DoubleNet Pay Garners $4 Million Investment

DoubleNet Pay Garners $4 Million Investment

Financial wellness company DoubleNet Pay closed $4 million in Seed funding today. The investment, which marks the Atlanta-based company’s first round of funding since it was founded in 2013, comes from TTV Capital and Fuqua Investments.

The 12-person company will use the funds to boost product development and bolster sales. To help fuel this growth, the company hopes to add up to 40 employees in the next year.

DoubleNet Pay aims to help the half of U.S. workers who do not have $500 saved for an emergency. With DoubleNet Pay, users build their savings by automatically deducting funds from their paycheck and depositing them into a savings account from which the funds can be withdrawn at any time. The platform is helping users save an average of $37 per pay period. DoubleNet Pay CEO Brian Cosgray said, “We automate emergency savings contributions on payday, similar to how 401(k) accounts are funded, or payroll taxes and health insurance premiums are paid.”

The company takes a B2B approach by selling its software to businesses to offer to their employees as a workplace benefit. “We found that employers are the best way to reach the people that need our help the most,” Cosgray said. “Most people’s only investment account is through the employer through their retirement plan.”

At FinovateSpring 2015, the company showcased its savings empowerment platform. In 2016, the company earned a spot in Plug&Play’s accelerator program. Earlier that year, DoubleNet Pay’s CEO Brian Cosgray was selected as an EBN Top 50 Benefit Technology Innovator.

Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira

Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira

Less than a month after announcing strategic fundings from Visa and Brightfolk A/S, Klarna is back in the fintech headlines with news of a new strategic investment from a partnership advised by global investment firm, Permira. The partnership will acquire shares from a trio of existing shareholders – DST Global, General Atlantic, and Niklas Adalberth – in a transaction that will leave Adalberth as the only equity shareholder of the three. TechCrunch reports that the deal is worth between $225 million and $250 million, and estimates a valuation of $2.5 billion. They note further that Klarna has raised “somewhere in the region of $500 million in the last 7 weeks.”

Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski (pictured) put the new investment in the context of its recent brand new banking license, referring to the company’s growth from an innovator in enhancing the shopping experience to “a consumer-oriented and technology intensive bank.” Permira principal Andrew Young echoed Siemiatkowski’s sentiments, calling the company a “unique scale fintech innovator” for its work in e-commerce. “We see many vectors that will drive future success and with Sebastian, we look forward to supporting the company’s future organic, geographic, and acquisition growth strategies,” Young said.

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Klarna demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. The company provides payment solutions for 60 million consumers and 70,000 merchants transacting across borders. Participating in 18 markets around the world, Klarna supports direct payments, pay after delivery, and installment plans via a single-click “purchase experience” that gives shoppers a wider range of payment options. Founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna noted 50% growth in recorded transaction volumes in 2016 – including partnerships with 17,000 new merchants.

New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million

New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million

It’s a Funding Friday here at Finovate! In addition to news of a strategic investment in Klarna, and new funding for credit scoring startup, Aire.com and DoubleNet Pay’s latest investment, we learn today that robo advisor Betterment is now that much closer to achieving unicorn status – courtesy of a $70 million investment from Sweden’s Kinnevik. The investment takes Betterment’s total capital to $275 million, and gives the robo advisor a valuation estimated at $800 million.

Praising the “strong partnership” between his firm and Kinnevik, Betterment CEO Jon Stein said that the investment will enable the company to “continue to build products that put even more money back in our customers’ pockets. The Kinnevik-led round, an extension of Betterment’s Series E from last year, featured participation from existing Betterment investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Francisco Partners, and Menlo Ventures.

Senior Investment Director for Kinnevik, Chris Bischoff explained the nature of the extended Series E, saying that his firm’s approach was to “(invest) over multiple rounds into high-performing technology-enabled companies.” He added, “after a year of investment, we saw additional opportunities for growth and proposed the financing to Betterment. We are excited about the opportunity to deepen our relationship.”

Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien during his presentation with Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte (not pictured) at FinDEVr New York 2016.

The news from Betterment arrives on the heels of the company’s launch of its Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Portfolio. SRI enables investors to grow their capital while avoiding investments in companies whose products, services, and overall corporate behavior are considered to have a “negative social impact.” Instead, as VP of Financial Advice and Planning Alex Benke explained at the Betterment blog, “companies deemed to have strong social responsibility practices, such as Microsoft, Google, Proctor & Gamble, Merck, CocaCola, Intel, Cisco, Disney, and IBM may make up a larger portion of the SRI portfolio.”

A year ago, Betterment celebrated more than $5 billion under management. Today, the robo advisor boasts of nearly $10 billion AUM. In addition to its fully-automated, algorithm-managed investment portfolio, Betterment unveiled a new hybrid robo advisory service in June that includes either annual or unlimited check-ins with Betterment’s team of certified financial planners. Stein told Bloomberg Markets the company would use the new capital to grow the hybrid service, in particular.

Founded in 2008 and based in New York City, New York, Betterment demonstrated the Multiple Goals feature of its platform at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, the robo advisor joined Quovo at FinDEVr New York 2016, where Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien and Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte presented “The Power of Aggregation Demonstrated by Quovo and Betterment.” The firm was named to CB Insights Fintech 250 list last month – along with 43 of its fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alums. We featured the robo advisor in our look at Passive Investing in our Savings Tech Horizon series this spring.

Aire Pulls in $5 Million, Lands Partnerships with Zopa and Toyota Financial Services

Aire Pulls in $5 Million, Lands Partnerships with Zopa and Toyota Financial Services

Alternative credit scoring company, Aire, announced today it has raised $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Sunstone Capital, with funds also coming from White Star Capital, which led the company’s 2016 Seed round. Aire’s funding now totals $12 million.

The London-based company plans to use the funds to drive recruitment. CEO Aneesh Varma said, “Aire has stood for an idea that people should have equal opportunities for financial products despite changing realities of work, lifestyle and careers in this modern economy.” Varma added that the new funds are a “strong vindication that we are making the right progress towards that goal.”

Founded in 2014, Aire leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer lenders new insight into borrowers with thin credit files. The company’s Interactive Virtual Interview adds a new layer of information to traditional credit bureau data. Because Aire’s credit risk analysis gives lenders access to a new pool of thin-file borrowers, the company has seen credit approvals grow by up to 14% on average, without increasing risk exposure.

Aire’s API integrates into the existing web and mobile workflows of the online credit application forms

Aire also announced strategic partnerships with P2P lender Zopa and the U.K. arm of vehicle finance company, Toyota Financial Services, who will leverage Aire’s API to enhance their underwriting and lending decisioning processes. These firms join credit card companies and high-street banks also benefitting from Aire’s API.

Earlier this year, Aire was featured in FinTechCity’s FinTech50 2017 list of top European fintechs and in January, we highlighted Aire’s role in our Fintech Filter for AI in 2017. Last year, the company made headlines when it announced it is now authorized and regulated by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, placing Aire on the same playing field as the big three credit bureaus. The company debuted its API at FinovateEurope 2015 in London.

LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing

LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing

Lending-as-a-service specialist LendKey raised $13 million in Series C funding this week. The round consisted of both equity and debt financing ($8 million of the former, $5 million of the latter) and was led by Portland, Maine-based North Atlantic Capital. Also participating in the investment were existing investors DFJ, Gotham Ventures, TTV Capital, and Updata Partners.

“Traditional financial institutions are now more than ever adapting to evolving customer needs to remain competitive and better reach millennials,” LendKey CEO and founder Vince Passione said, “LendKey empowers these institutions to compete in today’s lending market by digitizing their loan businesses.” This week’s investment boosts LendKey’s total capital to more than $27 million. Passione said the financing will help the company “meet the strong bank and credit union demand” for its services. LendKey plans to expand its regional office in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as add talent in account development and sales.

Pictured (left to right): CEO and founder Vince Passione and CPO Strati Papgeorge demonstrating LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015.

North Atlantic Capital Managing Director Mark Morrissette praised LendKey’s “impressive industry knowledge and background” and the way its technology solved “a real need for banks and credit unions.” LendKey’s white-label, lending-as-a-service model enables banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders to digitize their lending operations with a solution that manages the entire loan cycle. This includes demand generation, online decisioning, loan origination, and customer service. The company’s solutions help lenders conduct programs in private student loans, student loan refinancing, auto loans, and home improvement loans.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York City, LendKey demonstrated its LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015. With clients including Navy FCU, McGraw-Hill FCU, and WSFS Bank, LendKey has deployed more than $1.5 billion in capital to borrowers. This spring, LendKey presented its Student Loan Refinance Report, highlighting borrower trends in lending preferences and loan performance. Also this spring, LendKey earned a finalist spot in the 2017 Best of FinXTech Awards, along with fellow Finovate alums Roostify, Moven, and Green Dot.

Karmic Labs Lands $17.2 Million to Grow Enterprise Payment Solutions

Karmic Labs Lands $17.2 Million to Grow Enterprise Payment Solutions

Karmic Labs, the creator of Dash expense management platform, has received $17.2 million in Series B funding, bringing the company’s total funding to just under $25 million. Participating in the round were Alsop Louie Partners, Arbor Ventures, Greycroft, Marketplace Funds, Startup Capital Ventures, and others.

As part of the deal Wei Hopeman, Managing Partner at Arbor Ventures, and Jim Whims, Partner at Alsop-Louie Partners, have joined the San Francisco-based company’s board of directors. Karmic anticipates the funds will fuel the expansion of its enterprise-focused business. “This investment propels Karmic to the next stage of growth, and adding Wei and Jim’s expertise to our board will help us get there quicker,” said Mario Furgiuele, CEO of Karmic.

Founded in 2014, the company debuted the Dash Prepaid Mastercard at FinovateSpring 2015. The platform supplies employees with prepaid Mastercards and enables managers to view, approve, and control employee spending via the Dash mobile app. Karmic also offers co-branded and fully-customized card and mobile app products for a more seamless, branded experience.

EquityZen Secures $3 Million in Round Led by Draper Associates

EquityZen Secures $3 Million in Round Led by Draper Associates

EquityZen, a secondary marketplace for trading pre-IPO shares, has taken in $3 million in funding this week. This Series A round brings the company’s total funding to $6.5 million. Draper Associates led the round, with WorldQuant Ventures also participating.

The EquityZen marketplace connects shareholders of private companies with its current pool of 20,000 accredited investors. The platform offers shareholders the ability to unlock liquidity tied up in privately-held shares of startups, while providing an alternative investment opportunity for investors, who can access the privately-held shares for a minimum of $20,000.

Since it was founded in 2013, New York-based EquityZen has closed more than 2,000 investments in more than 20 private companies. The company plans to use the new funds to expand its operations both within and outside of the U.S. and to make investments more accessible to qualified investors. Atish Davda, EquityZen CEO said, “We are excited to partner with [Draper Associates] as we expand investment access to tens of thousands more qualified investors who are tired of sitting on the sidelines watching a small number of Silicon Valley insiders profit from the private returns.”

Atish Davda, EquityZen CEO & Founder, and Ketan Bhalla, Product Lead debut EquityZen Institutional at FinovateSpring 2016

At FinovateSpring 2016, the company debuted EquityZen Institutional, which enables institutional investors to browse and access listings on behalf of multiple investment accounts. The institutional offering also has post-investment analytics to help advisors monitor risk and simplify reporting. Last summer, EquityZen’s Davda was featured on CNBC and earlier this year we featured the company in our review of top wealthtech players.

Flybits Raises $6.5 Million to Help Banks Put Data to Work

Flybits Raises $6.5 Million to Help Banks Put Data to Work

Consumer data contextualization company Flybits pulled in $6.5 million this week, bringing the Toronto-based company’s total funds to $14 million.

The Series B funding was led by Information Venture Partners. New investor Portag3 Ventures LP also participated along with existing investors Robert Bosch Venture and Trellis Capital. As a part of the agreement, Information Venture Partners’ co-founders Robert Antoniades and David Unsworth will join Flybits’ board of directors.

“This funding will allow us to ramp up our sales efforts in the United States and Europe, reinforce our existing global presence and expand our product and engineering teams to strengthen Flybits’ unique machine learning capabilities,” said Dr. Hossein Rahnama, Founder and CEO of Flybits. “Our product focus now is simplifying how our customers leverage their data ecosystem and drive customer engagement.”

Jordanne Pavao, Product Manager (left) and  Hossein Rahnama, CEO & Founder (right) demo Flybits Experience Studio at FinovateSpring 2017

Founded in 2013, Flybits helps banks convert big data into business intelligence to offer consumers personalized experiences, promotions, and product recommendations. Earlier this year, the company debuted its Flybits Experience Studio at FinovateSpring 2017. The Experience Studio helps banks create and deliver personalized, digital experiences for their clients at scale. This helps banks waste fewer resources on IT complexities such as machine learning, semantic processing, and data contextualization and instead focus on delivering an exceptional user experience.

Rahnama was recently named to Forbes’ Top 40 under 40 for 2017. In 2016, the company earned recognition as a cool vendor in Gartner’s Platform-as-a-Service report and in 2015 received Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Canada award as a “Company to Watch.” With offices in Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area, London, and Singapore, Flybits not only serves the financial services industry, but also travel and hospitality, retail, and events.

Turnkey Lender Raises $2 Million in Series A

Turnkey Lender Raises $2 Million in Series A

In a round led by Vertex Ventures, the venture capital wing of Temasek Holdings, Turnkey Lender has picked up $2 million in funding. The Singapore-based company specializes in loan management technology, delivered over the cloud, that automates all stages of the lending life cycle – from application processing to collections and reporting. Turnkey Lender will use the funds for product development, adding staff, and growing its business in the Asia-Pacific region – especially Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Quoted in DealStreetAsia, Turnkey Lender co-founder Dmitry Voronenko emphasized the “enormous” opportunity to provide machine-learning and data analysis-enabled solutions to small and medium-sized lenders.  He added that the partnership with Vertex Ventures would help Turnkey Lender enter new markets as well as continue to grow in existing ones.  The company currently has more than 40 customers in 25 countries including the United States, Turnkey Lender’s biggest market.

Pictured: Turnkey Lender’s Arthur Timothy Timchenko demonstrating the company’s SaaS solution at FinovateSring 2017.

Founded in 2014, Turnkey Lender demonstrated its SaaS solution at FinovateSpring 2017. The company’s platform leverages machine learning to tackle many of the challenges of credit scoring in growth markets, such as the lack of borrower data. As Elena Ionenko, Turnkey Lender co-founder explained, the technology enables small and medium-sized lenders to begin with a generic scoring template that will adapt and evolve to the needs of the borrowing customers. This, in combination with accessing other alternative credit scoring methods via API, creates an automated, enterprise-grade lending solution that is flexible and scalable.

“We continue to disrupt the lending industry by providing the same great technology used by large retail banks to nonbank lenders,” Turnkey Lender Business Development Manager Arthur Timothy Timchenko said from the Finovate stage earlier this year. “It is our mission to fill in the gaps in the underserved markets making sure that even the smallest lenders can assess their credit risk properly, make good decisions, and offer (the) best rates to good borrowers,” he said.

A winner of a MAS FinTech Award at the inaugural Singapore FinTech Festival last fall, Turnkey Lender is also a veteran of FinovateAsia 2016. For more information about Finovate’s upcoming return to Hong Kong for FinovateAsia this November, visit our FinovateAsia 2017 page.

Ephesoft Earns $15 Million Investment from Mercato Partners

Ephesoft Earns $15 Million Investment from Mercato Partners

Document capture and data analytics company Ephesoft landed $15 million in Series A funding from Mercato Partners. This marks the company’s first round of funding since it was founded in 2010.

“Mercato’s investment will help Ephesoft realize its vision of liberating meaning through machine learning technology,” said Ike Kavas, Ephesoft’s founder. “We view Mercato as a long-term strategic partner, and we appreciate their experience in helping visionary technology companies accelerate and manage growth. This funding will enable Ephesoft to help organizations improve business outcomes by identifying and rationalizing dark data, then understanding how it impacts their business.”

Ephesoft’s cloud-based, machine learning technology generates insights from unstructured content by capturing, extracting, and analyzing raw data for its 500 customers that operate in a variety of sectors ranging from financial services, Federal government, insurance, mortgage and healthcare. At FinovateSpring 2017, the company demoed how its platform can be used to comb through international transaction data to identify and catch money launderers.

(pictured left to right): Ike Kavas (CTO)and Alex Welsh (Vice President, Analytics Practice) at FinovateSpring 2017

The California-based company will use the investment to accelerate product development and expand operations, market presence, and sales. As a part of the investment, Joe Kaiser Principal at Mercato Partners, will join Ephesoft’s Board of Directors.

In a press release, Kaiser said:

“Organizations are struggling with the enormous volume of unstructured content, which represents upwards of 80% of all available content, and is growing at a rate of 43% per year. To provide tangible value, that information needs to be processed and analyzed. Ephesoft’s solutions are disrupting the advanced capture market with a definitive value proposition: apply machine learning to convert these unstructured information streams and repositories into actionable data.”

Earlier this month, the company announced the availability of its cloud services on Microsoft Azure. In June, Ephesoft established its Asia Pacific offices in Sydney, Australia. The company was named to the 2015 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America and has recently received a patent for its machine learning technology.

Volkswagen Finance Arm Invests in AutoGravity

Volkswagen Finance Arm Invests in AutoGravity

Volkswagen’s finance arm, VW Credit, has agreed to make an equity investment of an undisclosed amount in auto financing platform AutoGravity. This will be the company’s fifth round of funding since it was founded in 2015, bringing its total raised to more than $50 million. Andy Hinrichs, CEO at AutoGravity, said the company will use the funds to “accelerate in the face of rapidly growing consumer and industry demand.”

Also of note, VW will be using AutoGravity to power its Volkswagen Credit iOS and Android app. The app, which matches users with financing options for their VW vehicle purchase, will offer Volkswagen dealers a new source of potential clients. Volkswagen credit options are also now available to the 400,000 users who have downloaded the AutoGravity app.

Horst Meima, President and CEO at VW Credit said, “Customers are becoming more demanding of mobile technology and the world of auto financing is no exception.” Meima continued, “We are ready to become a leader in shaping this part of the industry and believe that AutoGravity can help get us there.”

AutoGravity aims to simplify the car shopping and financing experience by offering access to transparent loan and lease offers on a user’s mobile device. CEO Hinrichs notes that offering the service via a mobile app “saves time and improves satisfaction for all parties.” The app gives consumers up to four personalized financing offers on a vehicle of their choice before visiting a dealer. By providing the customer with this type of information up front, AutoGravity is arming consumers with the information they need to make educated purchase decisions.

At FinovateFall 2016, AutoGravity took home a Best of Show award. The company recently began offering its auto loan financing app to car shoppers in New Jersey. Earlier this year, AutoGravity landed a multi-million euro investment from Daimler, adding to the $50 million the company raised in 2015.

Logical Glue Locks in Investment from New Look Founder, Tom Singh

Logical Glue Locks in Investment from New Look Founder, Tom Singh

Terms of the investment were not disclosed, but London-based predictive analysis specialist Logical Glue has secured funding from Tom Singh, founder of U.K.-based fashion retailer, New Look. The investment will support the continued development of Logical Glue’s machine learning and statistical modeling platform, including its white box, decision-making engine and data visualization technology.

Singh highlighted the platform’s effectiveness in a range of verticals. “Fast, accurate and automated decisions based on data have a place within many industries, from retail through to finance,” he said, crediting Logical Glue for “(bridging) the gap between data science and the boardroom.” Logical Glue co-founder Daniel McPherson called the company’s technology “the machine learning platform of the future,” and added that FSOs would be among the big beneficiaries of a solution that was “delivering better, faster decisions and providing the consumer with the best customer experience.”

Pictured (left to right): Robert De Caux (Chief Product Officer) and Jon Rimmer (UX Architect) demonstrating Logical Glue Ensemble at FinovateEurope 2016.

Logical Glue has developed a cloud-based platform that enables companies to use data to solve “prediction problems.” As the company’s Chief Product Officer Robert De Caux explained during his FinovateEurope demo last year, questions like:  “Will a customer repay their loan? Will they buy my product?” “Is this transaction fraudulent?” are answerable by applying the right predictive analytic tools to data that lenders and banks already have. More importantly, Logical Glue enables lenders and banks to use these tools without having to hire data scientists and coders to build and run them. During the company’s demonstration of its platform, Ensemble, De Caux and UX Architect Jon Rimmer showed the automatic categorization feature during the data input process, and the feature selection tool which helps ensure that only the most historically valuable and predictive features in the data are included during the model building process.

“You’ll find if you have hundreds or thousands of predictive variables that you want to assess, it’s often that if you remove some of them, you can improve your model performance,” De Caux explained. “At a time when companies are drowning in a sea of data from multiple sources they don’t properly understand,” he said, “it’s a great way to reduce costs and improve insight.” In addition to the data input and model building stages, the team from Logical Glue demonstrated how the models can be customized to the company’s specific business preferences, and then easily deployed in the cloud.

Logical Glue gives users three different predictive models to choose from: one geared toward the best statistical technique, one based on the best machine learning technique, and another De Caux called “the best for insight, which allows you to see why a decision has been made.” The company says its technology helps improve acceptance rates for lenders by 40% and grow profits by between 5-20%. Logical Glue adds that the platform also decreases default rates by 15%, boosts recovery collection rates for debt collectors by 18% and reduces manual interventions for underwriters “20-fold.”

Founded in 2012, Logical Glue demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2016.  The company’s partners include fellow Finovate alums ExperianmiiCard and Equifax.