Interview

Finovate Global: Talking Fintech Regulation in the European Union with EverC’s Maya Shabi

Finovate Global: Talking Fintech Regulation in the European Union with EverC’s Maya Shabi
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Interview

The regulatory landscape for fintechs and financial services companies operating in the European Union is expected to undergo significant changes this year, with new standards, guidelines, and rules governing payments, data privacy, digital assets, and more.

In this week’s edition of Finovate Global, we caught up with Maya Shabi, Senior Risk Strategist with EverC, a firm that provides tech-driven risk management solutions for ecommerce companies. In our extended conversation, Shabi discusses the policy and regulatory changes that are expected in the EU in 2025, what these changes are designed to achieve, and how they will impact fintechs, financial services companies, and their customers.

Founded in 2015, EverC offers a fully-automated, AI-driven, cross-channel risk management platform that helps drive growth for innovators in the online seller ecosystem. With domain expertise in risk intelligence, data science, and payments, EverC scans 30 million items a day — more than 10 billion products since inception — helping businesses detect and remove high-risk merchants, products, and services so they can safely grow and expand into new verticals and new markets.

In your opinion, did the regulatory environment of 2024 help or hinder innovation in fintech and financial services in the EU?

Maya Shabi: The EU’s regulatory push has been a double-edged sword for innovation in fintech and financial services. On the one hand, clear and consistent rules across member states have lowered barriers to entry, making it easier for fintech companies to collaborate, innovate, and scale across the EU. On the other hand, tighter regulations come with higher compliance costs and can limit the flexibility that’s often critical for driving rapid innovation. Given how quickly crime risks evolve in the financial sector, especially with the advent of AI, I see the overall impact of EU regulations as balanced — supporting innovation in some areas while slowing it down in others.

One early issue will be compliance with the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR). What is this policy about? What are the implementation challenges and what are the opportunities for those that get it right?

Shabi: The Instant Payment Regulation (IPR) is designed to make instant euro payments secure and accessible across the EU. Its goal is to modernize the region’s payments landscape by improving the speed and efficiency of transactions within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). SEPA is a broad payment integration initiative that allows consumers and businesses to make cross-border euro payments under the same conditions as domestic transactions, simplifying and unifying payments across EU member states and a few neighboring countries.

With the IPR in place, PSPs must offer instant payment services that process transactions within 10 seconds and are available 24/7 for all euro payments. For European consumers, this means faster, more reliable payments without delays —even during weekends or holidays. It enhances convenience, supports smoother online shopping experiences, and improves cash flow for businesses by eliminating waiting times for fund transfers.

Implementing the IPR presents several challenges for PSPs and other financial institutions. Many FIs need to significantly upgrade their payment processing systems to handle real-time transactions, which also need to uphold fraud detection and AML/CTF rules in real time. The cost of upgrading systems alone is huge, not to mention the added technical challenge of ensuring interoperability between different PSPs and banks across borders. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that not all FIs have the same level of digital maturity, leaving many to play catch-up.

That said, there are several opportunities for those who comply with the IPR sooner rather than later. Early adopters of IPR-compliant systems can position themselves as leaders in innovation and customer service. Offering seamless, instant payments can attract more customers and build trust. Additionally, faster cross-border payments lower barriers for businesses to expand across the EU.

Another policy that will kick in early in 2025 is DORA, the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act. What does this policy call for and why is it important?

Shabi: The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a pivotal regulation aimed at strengthening the financial sector’s ability to withstand digital disruptions and cyber threats. It sets clear IT security standards, focusing on managing information and communication technology (ICT) risks, improving incident reporting, and overseeing third-party ICT service providers. Financial institutions will be required to assess “concentration risk” when outsourcing critical or significant operations to external vendors.

For some added context, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) emphasizes protecting personally identifiable information (PIII) through consent and data security, whereas DORA shifts the focus to the digital supply chains of financial institutions. This introduces a new and potentially more challenging regulatory environment that pushes firms to strengthen their defenses against IT disruptions. It is designed to prevent major outages, like the devastating CrowdStrike software update last summer, from crippling banking, payment, and investment services. Under DORA, similar service interruptions will be met with stricter oversight and accountability, driving firms to prioritize digital resilience. Otherwise, non-compliance could lead to fines of up to 2% of a firm’s annual global revenue, and individual managers could face personal penalties of up to €1 million for breaches.

In terms of new open banking regulations, what are your expectations?

Shabi: Open banking regulations opened the door for greater innovation and competition, but they also brought meaningful friction as FIs worked to keep up with rising fraud risks. Under the EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), banks are required to share customer data with third-party providers through APIs — a move that, while promoting transparency and choice, also widens the attack surface for cybercriminals. It increases the risk of data breaches, identity theft, and payment fraud.

To counter these threats, PSD2 and its upcoming successor, the Third Payment Services Directive (PSD3), mandate stronger security measures like enhanced customer authentication and tighter oversight of third-party access. While these safeguards are critical, they can slow down user experiences and complicate partnerships. Still, this added friction is necessary to strike a balance between the advantages of open banking and the growing need to protect consumers and the broader financial system. Given that the PSD3 is expected to take hold in late 2025 or early 2026, FIs must prepare to ensure they remain compliant.

The EU AI Act passed in 2024. What kind of impact will this regulation have in 2025 and what should companies in financial services be doing now?

Shabi: Governments worldwide are racing to regulate the perceived risks of artificial intelligence. The US issued an AI Executive Order, the UK released a non-binding Declaration of Principles, and China introduced what appears to be a business-friendly AI framework. The EU’s AI Act marks the most significant step yet toward bringing structure to an industry that has largely operated like the Wild West, at least for now.

What makes the EU AI Act stand out is its risk-based approach. Instead of applying blanket regulations to all AI technologies, it scales oversight based on the potential for societal harm — the greater the risk, the stricter the rules. This method strikes a crucial balance between fostering innovation and protecting fundamental rights. In the payments industry, we’re no strangers to how effective a risk-based framework can be when navigating the fine line between managing risk and driving innovation.

Notably, over 100 companies – from global corporations to smaller financial institutions – have already pledged to comply with the AI Act ahead of its full enforcement. This early buy-in signals broad industry support or, at the very least, an interest in collaboration. Even critics who argue the law is either too sweeping or too narrow recognize that engaging with regulators and key stakeholders is often the smarter path. By collaborating early, companies can help shape the conversation surrounding AI instead of being sidelined and forced to comply without having a voice.

Other areas that are likely to receive regulatory scrutiny in 2025 in the EU are crypto and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). What developments are most likely for businesses in these spaces?

Shabi: Complying with the MiCA framework is the first thing that comes to mind when cryptocurrency and the EU are mentioned in the same sentence. MiCA is the EU’s first comprehensive legal framework for crypto assets that introduces clear and consistent rules across member states. Although it’s been in development for several years, key compliance deadlines took effect in 2024 and will continue through 2025. We’re already seeing major crypto firms like Coinbase adjusting their operations to meet MiCA’s requirements, while others are reassessing their market strategies — some even shifting focus to countries with more relaxed crypto regulations. For any crypto business operating in the EU, heavy compliance standards are becoming the norm, much like other industries that come with significant AML/CTF risks.

BNPL, however, presents a different regulatory challenge. In many ways, BNPL is just a modern spin on subprime lending — a long-standing issue in financial services when it comes to consumer protection. The explosive growth of BNPL services has raised concerns about rising consumer debt, as the lack of transparency about fees, terms, and penalties leaves consumers exposed to hidden costs. Additionally, weak credit checks and poor due diligence practices heighten the risk of users falling into financial overextension. These issues harm individual financial stability and pose systemic risks, especially since BNPL providers often operate across borders with inconsistent oversight.

To address these concerns, regulators across the globe are scrambling to regulate BNPL providers similarly to traditional credit frameworks. EU regulators updated the Consumer Credit Directive to strengthen consumer protections in the credit market, explicitly covering BNPL services. For businesses operating in this space, this means significant regulatory changes are on the horizon. EU member states must implement the directive into national law by November 20, 2025, with full enforcement beginning on November 20, 2026.

By this time next year, what areas of fintech/financial services do you think will have benefitted the most from greater regulatory clarity? Where do you anticipate that more work will be needed?

Shabi: By this time next year, crypto-assets, payments, and RegTech will likely be the biggest winners from greater regulatory clarity in the EU. The full rollout of the MiCA will finally bring consistency across member states, giving crypto firms the green light to develop secure, consumer-friendly products without second-guessing compliance. Likewise, updates to the Payment Services Directives are set to streamline open banking, tightening data security while making it easier for fintechs to access and use consumer data — fueling innovation in payments.

Simultaneously, the growing complexity of EU compliance is driving up demand for RegTech solutions. Fintech companies offering tools to automate compliance, manage risk, and strengthen cybersecurity will be well-positioned for growth as firms scramble to meet evolving requirements under regulations like DORA as well as AML/CTF directives. Ideally, this regulatory progress will create a more stable, trustworthy environment that supports responsible innovation across the financial sector.

However, several areas still need more attention. The EU AI Act doesn’t fully address how AI is used in financial services — especially in critical areas like credit scoring and fraud detection — leaving gaps around transparency, data use, and risk management. Cross-border payments and digital identity systems also remain fragmented, making it harder to streamline transactions and verify users across the EU.

Emerging asset classes like NFTs and tokenized assets are another blind spot, lacking comprehensive oversight and leaving both consumers and markets exposed to risk. Smaller fintechs, too, may struggle to keep up with strict cybersecurity and operational resilience requirements under DORA, highlighting the need for more scalable compliance pathways.  Closing these gaps will be key to ensuring the EU can balance innovation with long-term financial stability and consumer protection.

How will this evolving regulatory landscape impact your customers and the work EverC does for them?

Shabi: As platforms and payments continue to evolve, bringing more of our finances (and our lives) online, fraudsters will continue to exploit these opportunities, and regulators will continue to create structures to protect consumers. The evolving regulatory landscape is a challenge that marketplaces and payment providers must meet to continue doing business successfully.

The cost of noncompliance — in terms of enforcement actions and fines, lawsuits, decreased revenue, and loss of reputation and consumer trust — will always outweigh the cost of creating and maintaining a solid risk and compliance strategy. With technology, we can fight fraud and make ecommerce and digital finance safer while allowing our customers to benefit from operational efficiencies and more effective resource allocation.

EverC enables payment providers, ecommerce players, and financial institutions to meet these challenges with customer-centric innovation. That innovation is accelerated with the power of GenAI for scalable, tech-forward solutions. Our experts stay current with regulatory trends so we can anticipate and meet our customers’ needs as they navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German fintech 21X partnered with AllUnity, a joint venture between DWS, Flow Traders, and Galaxy Digital.
  • Lithuania-based Urbo Bank (formerly Medicinos Bankas) announced a collaboration with certified payment technology company DECTA to go live with Visa card issuing services.
  • German climate fintech Bees & Bears raised $525 million (€500 million) to fund renewable energy installations in Germany.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Dubai-based cybersecurity firm CyberHive inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with business planning and operations smart solutions provider Meerana.
  • Israel-based conversational AI innovator and Finovate Best of Show winner eSelf.ai raised $4.5 in seed funding.
  • Egyptian financial services company Paymob secured a Retail Payment Services (RPS) license from the Central Bank of the UAE.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian fintech Nubank partnered with Mexican convenience store chain Oxxo to expand its cash deposit and withdrawal network.
  • El Salvador bought twelve Bitcoin this week despite an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reduce its activity in the cryptocurrency market.
  • Revolut applied for a banking license in Colombia.

Asia-Pacific

  • Philippines-based Netbank partnered with Discovery Credit Solutions Corporation (DCSC) to launch a new solution to optimize loan management.
  • South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) fined KakaoPay and ApplePay $5.8 million for violations of the country’s Personal Information Protection Act.
  • Revolut launched its robo-advisor service in Singapore.

Photo by Marco

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From AI to AR: U.S. Bank’s Innovation Leaders Share Key Takeaways from CES 2025

From AI to AR: U.S. Bank’s Innovation Leaders Share Key Takeaways from CES 2025
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Interview

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) took place last week, and U.S. Bank sent its Chief Innovation Officer Don Relyea and Head of Applied Foresights Todder Moning to take a look at the future of innovation across industries. The pair went to explore how emerging trends like AI, automation, and extended reality can enhance the customer experience.

In our interview with Relyea and Moning, the two shared their key takeaways from the event, including insights into the newest AI advancements, the evolution of immersive technologies, and the practical applications they plan to bring back to U.S. Bank.

Did you see any innovations at CES that inspired ideas for how U.S. Bank might improve its customer experience?

Don Relyea: Yes, inspirations for new innovations were everywhere. A few examples across industries: This year, we saw more foreign banks demoing their innovations than we ever have before. Several Asian banks were showcasing AI-powered venture portfolio tools, as well as AI-powered banking applications that are more along the lines of “Do It for Me” opposed to the current digital standard of “Do It Yourself.” This is a trend we follow closely. Samsung’s SmartThings Pro, which extends its smart home technology to business environments, is very interesting for optimizing and personalizing consumers’ retail experiences. When you think about the branch of the future and how branches will evolve, there are interesting things that could be done with a space that is environmentally aware of who and how many people are in it, etc.

Todder Moning: At CES 2025, it was apparent how technology is advancing convenience, safety, and new forms of value across all areas of consumers’ lives. For companies exhibiting in recent years, it’s been about adding sensors to products and connecting them to the cloud via consumers’ WiFi connections. We have also seen how new channels of human computer interaction are making it into the mainstream – from voice interaction to the emergence of new audio/visual interaction with glasses and AR/VR headsets. This year, it was all about taking that data and using AI to make products and services smarter and more capable. And we’re in the very early innings of this trend to help people traverse their worlds with smarter, more ambient, and more ‘auto-magical’ products and services. U.S. Bank has been doing the same thing in connecting customers and their money, payments, and transaction capabilities, embedding them in more areas across their lives and businesses. I think the work we’ve been doing in both embedding and machine learning/AI will be a vector that will expand further based on what we saw at this year’s CES.

How do you think the advancements in AI and automation showcased at CES could influence the future of banking in general?

Relyea: We saw a lot of AI at the show, but many of the things were just companies branding things with AI in the name versus harnessing AI’s full potential. However, we did begin to see clever use cases where companies are leveraging AI for consumer automation with good customer-centered design – once again, “Do It for Me” type use cases. This trend will eventually raise the bar for consumer expectations as consumers become more comfortable ceding control to agentic AI. These are market signals we are keeping an eye on as we prepare for this shift in consumer expectations.

Moning: While AI is not new and has always been at CES, it was overwhelmingly the primary focus this year. It reminded me of a few years back when Alexa voice interaction was put into everything from eyeglasses to grills to pet bowls. However, there were some big announcements and creative uses of AI too. We’re currently seeing AI move from simpler use cases of language and content creation using Large Language Models to the next phase of AI agents using Large Action Models, where chatbots and GPTs will be able to reason more and take permissioned action on your behalf. Instead of just reviewing a PDF for you and helping to craft an email, AI agents will enable digital actions such as making reservations or paying your monthly bills.

What was exciting to me, after years of following IoT and autonomous driving for U.S. Bank, was finally seeing the emergence of tools that will enable what some call physical AI, moving us closer to fully realized autonomous driving, more automated factories and warehouses, and more functional general robotics. Digital twins and Large World Models (mapping physical environments and learning the physics and rules of how to function in those environments) will enable consumers and enterprises to improve their lives and their businesses, respectively. It’s a big opportunity and should create many new kinds of jobs. We believe that banks will need to enable customers and their AI agents with transaction services, payments, lending and investing. This will be a large and exciting trend to explore over the next few years.

Were there any discussions at the conference about the metaverse, AR/VR, and immersive experiences? Do you see a role for these technologies in banking or financial services?

Relyea: The metaverse was somewhat more subdued at CES this year with companies perhaps realizing more fully they are not sure how it will play out. We didn’t see anything groundbreaking in the metaverse space. In fact, we saw several of the same things from last year’s show. That said, the smart glasses space is evolving and miniaturizing at a nice pace. AR glasses are getting more visibly appealing, as well as getting more functionality packed into the smaller form factors, including holographic displays on the lenses. The technology is not ideal yet, but it is getting closer. We believe the metaverse/immersive AR/VR experiences will hit their tipping point when these wearable devices are ubiquitous and always with us – like our phones are today. When this happens, we will be ready with embedded financial services.

Moning: Extended reality, including AR and VR, continues to simmer on the stove, so to speak. CES lets us see how different technologies are developing laterally across dozens of industry sectors and longitudinally over multiple years. It’s clear that AR/VR is improving but still has a way to go before it moves from simple heads-up displays (which can be highly useful for certain use cases, like closed captioning for the hearing impaired) to being a more immersive interaction layer over the world. Some vendors have started creating capabilities for 3D commerce, anticipating those markets as they evolve. We did see a few “metaverse companies,” although they’re not well-known names and will depend on more advancements and partnerships to break through. However, self-driving cars and semi-trucks, autonomous agricultural vehicles, and autonomous construction/mining vehicles are using 4D sensors (the fourth D is velocity) and digital twins in their own metaphorical version of a metaverse to bring us closer to the fully realized self-driving future we’ve all been waiting for.

NVIDIA’s announcements were of particular note, with its Blueprint agentic AI platform, AI-embedded computer, and Omniverse and physical AI platform that enable AI training for vehicles, factories, robotics, and more for the real world. So, the metaverse, which many think of as only a “virtual world,” is likely to be more of a merging between the virtual and real world. As you can imagine, the way U.S. Bank currently enables both physical and digital economies will be prevalent in such a future as it emerges.

What insights or lessons from CES do you plan to bring back to U.S. Bank’s innovation strategy?

Relyea: Companies that are more mature in their customer experience practices displayed solutions that are ambient, predictive, adaptive, and accessible. Much of this is powered by AI, either traditional or agentic. This was the year of agentic AI, and we think it will begin to usher in the age of “Do It with Me” and “Do It for Me” style experiences. From a customer experience perspective, the team will be focused on defining the art of possible in these spaces.

Moning: Seeing the AI announcements and AI-embedded products and services in so many was impactful to me. The same way that we’ve been testing to safely use traditional and generative AI in the enterprise, consumers will be using AI bots and soon more functional AI agents in their own lives. I believe the way people now manage a constellation of connected devices in their life, they’ll soon have a constellation of AI agents helping them manage the many things they do – from getting dressed in the morning to managing their active busy families to getting life-enhancing medical care to being fully-engaged employers and employees, and, of course, managing their financial lives.

We already have a multi-language capable virtual assistant in our mobile app, so how do we safely plug the value and service U.S. Bank provides to help our customers in other ways? How do we provide it when interacting with their AI agents? If there are eight billion people, of which let’s say one billion or so are active working professionals, that means that there will be many billions of AI agents those folks will be using and with which companies will be interacting. That feels like a pretty big opportunity.

What was the coolest non-fintech technology or tool that you saw there?

Relyea: Small personal aircrafts are getting really cool – think big drones with cockpits. We also saw many autonomous robots for vacuuming, mowing, cleaning pools, and a ton of other uses. I was able to shake hands with a robot for the first time at this CES, which was pretty cool but also a little terrifying when you think about it.

Moning: After petting and high-fiving a robotic dog last year, I shook hands with my first humanoid robot this year. It was a kind of “first contact” with the robotic future. But what I found most thrilling was being able to dig in Arizona using a large Cat Excavator I was operating remotely from the CES floor in Las Vegas. It was like being a drone pilot but for construction/mining equipment. This kind of remote control is the important “human-in-the-middle” stage between no autonomy and fully autonomous vehicles.

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Finovate Podcast: Private Wealth, Crypto, and the Fintech Ecosystem in 2025

Finovate Podcast: Private Wealth, Crypto, and the Fintech Ecosystem in 2025
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, Podcasting

2025 is here in earnest and we’re looking forward to another year of exciting and insightful interviews from Finovate VP Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast!

Before we get this year’s conversations under way, here are a handful of podcast discussions from the final weeks of 2024 that you might have missed during the holiday rush.

Shannon Saccocia (LinkedIn), Chief Investment Officer with Neuberger Berman Private Wealth (NBPW), talks with Finovate VP and podcast host Greg Palmer about the opportunities and challenges for fintechs in the private wealth market. EP 241.

As Chief Investment Officer with NB Private Wealth, Saccocia works with investment leadership across Neuberger Berman to establish market views, asset allocation, and portfolio recommendations for NBPW clients. Saccocia also leads the NBPW investment platform to enable comprehensive delivery of the firm’s investment capabilities.

Greg Palmer sits down with Lark Davis (LinkedIn), cryptocurrency enthusiast and founder of The Crypto Lark, to explore where cryptocurrencies stand in 2025 and what’s coming next. EP 240.

Davis’s YouTube videos explore the satirical side of the news along with fact-filled reviews and interviews. His channel, The Crypto Lark, provides continuous updates on the cryptocurrency markets, bitcoin, blockchain, and the future of technology. Davis is also author of Wealth Mastery, a crypto newsletter featuring market analysis and insights.

Long-time investor and operator Kamran Ansari (LinkedIn) of Kapital Ventures joins the Finovate Podcast for a high-level examination of the fintech ecosystem heading into 2025 and shares his insights on where the industry is going from here. EP 239.

Ansari is venture capitalist and operator involved with a sizable number of innovative technology and fintech companies including Venmo, Azimo, and Braintree. As a private investor, Ansari has participated in funding for firms ranging from Facebook to Coinbase. In addition to his work with Kapital Ventures, Ansari is a venture partner with VC firm Headline.

Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash

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Streamly Snapshot: Fusing Traditional Old School Practice with Futuristic Practice in Banking

Streamly Snapshot: Fusing Traditional Old School Practice with Futuristic Practice in Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, Streamly

How are banks managing the challenges of digital transformation? What do financial institutions need to do in order to ensure that new digital initiatives are aligned with customer preferences and needs?

In this Streamly interview, Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn sits down with Milton Santiago, Global Head of Digital Solutions at Silicon Valley Bank. The two discuss the bank’s current digital transformation and the role of enabling technologies like AI in enhancing the customer experience, among other topics.

“What excites me the most about what’s going on in our bank is the fact that we continue to invest, we continue to focus really on what our customers need to grow their businesses and to be successful at a variety of life stages: be it at small inception where maybe it’s just you and me as a startup to where we have gone through multiple rounds of funding, or we’re a large company that is also publicly traded. Our needs are being met by the same financial organization, regardless of our size.”

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) serves many of the most innovative companies and investors in the world. A division of First Citizens Bank, SVB provides commercial and private banking services to individuals and companies in industries ranging from technology and healthcare to private equity and venture capital. With 70% of the 2024 Forbes Cloud 100 among its customers, SVB is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Milton Santiago has worked for Silicon Valley Bank for more than six years and is currently Global Head of Digital Services. In this role, he is responsible for creating end-to-end omni-channel and API experiences and solutions for startup (Pre-Series A) and mature companies, alike. Santiago is also a veteran industry speaker on topics including security and fraud, mobile and emerging payments, big data, and innovation.

Photo by Pixabay

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Finovate Global: 10x Banking’s Lewis Ide on High Growth Markets in APAC and Africa

Finovate Global: 10x Banking’s Lewis Ide on High Growth Markets in APAC and Africa
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 10x Banking, Finovate Global, Interview

As 2025 approaches, where will new opportunities arise for financial institutions, financial services providers, and fintechs looking to expand into new markets?

In this week’s Finovate Global interview, I talk with Lewis Ide, Vice President for 10x Banking, about the opportunities in high-growth markets in APAC and Africa.

Part of the company’s senior leadership team, Ide is responsible for the strategy, growth, and execution of the business objectives at 10x Banking. He has a 13-year career in financial services technology with leadership roles in payments, financial infrastructure, and AML platforms.

10x Banking first introduced itself to Finovate audiences with its debut at FinovateEurope 2023 in London. The company won Best of Show for a demonstration of its 10x SuperCore Cards which enable banks to build a card proposition in minutes with 10x’s Bank Manager interface. Founded in 2016, 10x Banking is headquartered in London, U.K.

There is a lot of interest in high growth markets around the world, especially in the APAC region and in Africa. What is driving growth opportunities in these markets – starting with APAC? 

Lewis Ide: I think it comes down to demographics first of all: APAC in particular has a young, growing, digitally-native population. Economies in this region are growing rapidly and with that come opportunities for growth in the financial services industry. And typically the countries across APAC are very innovation-friendly.  

Regulation also really supports innovation. One example is in Thailand, where the regulator is releasing new digital banking licenses to support the growth of the industry from a digital-first point of view.  

This all feeds into banks being able to benefit from core transformation, moving away from batch transactions to real-time transactions. They are also able to scale in user numbers and transaction volumes as the population grows and becomes even more digital-first. And the thing that makes that growth even more sustainable is the hyper-personalization that modern cores allow for, so banks in APAC can create unique offerings that consumers need.  

What do small businesses in APAC need that they have not been getting from traditional financial services? 

Ide: I think the first thing to say here is that traditionally, SME offerings have been bucketed into either the retail or the corporate bank offerings. Neither of these is really built around what small businesses need, so there is a demand in the market for tailored solutions.  

The next thing is cost: these services are typically costly for SMEs because they aren’t tailored. I think what we’re now starting to see is a shift away from that bucketing towards banks being able to launch services that are specific and personalized to the needs of small businesses. That includes broadening access to credit, making it cheaper, and designing the products that the business needs at the time that they need them.  

And again it’s innovation that is enabling this. The availability of agile, cloud-native infrastructures allows for a much more effective cost-to-income ratio control. And that in turn means that they can pass the cost benefits on to their customers in the form of new products at compelling price points. So the shift here is from high-cost services to tailored, personalized ones. And that’s been made achievable by agile, cloud-native core platforms. 

What has prevented or limited the ability of financial institutions to respond to these pain points? 

Ide: I would say the biggest thing is the legacy technology in place. In the last decade or so, neo cores emerged as a way to address the problems of legacy infrastructures, but they now come with almost a “neo legacy” of their own with limited ability to scale or personalize. Those that are able to be personalized can be very challenging to maintain or upgrade once the code has been written.  

But in the last five to six years we’ve started to see a huge positive shift within the neobanks that has highlighted where the legacy and neo core platforms are now coming under pressure with those changing customer expectations. 

That pressure comes from the way those legacy architectures were constructed. They were monolithic in nature and didn’t necessarily allow for hyper-personalization. They were also batch-based systems, very expensive to run on the mainframe. All of this requires specific and costly resources and makes it difficult for banks to respond to all of these pain points. 

What changes have taken place or are taking place that are giving innovative companies the opportunity to step in with new solutions? 

Ide: The adoption of cloud-native platforms that are microservice and API-based has been transformational in terms of the industry opportunity. This is why we launched the world’s first meta core at 10x Banking — to give customers access to a cloud-native core banking platform that overcomes the compromises of both legacy and neo cores.  

This then allows customers to launch products at speed, gives them the hyper-personalization that they need, as well as doing so at a very low cost and with the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, overcoming a number of the challenges that the industry has faced with great success. 

What specific roles do you see for AI in helping institutions improve their operations and expand their services? 

Ide: I think from our perspective, before we get to AI, it’s about data. The data structures that we use in this industry are the foundations of AI capability. You need to have access to high-quality, unsiloed data so there is a single source of truth across the business from which AI models can be launched.  

From a core banking perspective, there are many things AI can enable, but three that spring to mind. First, at the customer layer, AI can personalize recommendations, power chatbots and make credit lending more efficient. Next is integration and transformation, enabling banks to connect all their systems together in a more efficient, composable architecture. Banks have a real opportunity to leverage AI to build better migration capability here. Finally – and this is something we are looking to support at 10x – is the ability to use AI to help code and create hyper-personalized products and services.  

What the meta core allows our customers to do, for example, is get their data ready for AI, so they can unlock its full potential. So I always go back to that: making sure the data is clean and the structures are unsiloed so it’s all ready to go when you do start using AI.  

Looking at Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, what is driving growth there? 

Ide: Africa is similar in some ways to APAC, so what I mentioned before in terms of the young demographic holds true here too. It’s a massive region, of course, so it’s hard to generalize. But there are some notable nuances in the way innovation is deployed in Africa. The mobile telecommunications networks like Safaricom and M-Pesa have been at the center of that, offering money transfer services alongside the telecommunications services.  

Much of the growth here is driven by the desire to bring more people into the banked economy. Financial inclusion is big on the agenda. If you can reduce the percentage of unbanked people from, for example, 20% to 10%, that’s a big growth in customer numbers for banking and financial services. That’s a lot more people to provide services to, which again links back to the importance of scalability and personalization.

Some have suggested that Africa is the ideal example of a region unencumbered by complex legacy financial systems. Can you elaborate on how this impacts the environment for innovation and new ideas? 

Ide: I would say that’s not the full story. The mobile telephone networks and operators have driven a lot of innovation as I touched on before, and there is a broad appetite for innovation across Africa in general. But there are challenges around the continued use of mainframe infrastructure, which is slowing banks down. As that has become more obvious, banks have been looking to core modernization, as well as partnerships with the mobile networks. This will enable them to extend their capability and services, which is a benefit for both the banks and the mobile networks.  

Are there any trends in banking and financial services in the APAC or Africa that you think are underappreciated or even unrecognized? Are there opportunities there that 10x Banking is pursuing? 

Ide: The major trend that goes underappreciated at the moment is in corporate banking. We have been working and investing heavily in this area, so I can speak from first-hand experience, with active projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, South Africa, and Kenya to name a few. At the moment, there is a massive shift underway in corporate banking, moving from batch to real-time transactions, modernizing their cores. This will enable them to radically increase transaction processing volumes to better serve the demands of new and existing customers in the market. 

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Israeli fintech startup and chargeback management specialist Justt raised $30 million in Series C funding.
  • Merchants in Paymob’s network in Egypt can now accept Apple Pay.
  • Middle East-based payment solutions provider Magnati partnered with Arabian Automobiles Company (AAC).

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s Karnataka Bank partnered with hybrid multicloud computing company Nutanix.
  • TBC Uzbekistan launched Osmon Card, its first credit card product.
  • India-based high-yield savings account Curie Money raised $1.2 million in seed funding.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • El Salvador announced its intention to continue accumulating Bitcoin, but will discontinue its Bitcoin wallet Chivo as part of a financing deal with the IMF.
  • Uruguay-based cross-border payments company Bamboo teamed up with monetization platform Coda to enhance the gaming payment experience in Colombia.
  • Latin American payment platform AstroPay launched its multi-currency wallet.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based SME digital finance platform Funding Societies announced a $25 million investment from Cool Japan Fund.
  • Indonesia’s Bank Jago teamed up with Google Cloud to enhance the bank’s innovation strategy.
  • Malaysian fintech startup Swipey, which provides financial tools for small businesses, secured an investment from 1337 Ventures.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Ethiopia’s parliament passed legislation to enable foreign banks to operate in the country.
  • TechCrunch profiled African stablecoin startup Juicyway.
  • Nigeria’s Bamboo became the first Nigerian fintech to acquire a U.S. broker-dealer license.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Bulgaria joined the European Central Bank’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service.
  • Episode Six partnered with Secupay to provide asylum seekers in Germany with payment cards to access financial assistance from the government.
  • Bank of Georgia turned to Cloudera to better leverage data analytics to enhance the customer experience.

Interested in demoing at FinovateEurope 2025 in London? Applications are still being accepted from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateEurope hub today to learn more.

Photo by Rebecca Zaal

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Streamly Snapshot: Disrupting the Market with Refunds-as-a-Service

Streamly Snapshot: Disrupting the Market with Refunds-as-a-Service
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, Sponsored, Streamly

One of the latest developments in the payments space, Refunds-as-a-Service, promises to bring innovation to an area of customer experience – refunds – in which more than a trillion dollars of value are exchanged every year.

In today’s Streamly interview, Jeremy Balkin, Founder and CEO of TodayPay, talks with me about his path from a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan to the launch of his refunds-as-a-service startup. Balkin explains the inspiration behind the decision, the company’s progress to date, as well as TodayPay’s upcoming direct-to-consumer product launch.

“We’re the world’s first dedicated refund payment network. It’s an alternative payment method for both merchants and consumers to receive refunds. We’re pioneering a category we like to call refunds-as-a-service, serving merchants, marketplaces, insurers, issuers, and consumers to get a better refund experience.”

A finalist in the “Top Emerging Fintech” category of the 2024 Finovate Awards, TodayPay enables merchants to offer their customers instant refunds over a variety of payment choices, including cashback. A pioneer in the field of Refunds-as-a-Service, TodayPay is part of the Visa Fasttrack program.

Before launching TodayPay, Jeremy Balkin was a Managing Director for J.P. Morgan in New York City where he led fintech innovation and corporate development in the payment space.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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Fighting Financial Crime and Identity Fraud: A Conversation with GBG’s Gus Tomlinson

Fighting Financial Crime and Identity Fraud: A Conversation with GBG’s Gus Tomlinson
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: David's column, Interview

How can banks and other financial institutions defend themselves and their customers and members against increasingly sophisticated, increasingly organized financial crime? What are the most challenging fraud threats and, critically, what tools and tactics are available to help institutions deal with them successfully?

We talked with Gus Tomlinson, Managing Director, Identity Fraud, with identity verification, location intelligence, and fraud prevention solutions provider GBG, about the challenges faced by companies and organizations when it comes to fighting evolving fraud threats.

Helping companies around the world onboard customers safely, fight fraud, and stay compliant, Tomlinson has more than a decade of experience in the identity industry. She has worked in strategic, commercial, data, and product roles and, this year, was named to Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35 roster for 2024.

Tomlinson is also a supporter of Women in Identity, a non-profit that promotes a more diverse workforce in the digital identity industry.

We wanted to talk with you about the spike in Synthetic Identity Fraud (SIF). What is SIF? What industries are being impacted most?

Gus Tomlinson: Synthetic identity fraud is a fraud tactic many businesses struggle to identify. This is because it uses a mix of genuine, stolen personally identifiable information (PII), and manufactured synthetic data to create a fake identity. This fabricated identity is then used to open accounts, make purchases, and commit other fraudulent activities.

The blending of real PII such as name and address with a different date of birth data for example, is common, and amongst more sophisticated scams, fraudsters will go beyond data to include fake identity documents, fake photos and videos, and even other biometric characteristics, like fingerprints. These ‘identities’ allow fraudsters to apply for low-friction accounts where there are no or limited checks to build up their credit history.

Often synthetic identity fraudsters will play the long game as their credit history improves – increasingly getting access to higher value finance and goods before disappearing without a trace, leaving the affected businesses trying to collect from people who never existed in the first place.

The industries particularly vulnerable to synthetic identity fraud are those that handle high value data and offer potential financial gains for fraudsters – financial services, gaming, and government sectors are key examples. Though it’s important to remember that all industries are vulnerable – fraudsters don’t limit their activities to one organization, sector, or even stop at national boundaries. They target where they see an opportunity.

What makes fighting SIF a challenge? 

Tomlinson: Fighting synthetic identity fraud is a challenge due to the sheer scale it’s being – and has been – leveraged by fraudsters. The lack of preparation from businesses has led to them letting in huge numbers of sleeping identities that are now ready to attack.

Organizations need to act now as this threat will only continue to increase. On the dark web, thousands of sites are selling cheap bundles of identity data from billions of records stolen in cyberattacks and data breaches every year. All the info needed to impersonate someone is easily available within a few clicks and for a few dollars.

Digital identity is complicated, and synthetic identity fraud takes advantage of that by blending real and fake data to slip through the cracks. Technological advancements, such as Generative AI (GenAI), are also increasing the sophistication of synthetic identities, making it even harder to spot. To catch this kind of fraud, detection methods need to handle that complexity and use all the digital identity data out there to spot the fraud signals. Building up several layers of defense is critical.

How high on the list of priorities is this for companies? Do they understand the threat posed by SIF and other AI-powered fraud tactics?

Tomlinson: Fraud is hitting the bottom line – estimates show businesses are losing around five percent of their revenues to fraud annually. Now GenAI has given fraudsters new capabilities to work faster, scale attacks, and create more believable scams. The threat has risen to a new level. 

As a result, digital identity verification and fraud prevention has moved from a tick box exercise to a business imperative and more than ever identity fraud is a boardroom topic.

While this is a step in the right direction, what is still missing is an appreciation for – or acceptance of – the true extent of the problem.

Synthetic identity fraud isn’t new, it’s been happening for years. Many organizations are far more exposed today than they might think.

The reality is businesses prioritize fraud prevention mid-journey or at checkout rather than at the onboarding stage. So, the threat isn’t just about onboarding new synthetic identities, it’s also the many synthetic identities that have already been onboarded and exist in their ecosystem ready to attack. 

What we see is that many companies try to ignore that the problem is already intrenched in their operations. They need to accept this part of the problem to truly protect against it.

You’ve spoken about “cross-sector industry collaboration” as key to helping deal with AI-powered fraud. Why is this the best strategy?

Tomlinson: Synthetic identity theft is just one of the fraudulent threats today. Businesses need to build a layered defense to fraud prevention to protect against current and new fraud tactics. For example, a combination of credit bureau data checks, mobile data, document verification, biometric checks and other alternative data, such as cross-sector intelligence, is a key part of a proven multi-layered approach that strengthens the identity verification process by providing a more robust and informed way of validating identity and spotting fraudsters.

Ultimately, it’s about leveraging the strengths of each component. AI can process vast amounts of data and identify patterns quickly. Human fraud experts bring critical thinking and experience to interpret AI findings and make nuanced decisions. Cross-sector collaboration allows for sharing of intelligence and best practices, making it harder for fraudsters to exploit gaps between industries and organizations. 

How difficult is it to coordinate all those pieces into a coherent, fraud-fighting operation?

Tomlinson: It shouldn’t be complex for organizations – identity experts like us are doing the hard work in the background to bring everything together – that’s why we exist! Plug-in onboarding systems are available to orchestrate identity verification at an intelligent, adaptable level. These identity verification and fraud prevention technologies deliver greater speed and accuracy, calculating the absence or presence of fraud signals and adjusting the customer journey accordingly so there is minimal friction for genuine customers.

How can effective fraud-fighting co-exist with the kind of seamless, real-time experience that consumers have come to expect?

Tomlinson: Actually, more than ever consumers value and prioritize security over convenience. In fact, our latest Global Fraud Report revealed 68% of U.S. customers place greater importance on the security of the onboarding process over its speed.  

In the recent past, with organizations fighting in competitive landscapes to provide the best onboarding customer experience, reducing friction has been seen as critical. However, as fraud, data breaches and security news stories increasingly become dinner-party conversations, consumers are more actively looking for and comforted by visible security measures. Now, it’s critical for organizations to understand that friction doesn’t equal a bad customer experience.  

With cross-sector intelligence, organizations can detect bad, good, and great customer prospects and give them a tailored experience corresponding to their risk level, including when and how to use step-up authentication through documents or biometrics in this time of increasing use of GenAI by fraudsters.  

What is GBG doing specifically to help businesses combat SIF and other forms of AI-powered fraud?

Tomlinson:  Data tells a story and we help you read it. We understand the data that is being presented and verify against it, giving businesses clarity on exactly what they are making decisions on. This is fundamental to preventing synthetic identity fraud.

While GenAI is making fraud tactics smarter, the same is true for fraud detection and prevention. Our solutions leverage AI to quickly sort through and scrutinize huge amounts of digital data, flagging identities that are high, medium, and low trust. We also implement injection attack detection technology for the new era of synthetic identities where fraudsters are matching data with biometric images.

Critically, we layer documents, biometrics, digital, and data checks to give businesses complete defense. Our multi-layered approach strengthens the identity verification process by providing a more robust and informed way of validating identity and spotting fraudsters.

Looking to 2025, what do you expect to see in terms of new trends in the fraud and financial crime landscape?

Tomlinson: In the coming year, expect to see:

  • A rapid pace of attack – established organized crime groups have made fraud their profession and stable source of income. GenAI combined with the industrialization of fraud means more fraud at a faster pace. 
  • Brand damage attacks and an ulterior motive of fraudsters – the damage to a business’ reputation can cause more financial loss than the actual fraud itself. This is a powerful tool for a malicious actor to have in their toolbox.
  • Increased cross-border fraud – fraudsters don’t limit their activities to one organization, sector, or even stop at national boundaries. They target where they see an opportunity, which is increasingly cross border attacks.
  • Fraudsters recycle old methods –as companies pivot to defend against new fraud vectors with the latest technology, we’ll see fraudsters go back and use old fraud tactics to see if they can find a re-opened gap in the system to slip through. Businesses can’t afford to get complacent.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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Lowering the Barriers to Alternative Investments with Alto’s Scott Harrigan

Lowering the Barriers to Alternative Investments with Alto’s Scott Harrigan
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alto Solutions, David's column, Interview

With markets near all-time highs and Bitcoin teasing the $100,000 mark, investors have become increasingly interested in new opportunities to diversify their investments, reduce risk, and grow their wealth. Unfortunately, there are many assets — from cryptocurrencies to real estate to art — that can be difficult for investors to access and incorporate in their overall investment plan.

In this month’s column, I caught up with Scott Harrigan, President of Alto and CEO of Alto Securities. Alto provides a self-directed investment platform that empowers investors to build their wealth by investing not just in stocks, but also in alternative investments, including cryptocurrencies. The platform supports more than 27,000 investors and has more than $1.4 billion in assets under custody.

Alto has three primary divisions: Alto Solutions, a self-directed IRA administrator; Alto Securities, a wholly-owned registered broker-dealer; and Alto Capital, an exempt reporting advisor that provides alternative investment opportunities to accredited investors. Alto Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York with founder and CEO Eric Satz leading a demo of the company’s Alto IRA offering.

In this conversation, Harrigan talks about the pain points investors have when trying to integrate alternative investments into their portfolios and what Alto does to help resolve these issues. We also talked about the opportunities a growing number of investors are seeing in crypto and the challenge of making historically difficult-to-access private investments available to a broader community of investors.

Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Alto was founded in 2015.

What problem does Alto solve and who does it solve it for?

Scott Harrigan: Alto aims to lower the barrier to entry for alternative investments, making alternatives available within an IRA so investors can diversify their retirement savings, reap the benefits of reduced volatility, and have the potential to increase returns. Alto IRA account users can benefit from tax-advantaged investment options in a wide range of alternative assets, including private equity, venture capital, real estate, art, crypto and more, providing them with the opportunity to diversify their investment portfolio while planning for retirement.

How does Alto solve this problem better than other companies or solutions?

Harrigan: With the goal of lowering the barrier to entry, Alto addresses these two pain points: investors want to understand their various alternative investment options and they want easy access to these types of investments in a streamlined platform.

Alto is the only digitally native self-directed IRA provider with multiple alternative investment options. This is unique because many legacy IRA providers have been around for decades and continue to operate in the same fashion they always have, showing no urgency to grow or evolve. They are overlooking the importance of the digitally-oriented experiences that individuals demand these days. Alto understands the importance of being digital-first and bringing a seamless and enjoyable experience to investors.

As for providing multiple alternative investment options, we are forging diverse opportunities in how and where individuals invest their retirement dollars. Alto offers Traditional, Roth, and SEP IRAs so investors can select the right vehicle for their money based on their unique goals, and individuals have the option to put their retirement funds toward anything from biotech to bitcoin, wine to whiskey, and farmland to fine art.

Who are Alto’s primary customers and how do you reach them?

Harrigan: Our goal is to bring alternative investments to everyday investors, and we do this by removing the hurdles that have long prevented them from investing in this sector. There are three areas key to our success in expanding access and awareness. The first is expanding the number and type of investment opportunities offered, so that individuals have freedom of choice and can identify what options are right for them. The second is creating a user-friendly digital experience that makes investing in alternatives more approachable. Last, but certainly not least, is providing education, and disseminating more information and resources to help investors make confident investment decisions.

In addition to expanding our reach more broadly, we also curate opportunities for accredited investors. This past year, we launched Alto Marketplace, a new part of the Alto platform dedicated to curating private alternative investment opportunities for accredited investors. The platform allows eligible investors to invest in historically difficult-to-access private investments which are curated specifically by Alto. Investors now have access to private equity, venture capital, real estate, fine wine, art, and more, all in one platform.

Can you tell us about a favorite implementation or deployment of your technology?

Harrigan: Our technology provides investors access to unique investment opportunities in the alternatives space within an IRA. We provide opportunities for investors to build wealth beyond the stock market and diversify their retirement portfolio with alternative investments.

As part of our commitment to enabling individuals to invest in a wider variety of alternative assets, we were proud to go live with the Alto Marketplace this past year. Marketplace enables Alto’s users to enjoy a streamlined, consolidated investing experience as they explore offerings that range across a variety of different asset classes. Accredited investors can benefit from alternative assets that may offer portfolio diversification and a chance of achieving long-term financial stability in today’s volatile market.

What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Harrigan: My experiences have helped me become deeply familiar with SEC and FINRA guidelines, critical to bringing fair, transparent and compliant opportunities to the everyday investor. Having worked in private markets for the past seven years, I gained a much deeper understanding of how alternative asset investment structures work and how we could work within regulatory guidelines to provide the access that we have today. Creating special purpose vehicles is complex, but we do it because we want to bring a modernized and simplified experience for investing in alternatives.

You recently announced a partnership with SignalRank? Why team up with SignalRank? What will this partnership accomplish?

Harrigan: As mentioned, we launched Alto Marketplace to curate exciting private alternative investment opportunities for investors. Partnering with SignalRank, the first private markets index made up of preferred Series B shares in high growth venture-backed companies, is in line with our commitment to provide investors with wider access to investment opportunities that, by nature, were formerly more exclusive.

We have had prior venture capital opportunities through our Marketplace, but SignalRank is unique in that its algorithm has successfully predicted successful transitions of Series B startups to billion dollar companies. This partnership will help us accomplish our goal to bring unique strategies that aren’t more widely publicly available, and have been largely limited to ultra-high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors, to more investors. Alto’s special purpose vehicles bring investors these opportunities at lower thresholds, for example by lowering the minimum investment to $25,000 whereas typically it might be closer to $500,000 or even higher.

What excites you about the growth of the alternative asset market? Is there an education gap to be covered in order to get more eligible individual investors interested in alternative assets?

Harrigan: I am excited about how we’re in the early days for the alternatives space. The industry is just starting to recognize how big alternative investments will become in the next five years. If you don’t know what this business is about, you’re going to need to, because this is where wealth management is headed in the next five years.

Because we are in the early days, there is absolutely an education gap. Our original study found that a lack of familiarity with alternative investments was the most significant barrier to investing in these assets as part of a diversified retirement portfolio. One common misconception is that the long-term nature required of some alternative assets is a drawback. However, there is a definite advantage in combining the tax efficiency of self-directed IRAs with the extended investment horizons of alternatives. This long-term alignment allows investments to compound and realize strong returns.

As alternatives are poised on this incredible growth trajectory, we’re excited to be ahead of the curve in providing education on how Alto IRA account users can benefit from tax-advantaged portfolios and outsized returns.

What are your goals for Alto? What can we expect to hear from you in the months to come?

Harrigan: In 2025, we expect to bring a much larger variety of alternative investments to our platform. In 2024, we launched 15 deals, so we expect to continue on this momentum and bring investors even more optionality and choice.

We’re also keeping an eye on the preferences of Gen Z and Millennials, two groups that research shows are engaging with investments differently than the generations before them. Notably, those aged 21 to 43 are currently more likely to choose alternatives over stocks.

Last, we will continue to advance our proficiency in how we educate investors. We feel a significant obligation to provide investors with as much information as possible so that they can make informed, confident decisions about their retirement savings. In line with this strategy, we plan to focus on scaling information about and access to Alto CryptoIRA. Crypto presents an immense opportunity for investors to diversify their portfolios and realize greater returns. We want to make more individuals aware of the opportunity they have to invest in crypto as part of an IRA.

Photo by Kelly

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Streamly Snapshot: Upgrading Your Digital Knowledge Management

Streamly Snapshot: Upgrading Your Digital Knowledge Management
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Interview, Streamly

With digital rising to the preferred channel for audiences across the globe, it is more important than ever for firms to manage their brands’ digital presence. Organizations no longer need to just worry about sending out consistent messaging, they also need to ensure that the information that search platforms are sharing about them is correct and consistent in order to uphold their reputation

Earlier this fall, Finovate Research Analyst David Penn spoke with Stuart Greer, VP of Enterprise Sales at digital presence platform Yext to get an idea of how the company not only helps brands manage their reputation, but also with managing information on data aggregators about their physical locations, setting up , and more.

“One of the biggest things I’d say that large enterprise financial services companies deal with… is their online presence across all of the platforms, said Greer. “Yext is a digital presence platform that essentially helps multi-location businesses. When you think about multi-location businesses, you can think of banks, ATMs, wealth advisors, insurance agents– anyone who has that presence online.”

Yext was founded in 2006 to help brands with multiple locations manage their digital presence. Companies can leverage Yext’s platform to ensure they deliver accurate, consistent information, while connecting with customers across the globe via digital channels. The New York-based company leverages AI to automate workflows at scale and provide actionable insights to do everything from enhance SEO to manage social media reputations. Michael Walrath is CEO.

Photo by KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA

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Streamly Snapshot: The Central Role of Contact Centers in AI-Driven Customer Experience

Streamly Snapshot: The Central Role of Contact Centers in AI-Driven Customer Experience
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, Streamly

Leveraging AI to enhance the customer experience is one the biggest challenges – and greatest opportunities – in fintech and financial services.

Today we share the insights of Rahul Kumar, VP and GM for Financial Services and Insurance with Talkdesk, on the central role of contact centers in AI-driven customer experience. In our Streamly Snapshot conversation, which took place in September at FinovateFall 2024 in New York, Kumar discusses what financial institutions are doing to overcome the barriers to delivering a superior customer experience. Kumar also explains why leaders in financial services are prioritizing the contact center as a central part of their AI and CX strategy.

“One of the things we’re seeing in the industry is that customer experience is fast becoming a strategic initiative for executives across the board — for banks and for credit unions. Recently, in a survey, we polled over 200 customer experience professionals and the responses were unsurprising: 86% of executives said that they do believe CX is a strategic investment priority that can lead to brand differentiation for themselves. 63% felt that they could tie CX metrics to value. And 80% do believe that contact center is fast becoming a strategic investment area for them. It’s definitely top of mind for executives.”

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Talkdesk is an international cloud contact center leader for businesses of all sizes. The company’s contact center platform leverages AI and automation to enable businesses to deliver exceptional outcomes for their customers. Talkdesk’s AI-powered customer experience platform helps enterprises reduce costs, grow revenues, and streamline operations to boost efficiency. Tiago Paiva is Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

In his role at Talkdesk, Rahul Kumar leads business, product, and go-to-market strategy for financial services and insurance. He also leads the customer success function for all strategic industry customers, managing C-suite relationships for enterprise customers.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

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Effective AI Implementation in Financial Services: Moving Beyond the Hype

Effective AI Implementation in Financial Services: Moving Beyond the Hype
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2024, Interview, Streamly

How can companies take advantage of the opportunity of AI to grow revenues, help develop new products, and better engage customers? Our latest Streamly interview features Chris Brown, President of Intelygenz, who shares strategies for businesses to effectively implement AI.

In this interview, conducted by Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn, Brown talks about Intelygenz’s engagement models that quickly deliver measurable ROI. Brown also discusses Intelygenz’s “Day Zero” promise, successful use cases in financial services, and explains what the metrics for success are when it comes to AI projects.

“There are a few things actually that I think organizations can do: I think the first thing is try and get yourself out of the AI buzzword, out of that AI hype, and really try to understand where you can apply AI within your business. Try and cross match your strategy, your challenges to the art of the possible of AI.”

“Don’t get hung up and leave that technical jargon. Leave all those hype words to the machine learning engineers and data scientists. Really focus on ‘What are the challenges I’m facing in my industry?’ ‘What will make a difference to my business?’ And if you do that, I can promise people from our vantage point that over many years you will put yourself in a really good position.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2002, Intelygenz provides expert AI consultancy and implementation services. Specializing in AI, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and other enabling technologies, Intelygenz guides businesses and organizations through their AI journeys – from conceptualization to implementation.

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Unicorn or Cash Cow? The Finovate Podcast Offers Tips for Fintech Founders and More!

Unicorn or Cash Cow? The Finovate Podcast Offers Tips for Fintech Founders and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, Podcasting

Summer’s officially over. But you’ve still got plenty of time to catch up on episodes of the Finovate Podcast that you might have missed while on vacation or just taking a break from the fintech buzz.

John Driscoll of Naked Development sat down with Greg Palmer to discuss the importance of building a company for the exit you want as a founder. Unicorn or cash cow? Driscoll and Palmer discuss the opportunities and challenges of both paths. Ep 228.

Naked Development is a mobile app development company and creative agency headquartered in Irvine, California. Driscoll is Co-Founder and CEO.

Colby Mangers and Christine Martin of EverBank talk with Greg Palmer about their insights on digital transformation from their perspective as senior bankers. Mangers and Martin offer ideas on how fintechs can make a great first impression and better stand out from their rivals. Ep 227.

EverBank is a nationwide specialty bank that serves both consumer and commercial clients. A pioneer in online banking, EverBank is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.

Kelly Fryer of Fintech Sandbox and Greg Palmer talk about the mission of Fintech Sandbox and the importance of making data available to early-stage fintech startups. Ep 226.

Fintech Sandbox offers entrepreneurs free access to data and resources in order to build their early-stage fintech solutions via its Data Access Residency program. Fryer is Executive Director.

Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer interviews Jeff Trammell of Merchants & Marine Bank on the issue of cannabis banking and community banks. As a COO, Trammell offers his perspective on implementing new programs. Ep 225.

Headquartered in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Merchants & Marine Bank is a community bank that has served customers in the Gulf Coast region of the U.S. for more than 120 years.

Author Rita Martins talks with Greg Palmer about Web3, its impact on financial services and what banks and other financial institutions need to know – and do – right now about Web3 in order to take advantage of new opportunities. Ep 224.

Author of Web3 in Financial Services, Martins’ book examines the transformative potential of Web3 in the financial services space.

Alex Harris of Fiat Ventures shared his 2024 mid-year review this summer. In this podcast conversation with host Greg Palmer, Harris handed out a few tips for founders and gave his prediction for what’s next for the fintech industry. Ep 223.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Fiat Ventures is an emerging VC focused on supporting the next generation of market-leading, early-stage fintech companies. Harris is Co-Founder and General Partner.

Photo by tyler hendy

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