Highnote Archives

Consumer Engagement Platform SKUx Launches New Card Program with Highnote

By David Penn Posted on May 16, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Highnote

Embedded finance company Highnote is powering the new card program from SKUx.
SKUx is a payments technology and consumer engagement platform headquartered in Florida.
San Francisco, California-based Highnote made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring 2022.

SKUx, a payments technology and consumer engagement platform, has launched a new card program. The company has teamed up with embedded finance company Highnote to power the new offering. SKUx noted in a statement that the partnership will help the Florida-based company continue to innovate in the disbursements space.

Highnote’s card platform technology enables a range of solutions from SKUx. Among these products are SKUx Customer Care and Recovery, which streamlines the product recall process, and SKUx Crisis Disbursements, which streamlines emergency payments to individuals. These new solutions join SKUx’s flagship solution, SKUPay, for product-based payments redeemed at the point of purchase.

In a statement, SKUx co-founder and President Bobby Tinsley highlighted the “magnitude of money” that moves between merchants and customers. Tinsley also bemoaned the fact that so much of these flows take place over “outdated and clunky” systems. He added, “We are obsessed with powering the best experiences by providing payments at the speed of today’s consumer – designing products optimized for digital wallets, mobile payments, and QR codes. Our partnership with Highnote enables us to continue this vision at both the quality and service our clients demand.”

Founded in 2021, Highnote is based in San Francisco, California. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last year. At the conference, Highnote demoed its GraphQL API-based card issuance platform, showing how the technology enables organizations to make card issuance an embedded feature in their solution. The platform uses notifications and SDKs to empower developer teams to bring card products to market quickly. A no-code dashboard enables management and support, as well as providing product-wide visibility.

“The average consumer has become more digitally savvy, and their expectations around ease of use and instant access to funds have risen,” Highnote CEO John MacIlwaine said. “SKUx has tapped into this trend by providing more elegant and modern solutions to consumer needs, and we couldn’t be more proud to be their enabler in driving this digital transformation.”

Highnote has raised more than $104 million in funding. The company’s investors include Costanoa Ventures and Oak HC/FT.

Photo by SHVETS production

3 Things You Need to Know About Highnote’s New Partnership with Plaid

By David Penn Posted on July 13, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Highnote, List series

All-in-one card issuer and program management platform Highnote has teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Plaid. The new partnership will enable frictionless money transfers for card solutions powered by Highnote. The company will leverage Plaid’s account auth and balance solution to enable its customers to seamlessly make their transactions without needing to worry about account or routing numbers. Highnote customers will also be able to use Plaid Link to instantly authenticate cardholder accounts and then automatically create a Highnote Processor Token to enable fund transfers between card accounts and external bank accounts.

Here are three things you need to know about Highnote and its partnership with Plaid.

Highnote helps open finance work for embedded finance

Companies have pursued embedded finance as a way to expand or re-envision their business models. Those businesses that seek to make card issuance a part of their business face challenges in terms of providing a secure, frictionless user experience. Courtesy of Highnote’s partnership with Plaid, businesses will be able to instantly authenticate cardholder accounts, and end users will be able to easily authenticate with their financial institutions and choose which accounts to use for payments.

Removing friction is key to enhancing the customer experience

Helping customers – individuals or businesses – get from point A to point B quickly is the most immediate way for businesses to show they have their customers’ interests – and their time – top of mind. Highnote’s partnership with Plaid is all about removing friction and creating seamless experiences for customers of all kinds. By automating and making instantaneous operations such as account authentication and bank verification, the partnership between Highnote and Plaid is one small step for money movement, and a large leap in the direction of making financial services more accessible and convenient.

The collaboration with Plaid is Highnote’s newest strategic partnership

Highnote – in collaboration with Mastercard – began the year helping business credit platform Tillful launch its Tillful Card. This spring, Highnote announced a collaboration with GoDo as the company introduced its GoDo Card designed to bring earned wage access to underbanked workers.

“We built Highnote to enable companies like GoDo to create truly unique and game-changing payment solutions for their customers,” Highnote co-founder and CEO John MacIlwaine said. “The earned-wage-access market needs modernized payment solutions that can power innovative digital experiences and we’re here to deliver that.”

Highnote made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the event, Highnote demonstrated the developer experience on its cloud-native, GraphQL API-based issuer-process platform. The company also showed how the platform’s interface gives customer management teams control over the payment transaction lifecycle, as well as provide access to transaction processing data.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Highnote has raised $54 million in funding. This include a $42.5 million Series A round closed in September of last year.

Photo by César Vonc

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Highnote

By Heather Stowell Posted on April 26, 2022
Categories: FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek, Highnote

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Highnote is the world’s most modern card platform, providing all-in-one card issuer processor and program management services to help companies easily issue/process payment cards that accelerate growth.

Features

Full-stack card issuer-processer and program manager
Flexible and modular capabilities with Graph QL-based API
Purpose-built ledger for money movement visibility

Why it’s great

Highnote’s GraphQL API allows tailored, client-centric access to the platform and offers full-flexibility to build great brand experiences for customers that work with companies’ systems.

Presenter

Jody Soldo, Product Management Leader
With 10+ years of product management experience, Soldo is passionate about working with customers to help build innovative business solutions. She geeks out at payment processing and money movement.
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