Mergers & Acquisitions

Harmoney Acquires Compliance Specialist APPC

Harmoney Acquires Compliance Specialist APPC
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Harmoney, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Belgian regtech Harmoney has acquired compliance specialist APPC, a subsidiary of the Forsides Group.
  • The acquisition will provide APPC clients with a broader range of tools to fight challenges ranging from anti-money laundering (AML) to counter-terrorism financing (CTF).
  • Harmoney made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London.

Belgium-based regtech Harmoney announced its acquisition of APPC, the compliance-oriented subsidiary of the Forsides Group. The acquisition will enable Harmoney to offer a streamlined, all-in-one compliance solution to financial institutions (FIs), integrating all regulatory operations on a single platform and empowering FIs to maintain compliance with the ever-changing regulatory environment.

The acquisition comes after five years of collaboration between Harmoney and the APPC team. This collaboration has yielded flexible, customized solutions to help FIs deal with challenges ranging from anti-money laundering (AML) to counter-terrorist financing (CTF). Post-acquisition, the APPC brand will remain intact; its services will be enhanced and expanded via Harmoney’s offerings. This will provide APPC clients with access to an even broader range of compliance solutions. APPC clients will also benefit from the expertise of the Harmoney team which offers a cost-efficient approach to compliance and comprehensive coverage to complex corporate structures.

“Our long-standing partnership with APPC has paved the way for this exciting new chapter,” Harmoney CEO Thomas Van Maele said. “By integrating all regulatory processes onto a single platform, we’re able to merge advanced technology with expert support from two expert teams that share the same values and dedication to compliance.”

Founded in 2016, Harmoney made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At the conference, the company demonstrated the workflow orchestration of a digital reboarding of a private customer. The workflow includes identification, authentication, and risk screening that provides an overall risk score that enables compliance teams to conduct due diligence and, ultimately, determine acceptance, escalation, or rejection.

This summer, Harmoney announced that it was teaming up with Discai, a subsidiary of KBC Group, which leverages data science and financial expertise to help banks and other financial institutions combat financial crime. The two companies launched an integrated AML solution for FIs that combines Discai’s AI-based alert system with Harmoney’s end-to-end case and process management platform. Also this year, Belgian banking solutions collaborative Isabel Group announced that Harmoney would be the first integration partner for its newly launched verified corporate data hub.

Harmoney has raised $5.3 million (€6 million) in funding according to Crunchbase, courtesy of a seed round in 2023.

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 Barb Duggan

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Asset Manager Amundi Acquires Aixigo in $157 Million Deal

Asset Manager Amundi Acquires Aixigo in $157 Million Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: aixigo, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Amundi Technology has agreed to acquire aixigo in a deal valued at $157 million.
  • Amundi will leverage the acquisition to strengthen its role as a leading technology and services provider in the asset management space.
  • Aixigo last demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2018 in New York.

Amundi Technology, an asset manager based in France, has acquired German wealth management platform provider aixigo. The transaction has been valued at $157 million (€149 million).

The acquisition is designed to help banks and financial institutions integrate technological solutions into their IT infrastructures faster. Adding aixigo will help Amundi develop further as a technology and services provider, enabling the firm to offer a more comprehensive range of services. The acquisition will also expand Amundi’s geographical reach thanks to aixigo’s customer base in Germany, Switzerland, and the U.K.

“Joining Amundi Technology presents aixigo with a unique opportunity to expand our service offerings and leverage Amundi’s expertise, allowing us to become the undisputed European leader before gradually extending our reach into Asia, a vision that perfectly aligns with our values and ambitions,” aixigo CEO Arnaud Picut said.

Founded in 1999, aixigo offers modular, intuitive wealth management technology. The company’s aixigo:BLOXX wealth management platform is a fully customizable solution that enables financial services providers to design wealth management services that fit their specific requirements and preferences. Portfolio analysis and reporting, digital portfolio management, risk management, financial planning, and investment advice are among the features of aixigo’s high-performance, API-based platform.

With a staff of 150, aixigo serves more than 20 clients representing more than $1.05 trillion (€1 trillion) in assets under management. The company reports that 60,000 advisors use aixigo’s technology on a daily basis for everything from client onboarding to report generation. Amundi is a leading European asset manager with 100 million retail, institutional, and corporate clients. A subsidiary of the Crédit Agricole Group, Amundi manages $2.3 trillion (€2.2 trillion) in assets.

“With the addition of new expertise, which has already been adopted and recognized by leading financial firms, we will continue to roll out new innovative services, and play an active part in the development of the financial advisory and wealth management sector,” Amundi Chief Executive Officer Valérie Baudson said. “This transaction will create significant value for our clients, partners, and shareholders.”

Headquartered in Aachen, Germany, aixigo made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017. The company most recently demoed its technology before Finovate audiences at FinovateFall 2018 in New York.

Photo by Kai Pilger

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Quoroom Merges with Investory.io

Quoroom Merges with Investory.io
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Quoroom
  • Investment management platform Quoroom has merged with portfolio management software company Investory.io.
  • The merger will help streamline the capital-raising process for venture capital funds, angel syndicates, and startup founders.
  • Headquartered in London, Quoroom made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.

It’s been M&A week here on the Finovate blog! Over the past few days, we’ve highlighted merger and acquisition activity from a pair of alums: nCino’s purchase of Full Circl and Array’s acquisition of fellow Finovate alum, Payitoff. For those looking for a silver lining among the VC funding slowdown in fintech, M&A activity like this might do the trick.

Here’s another fintech M&A announcement that almost slipped beneath our radar. Quoroom, an investment management platform that provides end-to-end fundraising and cap table management software for private companies, has merged with Investory.io.

Investory.io provides portfolio management software that facilitates structured and data-driven communication between investors and startups. With more than 3,000 company accounts and 6,500 investor accounts (including more than 1,000 institutional investors and 4,000 angel investors) on its platform, Investory.io leverages data and AI to enable data-driven portfolio decision-making for investors and simplified investor reporting for startups.

Quoroom’s technology provides an investment workflow that covers every aspect of a company’s lifecycle, from building an investor pipeline to legal completion. By giving investors a singular “source of truth” on deal flow and the metrics of portfolio companies, Quoroom helps companies stand out from the crowd and raise capital faster.

The strategic merger between Quoroom and Investory.io will help unify a fragmented market for venture capital infrastructure and analytics. Quoroom users will be able to leverage the integrated functionality of Investory.io to manage investor updates and cap tables in one place. At the same time, angel syndicates and venture capital funds will benefit from being able to manage fundraising, SPVs, portfolios, and LP reporting from within a single investment management platform.

“With this acquisition, Quoroom users can now manage cap tables, investor relations, and fundraising activities all in one place, making the process more efficient and effective,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page earlier this month when the deal was first announced. Quoroom added separately that it plans to offer “enhanced functionalities in the coming months” to further streamline investment management and make investor relations operations more efficient.

Headquartered in London and founded in 2018, Quoroom made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. At the conference, the company demoed its latest suite of investor relations tools, including enhanced investment recommendations, the ability to automatically visualize company financial metrics, and investor updates to keep shareholders informed during funding rounds.

We interviewed Quoroom CEO and CoFounder Ulyana Shtybel last summer as part of our Finovate Global interview series.

Photo by energepic.com

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nCino Agrees to Acquire FullCircl

nCino Agrees to Acquire FullCircl
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Mergers & Acquisitions, nCino
  • Cloud banking platform nCino has agreed to acquire Client Lifecyle Intelligence platform FullCircl. The purchase price is $135 million, subject to customary adjustments.
  • The acquisition comes a year after the two first forged a partnership in July 2023.
  • Wilmington, North Carolina-based nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London.

In a deal valued at $135 million, banking solutions provider nCino has agreed to acquire U.K.-based Client Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform, FullCircl. The acquisition comes a year after the two companies forged a partnership that combined FullCircl’s advanced data capabilities with nCino’s cloud banking platform.

“The acquisition of FullCircl is a strategic move for nCino that will not only enhance our data and automation capabilities, but also enables us to expand our reach across the U.K. and more broadly in Europe with an end-to-end experience for full client lifecycle management,” nCino CEO and Chairman Pierre Naudé said. “Having worked closely with the FullCircl team for some time now, we recognized the value our joint technology can deliver, and this acquisition marks an exciting step forward in our mission of driving innovation and powering a new era in financial services.”

nCino and FullCircl first partnered last year to improve the efficiency and profitability of acquiring, onboarding, and servicing SME customers. The collaboration set out to cut onboarding times, increase efficiency in credit operations, accelerate revenue growth, and win and retain more SME customers. Today’s acquisition announcement creates a new, end-to-end client lifecycle management experience that integrates customer acquisition and onboarding, KYC and KYB, as well as rules-based monitoring.

“We have been working with the nCino team for several years, and the close alignment in both organizations across vision, culture, customers, product, and market opportunity have contributed to this exciting acquisition making perfect sense,” FullCircl CEO and Cofounder Andrew Yates said. “We both serve regulated industries who walk a tightrope between a strict operating rulebook and a mandate to deliver growth and shareholder value, all while providing a seamless client experience.”

Founded in 2011, London-based FullCircl offers a Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform that helps companies in regulated industries better manage a variety of key business challenges. Via its applications, proprietary ‘graph’ technology, intelligent rules-based decision engine and APIs, FullCircl derives millions of actionable insights daily on entities from 160 countries. This enables the platform to provide a near real-time record of companies, corporate officers and shareholders, and the relationships between them. With more than 700 customers and 15,000+ users, the firm processes more than 300 million onboarding and monitoring transactions per month and facilitates the onboarding of more than 200,000 customers a year.

nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, and founded in 2012, the company currently delivers innovative banking experiences to more than 1,800 customers around the world, including community banks, credit unions, and independent mortgage banks, as well as some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

nCino began the month inking a partnership with Tokushima Taisho Bank. The Japan-based financial institution chose nCino’s Commercial Banking Solution to bring greater efficiency and increased value to its business lending operations. Other recent partnerships with nCino include the company’s work to enhance corporate lending at Netherlands-based bank ABN AMRO and its agreement to automate loan origination processes and expand portfolio management capabilities for U.K. specialist bank Shawbrook.

nCino is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker NCNO. The firm has a market capitalization of $4 billion.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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Array Acquires Consumer Debt Management Company Payitoff

Array Acquires Consumer Debt Management Company Payitoff
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Array, Mergers & Acquisitions, Payitoff

Array, an embedded consumer products platform, has agreed to acquire embedded debt guidance solutions provider Payitoff. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal will build on Array’s position in the intelligent debt management solutions industry, and further equip the company to help financial institutions, fintechs, and digital brands accelerate growth, create new revenue streams, and enhance the consumer experience.

“Financial institutions and other providers of financial products in digital experiences realize that helping their consumers better understand and manage their debt is a powerful way to increase deposits, revenue, and brand loyalty,” Array Founder and CEO Martin Toha said. “We acquired Payitoff because our companies have a shared vision to provide seamless, embeddable products that fuel financial progress. This provides our clients with the best of all worlds: bringing valuable products to market faster without additional resources and overhead.”

Founded in 2020, Array offers a range of embeddable private label products that enable businesses to serve as “one-stop shops” for financial services. The company’s solutions help financial institutions serve a wider range of customers’ financial needs, increasing engagement, and opening up new potential sources of growth. Array’s solutions can be implemented through embedded or private label sites, as well as via its API, and turn 18-month builds into 6-12 week deployments.

Array won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021. The company returned to the Finovate stage the following year at FinovateSpring 2022, taking home its second Best of Show award in as many appearances. Most recently demoing its technology at FinovateSpring 2023, Array introduced its HelloPrivacy and Subscription Manager solutions. HelloPrivacy monitors and removes personally identifiable information (PII) from the web to help defend against identity theft, robocalls, and other privacy risks. Subscription Manager allows subscribers to manage their subscriptions from a single location, as well as cancel unwanted subscriptions and negotiate lower rates on select subscriptions.

Array began 2024 with the appointment of Kew Kelly-Yuoh as Chief Financial Officer, a partnership with digital banking solutions provider Narmi, and a spot on the Fintech Innovation 50 list for 2024. This spring, Array reported that its online privacy solution, Privacy Protect, had surpassed four million in protected users and removed more than 200 million online records on their behalf. Earlier this month, the company announced that Lumin Digital, a provider of cloud-native, digital banking solutions, will offer a suite of Array products including My Credit Manager with Offers Engine, and Identity Protect — along with Privacy Protect and Subscription Manager — as part of its Financial Wellness Monitoring Suite for financial institutions.

Founded in 2018, Payitoff was born out of CEO Bobby Matson’s personal struggle to pay off “six-figure student loans and debt.” After initially launching a student loan management solution, Matson and his team expanded their offerings to include a more comprehensive set of debt management tools. Enabling companies to seamlessly integrate broad debt management functionality into their digital platforms, Payitoff has managed 200,000+ loans valued at more than $1.5 billion.

“The opportunity for impact between Array and Payitoff is massive,” Matson said. “Student loan payments resumed a year ago, and with delinquencies starting to impact borrowers’ credit this month, the timing of this acquisition couldn’t be more critical. Array’s reach, combined with our debt management tools, will empower financial institutions and fintechs to help their consumers manage debt and save thousands — all with a seamless integration.”

Payitoff made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023. At the conference, the consumer debt management tool provider demonstrated its white label, no code solution that empowers financial institutions to help their customers save money on student loan repayments. Earlier this year, Payitoff was selected to participate in Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program.

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Socure Acquires Real-Time Risk Decisioning Company Effectiv for $136 Million

Socure Acquires Real-Time Risk Decisioning Company Effectiv for $136 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Effectiv, Mergers & Acquisitions, Socure
  • Socure has acquired risk decisioning company Effectiv for $136 million
  • Socure will integrate Effectiv’s AI-powered orchestration platform into its digital identity verification and fraud solutions.
  • The acquisition will enable Socure to enhance fraud prevention, automate identity verification, and manage risk across onboarding, authentication, payments, account changes, and more.

Digital identity verification company Socure has acquired risk decisioning company Effectiv in a $136 million deal.

The agreement, which is set to close next month, will bring Effectiv’s developer-friendly, AI orchestration and decisions platform into Socure’s digital identity verification and fraud solutions platform. Socure expects the purchase will enhance its customers’ fraud-fighting efforts while offering the ability to verify identities across the entire customer journey.

Socure will use Effectiv to create complex, combinatorial rules that apply not only to its own solutions but also to those from third parties. Effectiv will provide a unified approach to enhancing identity verification for Socure, automating risk and trust decisions across various processes, including onboarding, authentication, payments, account updates, account recovery, and regulatory filings.

Effectiv, which demoed at FinovateFall 2023, was founded in 2021 to provide an open platform that integrates a wide range of risk solutions– including identity and payment fraud controls, underwriting, Know Your Business (KYB) and anti-money laundering (AML) tools– to facilitate decisions in real-time. Using Effectiv’s technology, firms can combat identity theft, account takeover, scams, and real-time payment fraud. Among the company’s clients are Ouro/Netspend, Lightspeed Commerce, Cardless, and Payco.

Today’s move positions Socure in the $200 billion enterprise fraud industry. The Nevada-based company, which currently serves 2,700 customers, will now be able to help its clients tackle payments fraud, credit underwriting, and AML transaction monitoring.

“With a world-class platform from Effectiv and analytics that allows for adaptive and progressive risk decisioning, we will be able to help our partners with a single view of identity to drive instant risk and trust decisions anytime, anywhere,” said Socure founder and CEO Johnny Ayers.

This isn’t Socure’s first time working with the Effectiv team. The company worked with Effectiv founders Ravi Sandepudi, Ritesh Arora, Jonathan Doering, and Anupam Tarsauliya when they worked at fraud prevention platform Simility before it was acquired by PayPal for $120 million in 2018.

Logistically, the Effectiv team will join Socure. The group will work to develop and promote Socure’s platform product, engineering, data science, and will immediately contribute to its enterprise go-to-market strategy.

“Socure has uniquely built everything required to solve for new account opening at the identity level—arguably the hardest problem because it’s the first time you’ve seen the consumer,” said Effectiv CEO and Co-founder Ravi Sandepudi. “Now we can review and analyze the user’s risk profile across transactions and accounts over time, maintaining an up-to-date perspective which was impossible before.”

Sandepudi will become Head of Platform Products at Socure.

Photo by Fernando Arcos

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U.K. Digital Bank Pockit Acquires Monese

U.K. Digital Bank Pockit Acquires Monese
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Digital bank Pockit has acquired multi-currency account provider Monese.
  • Pockit plans to continue operating both brands separately while combining efforts to process $6.52 billion (£5 billion) in annual transactions.
  • Monese’s B2B arm, XYB, will be spun off as a standalone business, and Monese’s 100 employees will join Pockit.

U.K.-based digital bank Pockit announced that it has acquired multi-currency account provider Monese. While financial terms of the deal were undisclosed, Pockit is rumored to have paid a “modest sum” for Monese.

According to the Times, Pockit CEO and Co-founder Virraj Jatania said that the deal would be “transformational” for the company and “great news for millions of customers poorly served by traditional banks.”

Pockit was founded in 2012 and now offers a prepaid card for everyday use, as well as a travel-specific prepaid card that can be used in multiple currencies. The company also offers joint account cards, a credit building tool, a cash advance product, and more. Pockit has raised just shy of $50 million, with its most recent $10 million round led by Puma Private Equity in August of 2023.

Also founded in 2013, Monese offers both personal and business accounts that come with a multi-currency debit card suited for traveling. The company also offers international money transfers for both sending and receiving funds. The company is backed by $201 million in funding, having secured its most recent 2022 round from HSBC Ventures, which wrote off its investment earlier this year.

Monese also has a business-to-business arm called XYB. This core-less banking platform, which helps banks and other financial services companies create and launch new financial services solutions, was spun off as a standalone business earlier this year.

For now, it appears that Monese’s two million customers across 30+ countries will remain with Monese. Pockit has said that, while Monese’s 100 employees will join the Pockit team, they will continue to run both Monese and Pockit as two separate brands. Combined, Pockit and Monese will process around $6.52 billion (£5 billion) worth of transactions each year.

Photo by Engin Akyurt

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Mastercard Acquires Minna Technologies

Mastercard Acquires Minna Technologies
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard, Mergers & Acquisitions, Minna Technologies
  • Mastercard has agreed to acquire subscription management platform Minna Technologies. Terms were not disclosed.
  • Minna Technologies offers technology that enables users to manage their subscriptions from within their bank app or website, saving users millions of dollars in spending on unwanted subscriptions.
  • Minna Technologies made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2019. The company is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Terms were not disclosed. But Mastercard announced today that it has agreed to acquire Swedish subscription management platform Minna Technologies. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, will bring greater simplicity and clarity to the subscription process and help enhance the engagement between merchants and their customers.

“This is significant recognition of the strength, growth, and impact of Minna Technologies in powering the global subscription economy, partnering with top-tier banks, fintechs, and subscription businesses,” Minna Technologies CEO and Chair Amanda Mesler said. “We look forward to joining Mastercard’s world-class team and helping businesses to empower consumers with control, convenience, and flexibility in managing their subscriptions and recurring payments.”

Minna Technologies offers banks and other financial institutions a subscription management platform that enables users to take control over their subscriptions via an automatically generated overview of all the user’s recurring expenses. Individuals can use Minna to cancel unwanted subscriptions as well as identify and quickly switch to new utility service providers. Mastercard’s acquisition comes as the number of subscriptions globally has climbed to 6.8 billion, with analysts at Juniper Research expecting that number to climb to 9.3 billion by 2028.

That said, the experience of our subscription economy can be a mixed one for consumers. Changing, extending, or canceling a subscription is often much more difficult than it needs to be. Additionally, the proliferation of subscription-based services means that many people have trouble keeping track of what they subscribe to, and when those subscriptions will be renewed. In the U.S., for example, the average person has 4.5 subscriptions. Additionally, more than 85% of Americans say that they have at least one paid subscription that goes unused each month.

Minna provides a payment-scheme agnostic service that empowers subscribers to manage their subscriptions from within their banking apps and websites. Bringing this technology into Mastercard’s suite of offerings is yet another example of how some of the biggest companies in financial services are leveraging acquisitions to add new solutions – from account-to-account payment functionality to enhanced cybersecurity – to their product mix. To that point, just last week, we shared news that Mastercard rival Visa had agreed to acquire fraud prevention company (and Finovate alum) Featurespace.

Founded in 2014, Minna Technologies demoed its technology at FinovateEurope in 2019. Today, the Sweden-based company has connected with more than 22,000 subscription businesses, served more than 120 million retail bank and fintech users, and saved customers more than $1 billion in spending on unwanted subscriptions.

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Visa to Acquire Featurespace

Visa to Acquire Featurespace
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Featurespace, Mergers & Acquisitions, VISA
  • Visa is acquiring fraud prevention company Featurespace to enhance its own fraud detection and risk-scoring solutions.
  • Terms of the agreement were undisclosed and the deal is expected to close in 2025 pending regulatory approvals.
  • The acquisition comes as Visa faces legal challenges from the U.S. DOJ over alleged monopolization in debit card markets.

Visa signed an agreement to acquire fraud prevention company Featurespace today. Financial terms of the deal, which is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in 2025.

Featurespace was founded in 2008 as a project in Cambridge University’s engineering department. The U.K.-based company offers AI-based tools that analyze transaction data to detect fraud. The company’s ARIC Risk Hub assesses behavioral analytics in real-time to identify abnormal user behavior, and leverages machine learning to adapt to changing behaviors and new scams, while improving accuracy over time.

“Providing our clients with solutions that can adapt to and anticipate the changing threat landscape is of the utmost importance,” said Visa Global Head of Value-added Services Antony Cahill. “Featurespace’s strong foundation in AI will enhance our existing product portfolio and enable us to address our clients’ most complex and pressing challenges. We look forward to welcoming the Featurespace team to Visa.”

Visa expects that Featurespace will complement and strengthen its existing portfolio of fraud detection and risk-scoring solutions. By leveraging Featurespace’s expertise, Visa will empower its clients to manage payments fraud in real-time while minimizing false positives and ultimately cutting costs.

“Over the past 12 years we have served the financial services industry, building a company that has gone from strength to strength, and we are thrilled to become a part of Visa,” said Featurespace Founder Dave Excell. “With Visa, we can bring the innovation, integrity and purpose of our platform and our team to more payment service providers and ultimately, stop more people from becoming victims of financial crime.”

Shadowing today’s deal is Visa’s previous failed purchase of Plaid. In 2021, Visa was forced to terminate its planned $5.3 billion acquisition of financial data access company Plaid. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil antitrust lawsuit that ended the merger about a year after discussions were initiated. The lawsuit argued that Visa wanted to acquire Plaid to protect its U.S. debit business against the threat of the fintech. Visa argued that the DOJ did not understand its business and the competitive landscape, saying that Plaid would complement its existing capabilities.

Visa’s planned acquisition of Featurespace is quite different than that of Plaid, however. That’s because the fintech will likely be seen as enhancing Visa’s existing fraud management capabilities and does not pose the same competitive risks as the Plaid deal did.

Even still, the Featurespace deal comes at an interesting time for Visa. The payments giant is re-living some of its 2021 woes with the DOJ. The department sued Visa earlier this week, alleging that it is monopolizing debit card markets. “We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”

As some experts have pointed out, however, banks and merchants have multiple payment rails to choose from, and that Visa’s global market share is simply a result of capitalism.

Photo by Florenz Mendoza

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CSI to Acquire Velocity Solutions

CSI to Acquire Velocity Solutions
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Velocity Solutions
  • CSI announced plans to acquire deposit growth firm Velocity Solutions.
  • CSI will integrate Velocity’s solutions that drive revenue, service, and compliance for community banks and credit unions into its existing offerings.
  • Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Community bank technology provider CSI announced plans to acquire deposit growth firm Velocity Solutions. Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Velocity Solutions was founded in 1995 to offer tools that help drive revenue, service, and compliance for community banks and credit unions. The company’s Velocity Intelligent Platform powers its solutions, among which are a Retail Performance Engine, Consumer Liquidity Engine, and Digital Business Lending. These tools leverage machine-led intelligence to help firms manage risk, drive revenue, increase engagement, and boost non-interest income.

Velocity Solutions, which demoed its Akouba cloud-based lending platform at FinovateFall 2021, services more than 30 million consumers and business owners.

“Our customers rely on us to provide the advanced tools and software that drive revenue, efficiency and cost savings,” said CSI CEO and president David Culbertson. “Velocity’s data-driven approach to deposit management and its intelligent overdraft decisioning engine are each designed to deepen relationships with account holders while minimizing risk exposure for financial institutions.”

CSI plans to integrate Velocity’s solutions into its existing financial services suite, which includes everything from core banking to lending to managed IT and cybersecurity, advisory services, and more. “We’re eager to identify more opportunities to evolve the differentiated financial software and technology solutions that make CSI the first choice for community and regional financial institutions nationwide,” added Culbertson.

“The CSI and Velocity teams are united by the same mission to empower community and regional financial institutions to compete and win against the largest banks in the country,” said Velocity Solutions CEO Christopher Leonard. “Our customers are facing increasing pressure to grow in a challenging rate and deposit environment and require innovative ways to acquire and serve their account holders. We are eager to tap into CSI’s deep expertise and development prowess to expand our banking management platform and support customers in meeting their goals.”

CSI expects that today’s purchase will complement the acquisition of community bank loan servicing platform, Hawthorn River, the company made in December of last year.

CSI, which recently launched an expanded developer portal, was founded in 1965. The company received an investment of an undisclosed amount from private equity firm TA Associates in January 2024.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

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Xero to Acquire Syft Analytics

Xero to Acquire Syft Analytics
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Mergers & Acquisitions, Xero
  • Xero announced plans to acquire Syft Analytics, a collaborative reporting tool.
  • Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the deal is expected to close between October and December of this year.
  • Xero plans to integrate Syft’s technology into its existing accounting offering, and it will also continue to maintain Syft as a standalone company.

Small business accounting software company Xero has announced plans this week to acquire collaborative reporting tool Syft Analytics. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

South Africa-based Syft was founded in 2017 to help small businesses leverage their financial data. In addition to automated, customizable reports, businesses can also create financial reports and disclosures. The tool can also consolidate financial information from any accounting software, trial balance, transaction list, or ERP.

“We’ve worked closely with Xero’s teams and customers over the past seven years,” said Syft CEO Vangelis Kyriazis. “Having met Xero’s senior leadership team over the past few months, we knew that joining Xero was a natural fit and would advance our shared goal of helping small businesses succeed.”

Xero has worked with Syft since February of 2018. The two first partnered when the New Zealand-based company added Syft to its App Store, which allowed Xero customers to leverage Syft’s custom reporting features.

Once the acquisition is finalized, Syft will continue to operate as a standalone offering for small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers – regardless of whether they are Xero clients or not. Xero also plans to embed Syft’s functionality into its existing platform, aiming to enhance its own analytics and reporting capabilities.

“We look forward to bringing this exciting vision to life by strengthening our insights, advanced reporting and analytics offerings through capabilities such as benchmarking, long term cash flow forecasting and multi-entity reporting,” the company said in a blog post. “Our goal is to bring the power of premium insights and advanced reporting functionality to our customers so they can reap the value for their business.”

The acquisition is expected to close between October and December 2024.

Founded in 2006, Xero listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) in 2007 and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in 2012. In January 2018, the company consolidated to list solely on the ASX and now boasts a market capitalization of $22.58 billion. The company counts 4.2 million subscribers.

Earlier this year, Xero launched new inventory management software called Xero Inventory Plus, which it anticipates will help goods-based small business owners track and manage their inventory across different channels.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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Ncontracts Acquires Third Party Risk Management Company Venminder

Ncontracts Acquires Third Party Risk Management Company Venminder
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Ncontracts
  • Ncontracts has acquired Venminder, a third-party risk management SaaS platform, to enhance its governance, risk, and compliance services.
  • The acquisition will broaden Ncontracts’ expertise in third-party risk management and strengthen its position in both SaaS and knowledge-as-a-service markets.
  • Ncontracts also announced that Hg has acquired Venminder’s previous shareholders and Ncontracts’ investor Gryphon.

Risk management and compliance solutions provider Ncontracts made an acquisition today to help broaden its governance, risk, and compliance capabilities. The Tennessee-based company has bought third party risk management program company Venminder.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Kentucky-based Venminder offers a SaaS platform for third-party risk management that helps more than 1,200 customers manage their vendor relationships– from onboarding to offboarding. With Venminder, firms can manage vendors, track contract data, perform due diligence and oversight, send and score questionnaires, conduct risk assessments, systemically monitor risks across domains, order due diligence assessments on vendor controls, and more.

Ncontracts anticipates the purchase will offer it more depth and expertise in third-party risk management, and will enhance its position in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and knowledge-as-a-service (KaaS) space.

“We are excited to join forces with Venminder,” said Michael Berman, Ncontracts Founder and CEO. “With our teams coming together to help reduce risk, improve compliance and control costs, we will continue to strengthen the financial industry and the communities they serve.”

Also this week, Ncontracts, which demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022, announced that investor Hg bought out prior Venminder shareholders as well as Ncontracts shareholder Gryphon Investors– which acquired Ncontracts in 2020. With its purchase, Hg will bring both resources and expertise.

“With the investment and support from Hg, we are well positioned to continue our rapid growth,” said Berman. “Gryphon has been a valuable partner, and I want to thank their outstanding team of operating partners, operating advisors and investment professionals.”

Third party risk management is a hotter topic than ever in today’s banking and fintech landscape, especially as the number of banks hit with consent orders rises due to regulatory breaches and compliance issues. With the increasing reliance on third-party vendors for technology, payment processing, and other services, the potential for vulnerabilities and risk has grown significantly.

Exacerbating the issue, regulatory bodies are tightening scrutiny on how banks manage their third-party relationships, ensuring that banks maintain strict oversight, due diligence, and risk mitigation strategies to safeguard sensitive data and operational resilience.

Photo by Edmond Dantès

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