Funding Archives - Page 62 of 88

PayPal Acquires TIO Networks in $230 Million Deal

By David Penn Posted on February 21, 2017
Categories: Funding, Fundings, PayPal, TIO Networks

In a cash deal valued at $233 million ($304 million CAD), PayPal Holdings has agreed to acquire Canada’s TIO Networks. PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman praised the way the company’s combination of digital platform and physical, in person locations made billpay “simpler, faster, and more affordable” – particularly for the underbanked. Chairman and CEO of TIO Networks, Hamed Shahbazi (pictured), emphasized this point as well. “We founded TIO to make speed and access part of the bill payment experience for the underserved, and we believe that we have created affordable products to serve the needs of all customers,” Shahbazi said.

TIO Networks will continue to operate as a service within PayPal after the acquisition, which is still pending shareholder approval. The purchase price of the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company, which made its Finovate debut in 2012, represented a premium of more than 25% of its recent share price. PayPal anticipates completing the acquisition in the second half of 2017.

Among the strategic benefits of the acquisition, according to PayPal, is the addition of 14 million consumer bill pay accounts with an estimated 60 million transactions processed as of TIO’s fiscal 2016. In addition, TIO Networks:

Processes more than $9 billion in bill payments a year
Accepts payments at more than 70,000 locations nationally
Provides access to more than 10,000 billers in network
Serves a wide variety of verticals including:
- financial services companies
- wireless carriers
- insurance companies
- app developers
- national and local retail chains
- general loan providers

TIO Networks was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The company demonstrated TIO MobilePay at FinovateSpring 2012. Five-year revenue growth of 125% helped TIO Networks make Canada’s 2016 PROFIT 500 list last fall, and in May, the company rebranded its consumer-facing acquisition, Chargestmart from 2014, as TIO.com. One of the top two tech companies in the 2016 TSX Venture 50, TIO was named by the Canadian Innovation Exchange as one of Canada’s 20 “hottest most innovative” public tech companies.

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AutoGravity Earns Multi-Million Euro Investment from Daimler

By David Penn Posted on February 16, 2017
Categories: AutoGravity, Funding, Fundings

AutoGravity, one of FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners, picked up a major, “double-digit million euro investment” from Daimler Financial Services. The funding adds to the $50 million AutoGravity has raised since its founding in the fall of 2015, and comes as the company’s nationwide rollout reaches 46 states in the U.S.

Bodo Uebber, member of Daimler AG’s board of management, said the investment in AutoGravity was a “strategic step” in opening digital sales channels in leasing and financing. “We believe AutoGravity and its technology have the potential to revolutionize the sector for online financing while, at the same time, offering a digital platform for other financial services providers and automotive manufacturers,” Uebber said. Daimler Financial Services board chairman Klaus Entenmann called AutoGravity “a new star rising in the digital world.”

Pictured: AutoGravity CMO Serge Vartanov demonstrating the company’s auto financing solution at FinovateFall 2016.

Quoted in AutoFinanceNews, AutoGravity Chief Marketing Officer Serge Vartanov added that the investment from Daimler was a major show of confidence in the company’s platform and potential for growth. “That Daimler has recognized the technology and sees the potential in transforming that shopping and financing experience for the consumer,” Vartanov said, “I think is a really good validation of what we’ve been building.” He added that because AutoGravity is lender-agnostic, Daimler’s investment in the technology will benefit not just its loan originations at its own Mercedez-Benz Financial Services, but will help auto lending more broadly, as well.

AutoGravity’s mobile app gives prospective new and used car buyers and leasers the ability to search for vehicles, complete credit applications, and get up to four personalized financing offers. With more than 150,000 downloads, the free app is available in iOS and Android. Read more about AutoGravity in our profile from earlier this year.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Irvine, California, AutoGravity won Best of Show at its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall 2016. In November, the company announced that its technology would power the digital auto sales and finance app from Fletcher Jones Motorcars. AutoGravity’s app was listed by Forbes in September as one of the “best new personal finance apps and sites.” Andy Hinrichs is CEO.

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Rippleshot Racks Up $2.6 Million in Second Seed Round

By David Penn Posted on February 13, 2017
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Rippleshot

Chicago-based anti-fraud, transaction monitoring specialist Rippleshot has raised an additional $2.6 million in seed funding. The investment, led by the venture capital arm of CUNA Mutual Group, CMFG Ventures, takes the company’s total funding to $4.6 million. Rippleshot will use the additional capital to add technical talent, specifically developers and data scientists, and will leverage its relationship with CMFG to market its solutions to 9,000 of CMFG’s affiliated credit unions.

Rippleshot co-founder and CEO Canh Tran said that the funding comes as his company finds itself “in a unique place to help bridge the fraud detection gap between issuers and merchants.” Rippleshot’s technology enables card issuers to catch card data breaches early, track trends in compromised card activity to identify future vulnerabilities, reissue new cards to customers whose cards have been compromised, and issue real-time declines to limit losses. Rippleshot’s cloud-based technology monitors millions of credit card transactions a day and the company says it can prevent “more than half of the fraudulent spend from compromised cards.”

Pictured: Rippleshot Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Randal Cox demonstrating Rippleshot’s platform at FinovateFall 2014.

In addition to the funding from CMFG, Rippleshot announced that emerging payments specialist – and former PYMNTS.com president – Gloria Colgan will join the company’s advisory board. Tran said that Colgan’s presence on Rippleshot’s board “will be invaluable as we take the next step in growing our footprint.” Colgan was managing director for Market Platform Dynamics and an SVP at both Discover Financial Services and JP Morgan Chase.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Rippleshot demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2014. Last fall, the company was recognized by H2 Ventures and KPMG as one of its “50 Emerging Stars.” And last June, Rippleshot’s card-compromise detection solution, Sonar, was endorsed by the American Bankers Association. A graduate of the SixThirty accelerator program, Rippleshot was a finalist in BBVA’s Open Talent Competition.

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WorkFusion Closes $35 Million in Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 26, 2017
Categories: Funding, WorkFusion

Today’s investment in WorkFusion is a reminder that AI is one of the hottest trends in fintech. With AI already proving to be one of the hottest trends in fintech this year, the news of today’s investment is not surprising. The AI automation company announced today it raised $35 million in a round led by Georgian Partners. Existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, iNovia, Nokia Growth Partners, Greycroft, and RTP Ventures also participated in the Series D round, bringing the company’s total funding to $71 million.

New York-based WorkFusion plans to use the funds to “accelerate customer adoption of AI-powered automation.” Justin LaFayette, Managing Partner at Georgian Partners said he invested in WorkFusion because it “has made machine learning practical and powerful for enterprise operations.”

Founded in 2010, WorkFusion leverages self-learning and automation to eliminate manual, back-office work. The company also offers AI-powered chatbots to assist with front-office operations. At FinovateFall 2014, WorkFusion debuted Active Learning Automation, a system that actively tracks human work to establish patterns and automatically trains algorithms to follow those patterns.

The company highlighted a number of its 2016 successes in today’s press release:

Named the number one solution in Everest Group’s Vision and Capability quadrant in its “Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Technology Vendor Landscape with FIT Matrix™ Assessment – Technologies for Building a ‘Virtual Workforce'” (Dec. 2016) report
Recognized in Garner, Inc.’s “Cool Vendors in Smart Machines, 2016” report for its ability to “do (at scale) what, five years ago, either required expensive human labor or could not be done at all”
Launched the world’s first free RPA product for enterprise operations, WorkFusion RPA Express, to accelerate the digital transformation of work
Opened new office in Delhi, India, supporting its increased focus on APAC and supplementing its already robust presence in EMEA
Trained hundreds of developers at top tier partners globally

For further coverage, check out our Finovate Debuts feature on WorkFusion.

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$700 Million Raised by 26 Alums in Q4 2016

By David Penn Posted on January 23, 2017
Categories: Funding, Fundings

Finovate/FinDEVr alums raised more than $700 million in the fourth quarter of 2016. Total fourth quarter investment in Q4 2016 was more than double last year’s Q4 total, and represented a gain of more than 40% over the previous quarter’s total.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

Q4 2016: More than $700 million raised by 26 alums
Q4 2015: More than $302 million raised by 28 alums
Q4 2014: More than $1.4 billion raised by 26 alums
Q4 2013: More than $294 million raised by 17 alums

The biggest equity deal of the final quarter of 2016 was $180 million raised by Payoneer in October. Also worthy of note was the $115 million raised by PaySimple, and the $80 million raised by NuBank. For the fourth quarter of 2016, the top 10 overall investments totaled $593 million or more than 84% of the total alum funding for the quarter.

Top 10 Overall Investments (equity only)

Payoneer: $180 million
PaySimple: $115 million
NuBank: $80 million
BlueVine: $49 million
Finicity: $42 million
Nutmeg: $37 million
Quantopian: $25 million
Personal Capital: $25 million
Lendio: $20 million
SecureKey: $20 million

These Q4 numbers for Finovate/FinDEVr alums suggests that the pace of investment in fintech innovation remains robust. With a $700 million Q4, the total investment in our alums for 2016 is more than $2.3 billion. This compares to a $3 billion 2015, a $2.2 billion 2014, and a $825 million 2013.

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2016.

October 2016: More than $371 million raised by eight alums

Aire: $2 million – post
DeMystData: $7 million – post
FinanceIt: $17 million – post
Lendio: $20 million – post
Nanopay: $10 million – post
Payoneer: $180 million – post
PaySimple: $115 million – post
SecureKey: $20 million – post

November 2016: More than $97 million raised by eight alums

Finagraph: $5 million – post
figo: $7 million – post
Five Degrees: $10 million – post
Nutmeg: $37 million – post
P2Binvestor: $7. 7 million – post
Sezzle: $1.85 million – post
TrueLink Financial: $3.6 million – post
Quantopian: $25 million – post

December 2016: More than $235 million raised by eleven alums

BlueVine: $49 million – post
Finicity: $42 million – post
Hip Pocket: $150,000 – post
Kreditech: $10.4 million – post
NuBank: $80 million – post
Nutmeg: $14.6 million – post
Personal Capital: $25 million – post
Socure: $13 million – post
Tradeshift: undisclosed – post
Walletron: undisclosed – post
Zighra: $1 million – post

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2016, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

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Dwolla Raises Capital, Relaunches Access API

By David Penn Posted on January 20, 2017
Categories: Dwolla, Funding, Fundings

Writing at the Dwolla blog, company founder and CEO Ben Milne expressed how important the goal of “building the ideal API to move money” was to him and his company. Calling this “part of our DNA,” Milne wrote that the new opportunities Dwolla’s technology has created have “come with growth and the need to finance it.”

And finance it Dwolla has. The company picked up $6.85 million in new funding in a round led by Union Square Ventures and Foundry Group. Milne wrote that the investment will be used to expand Dwolla’s sales and account management operations in Des Moines, Iowa. The round featured participation from Detroit Venture Partners, Firebrand Ventures, High Alpha, Ludlow Ventures, and Next Level Ventures, and brings Dwolla’s total capital to just over $39 million. Firebrand Ventures founder John Fein was quoted in the Kansas City Star crediting Dwolla for rekindling his interest in supporting fledgling technology companies.

Pictured: Dwolla Director of Communications and Policy Affairs Jordan Lampe demonstrating FiSync at FinovateSpring 2015.

Milne also announced his company’s API Suite, Access API, will now contain all of Dwolla’s white label solutions. “Nothing changes for current customers,” he noted, “but additional features will be rolled into the Access API to make building software that connects to the banking infrastructure easier.” These features, according to TechCrunch, include same-day transfer and a new dashboard for managing transactions. Fortune.com notes that Access API “has attracted more than 100 customers in its first year.”

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, Dwolla demonstrated its FiSync technology at FinovateSpring 2015. The company partnered with open source subscription billing and payments platform, Kill Bill, last October and, in August, introduced a new dashboard and administrative interface for its white-label partners. Dwolla added more FIs to its instant account-verification flow back in May.

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Payfone Lands $23.5 Million in Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 5, 2017
Categories: Funding, Payfone

Mobile authentication company Payfone closed a $23.5 million round of funding today. BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and Andrew Prozes led the round, while new investors Strauss Zelnick, Maclab Development Group and Transaction Network Services, along with existing investors RRE Ventures, Opus Capital, Relay Ventures, Early Warning Services, American Express Ventures, Verizon Ventures, and Rogers Venture Partners also contributed.

This Series E round brings the New York-based company’s total funding to just over $66 million and bolsters Payfone’s Board of Directors with the addition of Mike Spadafore of Sandbox Industries and Andrew Prozes, the former CEO of LexisNexis.

When it launched in 2008, Payfone sought to fight the mobile payments battle but pivoted just over 3 years ago to focus on mobile authentication solutions. In its former life as a payments company, Payfone launched 1 Touch Checkout at FinovateFall 2012 in New York. Today, the company offers a non-intrusive authentication option for end clients that uses the identity of their mobile phone to offer persistent protection against fraud.

At the 2015 Fierce Innovation Awards, Payfone won the Over-the-Top (OTT) Monetization and Customer Security categories. In 2016, the company deployed its technology at a Tier-1 bank in the U.S., marking 50 million bank accounts protected by Payfone.

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Nutmeg Closes $14.6 Million Series D Round

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 23, 2016
Categories: Funding, Nutmeg

U.K.-based wealth management company Nutmeg brought its total funding to $90 million today after closing its Series D round, which was led by Taipei Fubon Bank.

The news comes hot on the heels of Nutmeg’s most recent funding when it scored $37 million in Series C funding last month from Convoy, Hong Kong’s largest firm of independent financial advisers. Adding two Asian investors in the past two months comes as a hint as to what’s next for the roboadvisor. Nutmeg CEO Martin Stead told TechCrunch,

There is a very significant market opportunity before us, in the U.K. and beyond, and we are going to capture it. With these new funds, we will continue to invest in product innovations which disrupt the industry and deliver a better deal–and a better experience–for customers. And, we are going to expand into new categories and new territories.

Expansion into the Asia Pacific region is a logical move, since it’s currently experiencing a fintech boom, while the U.S. market is saturated (see our wealth tech coverage for more on this).

Nutmeg, which manages $735 million for its 25,000 clients, debuted its digital wealth management technology at FinovateEurope 2012 in London. In early 2016 the company was recognized on the European Top 100 List at the European Fintech Awards, and the company’s former CEO and founder Nick Hungerford was named one of the U.K.’s coolest people in fintech. In May of 2016, Martin Stead, Nutmeg’s former chief revenue officer, assumed the role of CEO.

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Nubank Raises $80 Million in Series D Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 21, 2016
Categories: Funding, Nubank

Financial services innovator Nubank closed on $80 million in Series D funding led by DST Global earlier this month, marking DST’s first investment in a Brazilian company. Other participants in the round include Founders Fund, QED Investors, Redpoint, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia, and Tiger.

This is Nubank’s sixth round of funding and brings its total amount raised to $178 million. While there was no report of the company’s latest valuation, FT Partners reports that after its $52 million Series C round closed in January, Nubank was valued at $500 million. The company will use the funds to accelerate hiring efforts and expand its product offerings. Specifically, Nubank hopes to add a rewards program and add more credit products.

Founded in 2013, Nubank offers a Mastercard credit card with a companion mobile app that features PFM capabilities, spending alerts, and a card-lock feature. The company has had success in differentiating itself from other financial institutions in Brazil, which offer credit cards with 400% APR. In comparison, Nubank’s APR comes in significantly lower at 145%. This differentiation has led to Nubank receiving 7 million applications for its card, which currently holds a waiting list of 500,000 applicants.

Nubank Co-founder and CTO Edward Wible, along with Lucas Cavalcanti, lead software engineer, showcased at FinDEVr New York 2016 (pictured above) in a presentation titled Our Money, Our Rulebook. which explored how Nubank deals with real-time, double-entry accounting on a per-customer basis. In October, H2 Ventures and KPMG listed Nubank among 50 leading fintech companies.

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Behavioral Biometrics Startup Zighra Lands $1 Million in Seed Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 16, 2016
Categories: Funding, Zighra

Behavioral biometrics and fraud prevention company Zighra closed $1 million in seed funding recently. The round was led by the Investment Accelerator Fund, Export Development Canada, and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

This is the Ottawa-based company’s third round of funding. The amounts of the first two rounds were undisclosed, but Zighra’s funding total is now greater than $1 million. Zighra CEO Deepak Dutt said he plans to use the funds “to go into acceleration mode.” Specifically, he plans to bolster sales and marketing efforts to reach more mobile banking and mobile commerce clients.

Zighra, an Invest Ottawa portfolio company, offers security software that analyzes users’ behavioral patterns to validate their identify and prevent fraud. At FinovateFall 2013, Zighra debuted KineticID, a mobile authentication solution that evaluates the user’s unique, kinetic interaction with their mobile device. Earlier this year, the company graduated from Barclays Techstars Accelerator, which led to Zighra taking on a pilot project for the banking giant. The accelerator program also offered Zighra exposure to the U.K. market, a new geography for the company, which has previously focused on North America, the Middle East, and India.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Canada, Zighra has six employees and anticipates it will double its workforce by the end of 2017. Earlier this month, the company won Best Tech at the C100 48Hrs in the Valley program and last year was featured in the Wall Street Journal for its behavioral authentication efforts.

Behavioral biometrics has been a hot topic in 2016, and we expect it to be a star topic of 2017, as well. Finovate alums such as BehavioSec, BioCatch, NuData Security, and Trusteer (acquired by IBM in 2013) each offer unique solutions to combat fraud using behavioral biometrics.

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Personal Capital’s Growth Leads to Additional $25 Million in Funding

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 15, 2016
Categories: Funding, Personal Capital

Digital advisory service and wealth management firm Personal Capital is closing out 2016 by adding another $25 million to the $75 million in equity investment the company took home from IGM Financial in May. Today’s funding was part of a contingency from investor IGM Financial that stated Personal Capital had to reach a certain growth milestone by Q2 of 2017. Since the California-based company exceeded the specified growth target, the funds were distributed early, just in time for the new year. This closes Personal Capital’s Series E round and increases its 2016 funding to $100 million and boosts its total funding to just over $175 million.

“IGM Financial has been a great investor,” said Bill Harris, CEO of Personal Capital. “Over the past six months, we’ve been able to grow marketing, staffing, and offerings to our users and clients. With the final $25 million in investment secured, we look forward to seeing even more growth as we help more families manage their financial lives.” The company used the initial $75 million to increase its marketing efforts and hire new staff across its offices in San Carlos, San Francisco, and Denver.

Personal Capital’s CEO Bill Harris and CPO Jim Del Favero demoed at FinovateSpring 2014.

The new investment lifts Personal Capital’s valuation to around $500 million. That’s double what the company’s valuation was after its Series D funding round closed in 2014—$200 million shy of competitors’ valuations. Betterment and Wealthfront (pure robo advisory plays), as well as SigFig (a hybrid robo advisor) each have valuations of $700 million.

In addition to the funding from IGM Financial, Personal Capital has received a $25 million line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank. With regard to the credit, Mike Armsby, CFO of Personal Capital, says it will help the company “spur rapid growth in the New Year.”

Personal Capital delivers financial planning and investment portfolio management services. The company blends high tech and high touch by combining unbiased, algorithmic investing approaches and conversations via video chat—with real, human advisers. Personal Capital has added $1.5 billion in AUM in 2016. This represents 80% growth in less than 12 months and brings the company’s total AUM to $3.4 billion. In addition, Personal Capital offers a free, account-aggregation tool to help its 1.3 million registered users view all of their accounts in one place.

Personal Capital most recently presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where Ehsan Lavassani, the company’s founding engineer and chief engineering officer, talked about data-driven account opening. At FinovateSpring 2014, CEO Bill Harris and Chief Product Officer Jim Del Favero debuted One Click Investment Proposals.

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Investment from Rakuten Boosts Kreditech’s Total Capital By More than $10 Million

By David Penn Posted on December 15, 2016
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Kreditech

Germany consumer finance innovator Kreditech has just picked up a $10.4 million (€10 million) investment from Japan’s Rakuten. The new funds, which will be used to develop Kreditech’s partnership business, take the company’s total capital to more than $160 million. According to TechCrunch, the investment gives Kreditech a valuation of $313 million (€300 million).

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Kreditech founder and CEO Alexander Grabner-Müller emphasized how the capital will help drive the company’s partnership business. He also praised Rakuten’s investment in his company’s “mission to improve financial freedom for the underbanked through technology.” Kreditech CFO Rene Griemens added that Rakuten’s “strong market position in Asia” could be a “door opener” for the company which already has a presence in Russia, Poland, Romania, Spain, and Mexico, as well as its home country of Germany.

Kreditech is not the only fintech, nor the only Finovate alum, that Rakuten has invested in. The firm invested $15 million in Azimo this spring, and contributed to Currency Cloud’s $18 million Series C round last summer. Speaking of Kreditech, Rakuten Fintech Fund managing partner Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel highlighted the company’s “distinctive big-data-driven credit model and tech expertise” and complimented Kreditech’s “unique model of individual empowerment through access to credit.”

Founded in 2012, Kreditech demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2014. The company’s solutions leverage non-traditional data and machine learning to provide financing options such as loans, PFM, and digital wallets to underbanked communities. In October, Kreditech was named to the 2016 Fintech 100 sponsored by H2 Ventures and KPMG—the same month the company announced that former mBank veteran Michal Panowicz was joining it as chief product and information officer. Kreditech launched its online POS financing solution, Monedo Now, in June, providing online consumers with instant financing of as much as $5,500.

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