This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Lending solutions provider Open Lending has agreed to merge with Nebula Acquisition Corporation, an acquisition company sponsored by True Wind Capital.
The merger will take place via an acquisition in which, once finalized, Nebula will purchase Open Lending and form a new Delaware holding company called Open Lending Corporation. The new entity will be publicly-traded on NASDAQ with an estimated value of $1.3 billion.
Members of Open Lending’s executive team– John Flynn, cofounder, president, and CEO; and Ross Jessup, cofounder, CFO, and COO– will lead the new company. Flynn commented that there is “significant runway” for new growth, considering Open Lending’s existing banking relationships and “untapped opportunities” with new partnerships.
Open Lending was founded in 2000 and offers automated lending solutions to banks, specializing in automotive lending. Ultimately, Open Lending helps banks offer near-prime borrowers more attractive borrowing rates without changing the risk profile for the bank. In 2019, Open Lending facilitated more than $1.7 billion in automotive loans for 275+ financial institutions.
“Open Lending’s ability to demonstrate consistent organic growth and high levels of profitability represents an exciting investment opportunity within the risk-based analytics ecosystem,” said Adam Clammer, Nebula co-CEO and founding partner of True Wind. “John and his team have developed a highly-scalable technology platform that helps hard working consumers get into a new or used car at the best rate possible. We look forward to partnering with Open Lending’s management team and Bregal at this exciting inflection point in the company’s growth.”
Payments titan PayPal is shelling out $4 billion today in a transaction to purchase Honey, an online shopping and rewards platform. The deal is PayPal’s 20th acquisition and closely follows the California-based company’s arrangement with GoPay last month that gives it a 70% ownership in the China-based company.
PayPal, which offers solutions for both end consumers and merchants, will leverage Honey to create a better experience for the end customer while giving its merchant clients a boost through increased sales and customer engagement.
Honey brings with it a network of 30,000 online retailers and 17 million monthly active users. PayPal will be able to engage with these shoppers while they are still at the beginning of their online purchasing experience. Leveraging access PayPal’s 275+ million active customers and network of 24 million merchant accounts, Honey will be able to scale up its user base considerably.
Calling today’s purchase as one of the “most transformative” in the company’s history, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman went on to praise Honey for its ability to improve the online shopping experience. “The combination of Honey’s complementary consumer products with our platform will significantly enhance our ability to drive engagement and play a more meaningful role in the daily lives of our consumers,” Schulman said. “As a partner of choice for our merchants, this is another way that we can help them build and strengthen their customer relationships, provide personalized offers, and drive incremental sales.”
Logistically, Honey will stay intact, maintaining its headquarters in Los Angeles. The company’s co-founders George Ruan and Ryan Hudson will continue to lead the Honey team, reporting to PayPal’s Senior Vice President John Kunze.
PayPal showcased its Instant Account Creation feature at FinovateFall 2012. The company has a market capitalization of $120 billion.
Analytics and decision management technology company FICOannounced two new products this week as it snapped up security access provider EZMCOM. Transactional details of the acquisition were undisclosed.
The acquisition has facilitated the launch of FICO Identity Proofing, digital onboarding technology; and FICO User Authentication, a suite of multi-factor, biometric, and behavioral authentication capabilities.
EZMCOM was founded in 2006. The company’s identity proofing, biometric, behavioral and risk-based authentication technology is used by tier-1 banks across the globe, ultimately serving 60 million customers.
“As our clients expand their digital offerings, they are requesting more sophisticated identity proofing and authentication capabilities to complement our fraud, compliance, customer lifecycle, and customer engagement applications,” said FICO CTO Claus Moldt. “Behavioral and biometric authentication are becoming the gold standard to prevent identity spoofing and improve customer protection, while reducing friction. By adding this technology to our portfolio, we will provide our clients with a seamless approach to authentication and customer onboarding – across digital channels, mobile devices, servers and workstations.”
Founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac Corporation, FICO presented “Rapidly Deliver Contextually-Powered Stream Processing” at FinDEVr New York 2016.
Last week, Q2 completed its sixth acquisition since its 2004 launch. The digital banking services company closed the books on a $510 million deal to purchase PrecisionLender, a sales enablement platform.
“We are thrilled with the outstanding talent, culture and industry expertise the PrecisionLender team brings to the Q2 family,” said Q2 CEO Matt Flake. “We are also excited about the potential we have to help our customers improve margins, profitability and the quality of their relationship with their key accounts using our combined data insights and commercial banking solutions.”
Q2 will leverage PrecisionLender to further its corporate banking expertise and solidify its leadership in digital banking. Going forward, PrecisionLender will operate as Precision Lender, a Q2 company.
Q2 debuted Q2 Biller Direct at FinovateSpring 2018 and the company’s CIO Lou Senko made a cameo appearance in ALTR’s demo at FinovateFall earlier this year.
Social trading and investment platform eToro is making moves this month. In addition to launchingCopyTrader in the U.S. last week, the company announced today it has acquired Delta, an app for tracking crypto portfolios.
Delta’s app helps its 1.5 million users track and analyze their crypto portfolios, offering information on more than 6,000 crypto assets traded on more than 180 exchanges.
The deal will close for an undisclosed amount, though TechCrunch rumors the purchase price is around $5 million. Delta is eToro’s second acquisition this year (and overall) after buying blockchain company Firmo in March.
“When we started eToro our goal was to disrupt the world of trading. We wanted to change the way people think about trading and investing, ultimately reducing dependency on traditional financial institutions and make trading and investing more transparent and fun,” said eToro Cofounder and CEO Yoni Assia. “This mission remains our guiding light and we will continue to evolve both organically and by acquisition in order to bring our customers the very best experience.”
eToro’s purchase of Delta shows the company’s increased commitment to the crypto space. Last year the company launched its subsidiary eToroX, a regulated digital asset exchange and crypto wallet to support tokenized asset trading. Doron Rosenblum, Managing Director of eToroX, said that Delta is “a great addition” to eToro’s crypto offering. Rosenblum also mentioned that he plans to integrate Delta into the eToroX platform to allow customers to trade from within the app.
Logistically, the Delta team will become part of eToroX, reporting to Rosenblum, but will continue working from its headquarters in Belgium.
And if you haven’t seen eToro’s video featuring Alec Baldwin pitching the U.S. launch of CopyTrader, here you go:
eToro most recently showcasedCopyFunds for Partners at FinovateEurope 2017. Originally known for being a social trading platform, the company began pioneering bitcoin trading in 2013 via CFDs and in 2017 allowed clients to trade and invest in Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. eToro has raised $223 million since it was founded in 2007.
Digital banking technology provider Avaloq is at a crossroads, Reuters reports. The Swiss company is preparing to sell or go public.
The decision comes as Avaloq’s private equity shareholder Warburg Pincus, which owns a 45% stake in Avaloq, seeks an exit. Other shareholders in the company include founder Francisco Fernandez, who owns 28%, as well as Avaloq staff and management, which hold 27% ownership.
If recent exit trends persist, Avaloq will take the acquisition route, likely being picked up by a wealth management firm, large bank, or a larger competitor, such as Temenos, which is much more of a heavyweight in the industry. “I always said I would never do an IPO before getting to a critical size or maturity needed for such a step. I said roughly 1 billion in revenues,” Fernandez said in a Reuters report in 2017. “Counting back, we think that in three to four years we should be there.”
No matter which route Avaloq takes, it will likely be placed among fintech unicorns. The company was valued at $1 billion in 2017 when it initiated the agreement with Warburg Pincus.
Avaloq most recently demoed at FinovateAsia last year where it showcased its ecosystem that serves as an app store for banks using open APIs. The company launched in 1985 as BZ Informatik and has since grown its offerings to include core banking software, digital wealth management, as well as core banking SaaS and BPaaS products.
Avaloq, which has raised $350 million in funding, provides technology that helps its 150 clients manage $4.5 trillion. Among the company’s clients are Barclays, BBVA, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rothschild, Societe Generale, and Vontobel.
Amsterdam-based Interxion, which provides carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services, announced this week it has agreed to be acquired by Digital Realty, a data center services company.
The transaction values Interxion at $8.4 billion and brings added value to the company. Interxion will benefit from Digital Realty’s global footprint, helping it build its presence in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. “We also believe our stakeholders will benefit from Digital Realty’s investment grade balance sheet and lower cost of capital,” said Interxion CEO David Ruberg.
“The transaction is expected to be accretive to the long-term growth trajectory of the combined organization, and to establish a global platform that we believe will significantly enhance our ability to create long-term value for customers, shareholders and employees of both companies,” said Digital Realty CEO A. William Stein.
Once the deal is finalized the new entity will be called Interxion, a Digital Realty company. Interxion CEO David Ruberg will serve as the CEO of the combined company’s Europe EMEA business while Stein will serve as CEO of the combined company.
Finalization of the deal is subject to closing conditions and shareholder approval. The transaction is expected to close in 2020.
Interxion was founded in 1998 and now serves its customers through 50 data centrs in 11 European countries. The company is partnered with more than 700 connectivity providers, 21 European internet exchanges, as well as many cloud and digital media platforms.
At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015, Interxion’s VP of Enterprise Bill Fenick, gave a presentation titled Quants in a European Cloud.
Predictive email intelligence firm SparkPostannounced plans to acquire eDatasource this week. Terms of the deal, which marks SparkPost’s second acquisition, were undisclosed.
SparkPost sought eDataSource, an email delivery solutions and insights company, for its inbox performance insights and reputation management tools in hopes to create a fully integrated email sending and analytics platform.
“The industry has long accepted a certain level of lost subscribers, however, those stakes are considerably higher based on some of the email provider changes over the last few years. Today, a miss at the sending layer will result in a significant hit to a marketer’s total acquisition costs, and can be avoided by making small adjustments,” said SparkPost CEO Rich Harris. “By combining forces, we can now integrate insights with your sending for direct action and measurement. Our two companies coming together solves this problem.”
The new offering from the combined companies will offer:
Enhanced predictive inbox performance insights
Increased email engagement and conversion
Illustration of how emails are performing in the context of a larger marketing campaign
SparkPost plans to ship new offerings in the “next few quarters.” On that list are an automatic seeding tool and a real-time blacklist alert that is weighted to actual sending patterns.
At FinovateSpring 2019, SparkPost demoedSignals, a tool that analyzes email sending and data from across the company’s email network to warn users about email issues. Founded in 2008, SparkPost powers the delivery of more than 37% of all B2C email across the globe.
Small business financing company Kabbage has made a purchase that will help it get to know the world of SMEs all the better. In a deal announced today, Kabbage will acquire small business intelligence firm, and fellow Finovate alum, Radius, adding insights from more than 20 million U.S. small businesses to its platform.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the successful closing of the acquisition, Kabbage said in a statement that it will add “nearly 20 team members” from Radius to its offices in San Francisco, including Radius CEO Joel Carusone, to help support the integration of the two platforms and the two companies.
“Data has always been our competitive advantage, and Radius strengthens it by adding millions of new and verified small business insights to our platform,” Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein said. “These new technology and data-analysis capabilities further differentiate us from other SMB-focused fintech companies as we dramatically expand our product set and service platform to address the unique cash flow needs of small businesses.”
Expressing a “deep respect for Kabbage’s data-driven technology and focus,” Radius’ Carusone highlighted similarities between the two firms. “Our companies have complementary technical architectures and domain experience for decision making,” he said. “With Kabbage, we can build a more sophisticated analytics solution to identify, reach, and serve small businesses.”
San Francisco, California-based Radius was founded in 2009. The company demonstrated its platform at FinovateSpring 2014, showing how it leverages big data to gain insights into more than 27 million small and medium-sized businesses. This information helps FIs find the best customer segments, build efficient and accurate targeted lead lists, and measure the success of marketing campaigns.
Radius began 2019 with the launch of its Data for Good campaign to help the company’s employees and customers give back to their communities. This included credit-backs to the accounts of for-profit companies for any data used to support philanthropic causes. The campaign also featured service donations to nonprofits to enable them to use the Radius’ enterprise customer data platform to reach out to and potentially partner with small businesses.
In May, Radius unveiled a new data stewardship app designed to fix bad, siloed Salesforce data. The new solution enables enterprises to manage data across any Salesforce field based on unified, trusted data. “Existing tools enrich some external data,” Radius CEO Joel Carusone explained, “but what’s missing is an easy-to-use application coupled with a powerful platform that gives users access to data unified across all third-parties and their internal data sets.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Kabbage made its first appearance on the Finovate stage in 2010, demoing its Kabbage Loan offering at FinovateSpring that year. The company most recently demoed its Kabbage Card, a part of the company’s Kabbage Everywhere product expansion, at FinovateSpring 2015.
Featured in June by CEO World in its look at fintechs that are helping fight for fair lending, Kabbage announced a partnership with online banking platform Azlo in May that would create a new entity, Mission Street Capital, to help small businesses get the financing they need to grow. Kabbage also announced in May that it was teaming up with the BTEA (Building Trades Employers’ Association) in a strategic alliance to help women and minority-owned business enterprise contractors to secure funding for their projects.
With $2.5 billion in funding, Kabbage includes SoftBank Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and BlueRun Ventures among its investors. The company was founded in 2009.
Bazaarvoice, a startup that leverages product reviews and user-generated content (UGC) to help banks and retailers find and reach consumers, marked its fifth acquisition this week with the purchase of Influenster. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
The deal offers Bazaarvoice access to the six million community members on Influenster’s product discovery and reviews platform. Combined, these members have written more than 38 million product reviews and create more than 50,000 pieces of content on a daily basis. This network, coupled with Bazaarvoice’s own database of 6,000+ global brand and retailer websites, will offer brands a one-stop shop where they can build customer relationships, create product reviews and UGC strategy, and scale word-of-mouth marketing.
Offering insight into the acquisition decision, Joe Davis, CEO of Bazaarvoice, said, “Influenster’s product sampling and review generation offerings further strengthen our core product ratings and reviews solutions, and their hyper-targeting and gamification capabilities will allow us to better support our customers’ broader marketing initiatives.” He added, “We’re excited to partner with a company that shares our belief in the power of the everyday consumer.”
Before today’s acquisition, Influenster had raised $8 million since it launched nine years ago. Post-acquisition, the company’s founders, Aydin Acar and Elizabeth Scherle, will remain involved in “key functions” at Influenster. The companies have not disclosed the founders’ official roles or titles.
Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, which also has offices in Chicago, London, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, and Sydney, is now offering the new integrated platform in North America. The company will launch in Europe this fall and expand to more international locations in 2020.
Bazaarvoice’s other acquisitions include AddStructure in 2018, FeedMagnet in 2014, and Power Reviews and Longboard Media, both in 2012. The company demoed at FinovateSpring 2012.
Less than a month after securing a $37 million debt financing from BMO’s Technology and Innovation Banking Group, mobile application development platform Kony is back in the fintech headlines with even bigger news: the company has agreed to be acquired by digital banking technology giant and fellow Finovate alum Temenos for $559 million and an earn-out of $21 million.
The acquisition will bolster Temenos’ ability to compete in the digital front office solutions market, specifically strengthening the company’s Infinity offering – which currently has more than 500 banking customers and is widely recognized as a leading technology by industry analysts from Forrester and Gartner. Kony Chairman and CEO Thomas Hogan will serve as President of Temenos North America, post-acquisition, and will join the company’s Executive Committee.
“The power of the Temenos portfolio, combined with Kony’s digital banking applications and multi-experience development platform, will bring the industry’s most robust suite of applications for delivering service, value, and efficiencies from the digital edge to the modern core,” Hogan said. “The strength, scale, and commitment of Temenos will also help protect and extend our market-leading innovation.”
The acquisition is expected to be completed by Q4 2019, and is subject to standard regulatory approvals.
Calling Kony the #1 SaaS digital banking company in the U.S., Temenos CEO Max Chuard highlighted the synergies between Kony and his company. “We are acquiring a digital front office product that has already been successful in the U.S. market and is connected to most third party cores,” Chuard said. “We are also adding a significant amount of exciting functionality and ease of generating customer journeys and experiences that will accelerate Temenos Infinity, providing banks in both North America and internationally with an unrivaled customer experience and omnichannel banking product.”
A long-time Finovate alum, Kony first demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2010, and returned to the Finovate stage two years ago for FinovateFall 2017 to present its retail banking solution. Founded in 2007 and based in Austin, Texas, Kony launched its Conversational AI DevKit earlier this month to enable businesses to deploy new technologies to improve customer engagement. In May, Kony announced that its Quantum digital experience development platform would power the new CareLogic mobile app from Qualifacts, and unveiled a new partnership with multiple Finovate Best of Show winner and fellow alum, MX.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos demonstrated its Connect Mobile Banking solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, having presented its B2B Financial Marketplace at FinDEVr Silicon Valley – also in 2015. More than 3,000 banks in 150+ countries – including 41 of the top 50 banks – rely on Temenos’ banking technology to process the daily transactions and interactions of more than 500 million banking customers.
Kony is the second major acquisition by Temenos this year. In July, the company announced its purchase of explainable AI innovator Logical Glue and plans to integrate the company’s machine-learning-as-a-service technology into its cloud-native banking solution. Aside from acquisitions, Temenos has been on an energetic partner-making pace, working with IIG Bank, who agreed to use the company’s Infinity digital front office platform earlier this month; as well as teaming up with FIs like Israeli bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, New Zealand’s TSB Bank, and Pakistan’s Bank of Khyber.
If you try to access Hip Pocket’s website today, you’ll be redirected to this site: htmobileapps.com/products/hippocket/. That’s because mortgage rate comparison site Hip Pocket has officially been acquired by HT Mobile Apps (HTMA).
Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Hip Pocket is a six-year-old fintech that aims to help consumers compare mortgage, auto loans, and retirement products on their bank’s website. The solution also gives banks a personalized way to engage their clients.
Founded by Mark Zmarzly in 2013, the company has raised over $250,000 across three rounds of funding. At FinovateSpring 2015, Hip Pocket demoed its mortgage comparison site. Two years later, the company graduated from Point of Light accelerator and that same year the company spun out Hip Money, a savings app that specifically targets millennials.
Kathleen Craig, Founder and CEO of HTMA said, “Hip Pocket is a great complement to our range of products. Each of our products empower customers to grow their knowledge of personal finances while also helping financial institutions provide better digital offerings and develop more meaningful relationships with their customers. We are excited to acquire this innovative technology.”
“Kathleen and I have known each other for years and always looked for ways to help each other’s companies,” said Zmarzly. “As we talked more, it became obvious that we could raise the level of impact for banks and customers by working together.”
The acquiring party, HTMA, is a Michigan-based fintech that offers a suite of solutions for banks and credit unions. The company also offers Plinqit, a savings management app; as well as Banker Jr. and Member Jr., apps that teach financial literacy to young clients.
This deal comes at a time when merger and acquisition activity is booming within fintech. So far this year, Finovate alums have inked 32 M&A deals, including the mega-merger announced today between Kony and Temenos. We laid out why all of this M&A is good for fintech in a blog post published this June.
