Cisco Investments, ABN AMRO, and existing investors Octopus Ventures and Conor Venture Partners also contributing. The Sweden-based company will use the funds to expand global operations and relocate its headquarters to the U.S. This comes after BehavioSec’s expansion to the U.S. last April.

Since it was founded in 2009, BehavioSec has secured billions of transactions for 40+ million users. The company’s flagship offering technology leverages machine learning to verify a user’s identity by how they interact with their device. This layered and continuous approach takes place in the background so as not to interfere with the user experience. At FinovateFall 2015, the company’s COO, Olov Renberg debuted BehavioSec On Demand. The solution is a transaction-based behavioral biometrics service in the cloud aimed to help organizations control who accesses that service without compromising the integrity of companies and individuals.

Alberto Yépez of Trident Cybersecurity cites two main reasons for the firm’s investment in BehavioSec. “We decided to invest in BehavioSec given production deployments authenticating user sessions for some of the most sophisticated financial institutions and governments around the world. In addition, the company continues to lead the innovation in behavioral biometrics through close partnership with leading cybersecurity vendors and government agencies, including DARPA,” said Yépez.

In an era when data breaches, hacks, and compromises occur on an almost monthly basis, there will be plenty of demand for online security companies for some time. That said, there will also be increased competition. Last October, Zighra launched a continuous authentication solution that leverages behavioral cues. Additionally, companies such as BioCatch, NuData Security, and IBM Security Trusteer all have offerings similar to BehavioSec’s behavioral biometrics solution.

At FinDEVr San Francisco 2015, the company’s VP of Engineering Ingo Deutschmann and COO Olov Renberg gave a presentation titled Behavioral Biometrics as a Service. Last November, BehavioSec teamed up with Crossmatch to add keystroke capture to Crossmatch’s authentication platform.

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StreetShares Brings in $23 Million in Equity Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 26, 2018
Categories: Funding, StreetShares

StreetShares has landed $23 million in equity funding, bringing the company’s total investment to $43 million. This comes just months after the military veteran-focused lending platform closed $10.3 million for its “shark tank meets eBay” approach to small business lending last August.

Today’s Series B round was led by Rotunda Capital Partners, with additional contributions from existing investors, including veteran-focused venture firm, Stony Lonesome Group. In a press release, Mark Rockefeller, CEO of StreetShares said, “This injection of capital allows us to continue to provide red-carpet treatment to our very special members— the veteran entrepreneurs, small business owners, government contractors, and impact investors—that make up our country’s next Greatest Generation.”

The StreetShares platform enables small business owners to pitch their loan requests to a community of investor members. Founded by military veterans, StreetShares is focused on offering financing for small businesses run by military veterans and their families, but serves non-veteran run small businesses, as well. The company offers loans with terms ranging from three to 36 months and lines of credit from $2,000 to $100,000. Investors can lend from $25 to $100,000 in Veteran Business Bonds and earn 5% interest.

StreetShares COO Mickey Konson said that the funding is a “huge step” in the company’s growth. He continued, “StreetShares is proud to fuel this special class of great American small businesses, and our partnership with Rotunda demonstrates that we are just getting started.”

At FinovateEurope 2015, the company’s CEO and co-founder Mark Rockefeller and COO and co-founder Mickey Konson showcased the StreetShares platform. The company began leveraging Title IV (Regulation A+) of the JOBS act in 2017 to allow unaccredited investors to lend to small businesses. It is now one of only a handful of P2P lending platforms open to unaccredited investors.

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