Showcasing Female Leadership in Fintech at FinovateSpring 2025

By David Penn Posted on March 17, 2025
Categories: Cinareo Solutions, Cratoflow, FinovateSpring 2025, Instarails, Penny Finance, Women in Fintech

Last week, we showcased five companies—all led by female CEOs—who demonstrated their latest innovations at FinovateEurope in London in February. Part of Finovate’s annual Women’s History Month commemoration, the post not only highlighted the achievements of women in fintech, it also helped introduce five new companies to our Finovate audience.

With that last point in mind, we’re thrilled this week to introduce you to some of the women who will be leading their companies on the Finovate stage next month at FinovateSpring in San Diego, May 7 through 9.

First, meet the two companies—Cinareo Solutions and Cratoflow—that were selected to participate at FinovateSpring as part of our Female Founder Scholarship program. Second, we introduce two additional companies—Penny Finance and Instarails—both with female CEOs, and both slated to demo their latest innovation at FinovateSpring next month.

Karen Elliott

CEO & Co-Founder, Cinareo Solutions

Elliott (LinkedIn) is CEO and Co-Founder of Cinareo Solutions, a SaaS platform that provides capacity planning for agents and support staff, financial management, what-if scenario modelling, and multi-skilling simulation.

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Cinareo Solutions sets a new standard for workforce planning and decision support for multi-channel contact centers. This provides robust and pro-active resource planning and financial analysis to cost-efficiently manage front and back-office staff, as well as all support staff.

Shiv Patel

CEO and Founder, Cratoflow

Patel (LinkedIn) is CEO of Cratoflow, a company that helps organizations to save up to 110 hours a week, reduce errors, and acclerate payments, enabling faster decision-making and driving operational efficiency and cost savings.

Based in Anaheim, California, and founded in 2021, Cratoflow offers a no-code financial workflow solution that centralizes and simplifies complex daily accounting processeas with an intuitive user interface. The platform leverages machine learning and AI to sync with third-party financial systems to systematically complete revenue, banking, and expense entries.

Yamini Sagar

Founder and CEO, Instarails

Sagar (LinkedIn) is founder and CEO of Instarails, a global payment network infrastructure that helps credit unions, community banks, and businesses attract and retain more clients while accelerating revenue growth,

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Instarails leverages blockchain technology to make direct, real-time, cheap, inclusive, and transparent payments. Clients connect to Instarails’ network via SaaS API and send transactions. These transactions are routed through Instarails’ network and recipients get funds instantly through their bank, e-wallet, or via cash pickup.

Crissi Cole

Founder & CEO, Penny Finance

Cole (LinkedIn) is CEO and Founder of Penny Finance, an online financial planning engagement engine that attracts, retains, and services the digital generation of credit unions and community banks by providing tailored education, resources, rewards, and services to their members and customers at large.

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and founded in 2020, Penny Finance connects the dots between a financial institution’s products and services and member and customer needs, all while creating efficiency for their marketing organizations.

FinovateSpring 2025 kicks off May 7 through 9 in San Diego, California. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more about our emerging speaker lineup, demoing companies, and how to plan your visit to Finovate’s first conference in SoCal!

Meet the Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship Winners for FinovateSpring 2024

By David Penn Posted on May 1, 2024
Categories: Blee, Endaoment, FinovateSpring 2024, Instarails, Kobalt Labs, LiquidTrust, List series, Nav.it, Parlay Protocol, Remynt

This year FinovateSpring will feature eight startups that are winners of our Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship program. The program is designed to showcase underrepresented founders and startups who are creating innovative solutions to combat climate change, promote diversity, and create financial inclusion.

To be eligible for the Finovate Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship program, fintech and technology companies must have less than $7 million in funding. There are five categories in the program: environmental, social, governance, BIPOC founded/owned, and female-founded/owned.

Here are the Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship winners for FinovateSpring 2024:

Blee – Scholarship winner in the Governance category. Headquartered in New York and founded in 2022, Blee helps organizations move to market quicker while increasing revenue and minimizing compliance risk. LinkedIn.

Endaoment – Scholarship winner in the Social category. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2020, Endaoment empowers nonprofit organizations to accept donations in crypto and stock without having to accept the asset directly. LinkedIn.

Instarails – Scholarship winner in the Female Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and founded in 2022, Instarails enables banks and other organizations to offer instant, inexpensive, and inclusive payments to boost revenue, generate growth, and pave the way for entry into new markets. LinkedIn.

Kobalt Labs – Scholarship winner in the Female Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in New York, NY, and founded in 2023, Kobalt Labs helps fintechs and financial institutions accelerate and strengthen third-party diligence, facilitating revenue-generating partnerships and improving operational efficiency – without increasing headcout. LinkedIn.

LiquidTrust – Scholarship winner in the Female Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and founded in 2019, LiquidTrust enables banks to offer an improved customer experience to their business customers, grow non-interest bearing deposits, and generate additional revenue. LinkedIn.

Nav.it – Scholarship winner in the Female Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded in 2019, Nav.it integrates with existing HR systems to help organizations grow their businesses by enhancing employee financial wellness. LinkedIn.

Parlay Protocol – Scholarship winner in the Female Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, and founded in 2022, Parlay Protocol offers technology that boosts the odds that an applicant will secure access to small business funding while helping banks gain new customers and attract new borrowers. LinkedIn.

Remynt – Scholarship winner in the BIPOC Founded/Owned category. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2022, Remynt helps creditors achieve higher recoveries and recapture defaulted consumers as customers as their financial position improves. LinkedIn.

FinovateSpring (May 21-23) is only a few weeks away! Take advantage of big early-bird savings on your registration when you buy your ticket by May 10.

Photo by Emily Ranquist

FinovateSpring 2024 Sneak Peek Series: Part 3

By Madeline Clines Posted on April 16, 2024
Categories: Deeployalty, FinovateSpring 2024, FinovateSpring 2024 Sneak Peek, Instarails, QuickFi, Sherpas, Skyflow

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 21 and 22. Register today using this link and save 20%.

Deeployalty

Deeployalty digitalizes paper receipts and plastic loyalty cards by integrating bank processing on one side and merchant CRMs on the other.

Features

Helps transition from paper receipts to digital receipts
Adds seamless loyalty features to banking applications
Provides an endless source of data for ML and scoring systems

Who’s it for?

Banks and retailers.

Instarails

Instarails is an intelligent, decentralized payout network that makes cross-border payments instant, inexpensive, and inclusive for all.

Features

Provides one connection to the world’s disparate real-time payment systems
Uses a decentralized network to eliminate fraud and disputes
Delivers one platform for inclusive payments in 50+ fiat currencies

Who’s it for?

Banks, remittance companies, mobile apps, e-commerce marketplaces, payment service providers, and enterprise businesses with offshore employees, gig workers, suppliers, and vendors.

QuickFi

QuickFi is the first and only embedded finance platform in the market for secured commercial equipment lending.

Features

Embeds easily into lender or manufacturer’s website
Offers 100% digital end-to-end borrower self-service, with 24/7 access
Provides automated credit, contract structuring, business verification, and compliance

Who’s it for?

Banks, equipment manufacturers, and equipment distributors.

Sherpas

Sherpas is a generative finance platform for wealth management that optimizes operations, personalizes advice at scale, and puts client engagement on autopilot through their AI model, Nima.

Features

Extracts data straight from documents
Provides information about products, funds, and client performance
Analyzes investments, and diagnoses and secures proposals
Creates personalized content

Who’s it for?

Wealth managers, private banks, independent financial advisors, asset managers, RIAs, and financial planners.

Skyflow

Skyflow recently released the Skyflow LLM Data Privacy Vault, which allows financial service organizations to leverage the power of LLMs, such as GPT, while maintaining privacy and security.

Features

Utilizes LLM while maintaining privacy and security
Isolates, protects, and governs sensitive data
Improves customer experience through new technologies while protecting sensitive data

Who’s it for?

Anyone who collects sensitive data such as PII, PCI, and PHI.