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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
It’s been nearly a year since we celebrated the innovators crowned Best of Show winners at FinovateSpring 2024. As we gear up for our upcoming FinovateSpring 2025 event in sunny San Diego, taking place May 7 through 9, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the impressive achievements of last year’s standout demo companies. These fintechs have continued their momentum from FinovateSpring by making waves in the fintech industry.
Business Insider listed Cascading AI as one of 15 Most Promising AI-Powered Fintech Startups to Watch in 2025.
Gartner identifies Casca as a key vendor for GenAI in lending.
Prosperity Now announces Lukas Haffer, CEO and Co-founder of Casca, as second place award winner of the RISE Challenge Award for its solution to improve loan assistance and identification.
Cascading AI featured in AI in Business Lending Report fro Datos Insights.
Finopotamus features how Remynt rethinks debt collection.
Fox 26 interviews Remynt Founder and CEO Gwyneth Borden on the state of debt in Texas.
Badcredit.org highlights how Remynt brings empathy to collection practices.
FinovateSpring 2025 kicks off May 7 through 9 in San Diego, California. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more about our emerging speaker lineup, demoing companies, and how to plan your visit to Finovate’s first conference in SoCal!
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 9 and 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Bud Financial
Bud Financial is a transaction intelligence platform transforming raw financial data into rich actionable insights with added customer context and readable outputs for LLMs.
Features
Link: Connect consumer debt accounts with a phone number
Guide: Provide the best next action to improve financial outcomes
Act: Money-saving actions taken in-app by customers
Who’s it for?
Banks and financial institutions
Eisen
Eisen offers account offboarding solutions for financial institutions, streamlining compliance with regulatory outreach, disbursement, and escheatment requirements.
Features
Save time on a complex process
Stop losing customers
Get proactive to reactivate inactives
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions.
Fin3 Technologies
Fin3 Technologies is the modern payment solution to physical checks. Fin3 is a trailblazer in the digital payments space and launched a new payment method, Digital Drafts, based on changes to payment law, specifically UCC 12.
Features
Fin3 Digital Drafts:
Replaces physical checks
Offers all the legal benefits of physical checks but is 100% digital
Integrates with core banking software
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, insurance companies, SMBs, and others using physical checks.
ID-Pal
ID-Pal uses 100% AI-powered technology for real-time identity verification and OFAC screening, ensuring seamless customer onboarding, compliance, and zero access to customer data.
Features
Provides built-in AI document fraud detection
Delivers global coverage and streamlined OFAC compliance
Offers seamless integration options and fully customizable
Who’s it for?
Banks, neobanks, community banks, credit unions, payments providers, insurance companies, asset management companies, and financial institutions.
ModernFi
ModernFi helps banks and credit unions grow, retain, and manage their deposits through the ModernFi Deposit Network by enabling extended federal deposit insurance.
Features
Delivers first fully integrated and API-driven deposit network available to banks and credit unions
Offers first and only credit union focused deposit network
Provides powerful digital experience for depositors
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions.
MoneyKit
MoneyKit is a superaggregator, a universal API that intelligently aggregates data from multiple sources, maximizing institution coverage, connection success rates, and connection stability over time.
Features
Supports data from Akoya, Finicity, MX, Plaid, and Yodlee
Offers intelligent routing, data standardization, and enrichment across providers
Provides SDKs for the simplest integration of all time
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, community banks, scaled fintechs, wealth management groups, payment providers, and IDV.
QuickFi
QuickFi is the first and only embedded finance platform in the market for secured commercial equipment lending.
Features
Offers 100% digital, end-to-end borrower self-service, with 24/7 access
Automates credit, contract structuring, business verification, and compliance
Completes transactions in minutes vs. days or weeks
Who’s it for?
Banks, equipment manufacturers, and equipment distributors.
The demos are done. The votes have been counted. And the people have spoken. After two days of live fintech demos here at FinovateSpring 2024, we are proud to introduce the winners of Best of Show.
Bloom Credit for its technology that helps banks and credit unions offer a deposit retention and credit building tool to their client base.
Cascading AI for its platform that improves efficiency in banks by 30x by automating rote tasks, enabling banks to leverage that step-change in efficiency to grow their top and bottom lines.
Kobalt Labs for its solution that helps fintechs and financial institutions accelerate and strengthen their third-party diligence, leading to faster and safer paths to revenue-generating partnerships and operational efficiency that doesn’t increase headcount.
QuickFi for its technology that enables banks and manufacturers to give their business customers a fully digital, self-service finance experience that’s fast, intuitive, and consistent with how modern business borrowers prefer to do business.
Remynt for its platform that helps creditors achieve higher recoveries and recapture defaulted consumers as customers when their financial position improves.
SAVVI AI for its solution that helps financial services companies step into the age of AI, with faster, more accurate forecasting, without changing their workflow or processes and using their existing teams.
A heartfelt thanks to all of our demoing companies for sharing their latest fintech innovations with our FinovateSpring audience. Be sure to check out the Finovate Podcast featuring Greg Palmer in the weeks to come as he interviews FinovateSpring 2024’s Best of Show winners.
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2024 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 21 and 22. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Deeployalty
Deeployalty digitalizes paper receipts and plastic loyalty cards by integrating bank processing on one side and merchant CRMs on the other.
Features
Helps transition from paper receipts to digital receipts
Adds seamless loyalty features to banking applications
Provides an endless source of data for ML and scoring systems
Who’s it for?
Banks and retailers.
Instarails
Instarails is an intelligent, decentralized payout network that makes cross-border payments instant, inexpensive, and inclusive for all.
Features
Provides one connection to the world’s disparate real-time payment systems
Uses a decentralized network to eliminate fraud and disputes
Delivers one platform for inclusive payments in 50+ fiat currencies
Who’s it for?
Banks, remittance companies, mobile apps, e-commerce marketplaces, payment service providers, and enterprise businesses with offshore employees, gig workers, suppliers, and vendors.
QuickFi
QuickFi is the first and only embedded finance platform in the market for secured commercial equipment lending.
Features
Embeds easily into lender or manufacturer’s website
Offers 100% digital end-to-end borrower self-service, with 24/7 access
Provides automated credit, contract structuring, business verification, and compliance
Who’s it for?
Banks, equipment manufacturers, and equipment distributors.
Sherpas
Sherpas is a generative finance platform for wealth management that optimizes operations, personalizes advice at scale, and puts client engagement on autopilot through their AI model, Nima.
Features
Extracts data straight from documents
Provides information about products, funds, and client performance
Analyzes investments, and diagnoses and secures proposals
Skyflow recently released the Skyflow LLM Data Privacy Vault, which allows financial service organizations to leverage the power of LLMs, such as GPT, while maintaining privacy and security.
Features
Utilizes LLM while maintaining privacy and security
Isolates, protects, and governs sensitive data
Improves customer experience through new technologies while protecting sensitive data
Who’s it for?
Anyone who collects sensitive data such as PII, PCI, and PHI.
The stage is not the only place where Finovate celebrates the accomplishments of Black and African-American fintech and financial services professionals.
Since inception, Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast have showcased Black and African-American innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in the fintech and financial services space.
As part of our continued commemoration of Black and African-American History Month, today we highlight those conversations. Click the image to access the interview.
Nneka Ukpai – Better
Nate Gibbons – QuickFi
Jacqueline Baker – Author, The Unexpected Leader
Joseph Akintolayo – Deposits
Ariam Sium – FinGoal
William Crowder – Aperture Venture Capital
Sesie Bonsi – Bleu
Sharon Kimathi – Fintech Futures
Adrienne Harris – Superintendent NYS Department of Financial Services
To kick off Finovate’s commemoration of Black/African-American History Month this year, we’re highlighting some of the Black and African-American fintech professionals who represented their companies and their fintech innovations at our Finovate conferences in 2023.
Andre Llewellyn – Marketing Consultant/Advisory Board Member with AI Squared
Along with company CTO Michelle Bonat, Andre Llewellyn helped demonstrated the new Generative AI-based features on AI Squared’s platform at FinovateFall last year.
The company’s technology enables financial services companies to leverage Generative AI – and their own data – to maximize their enterprise assets.
A marketing consultant and AI Squared Advisory Board member, Llewellyn is a marketing veteran whose insights helped fuel new product and brand launches for Procter & Gamble, Instagram, Hashflow, and Candy Digital. He is a graduate of the NYU Stern School of Business.
Michael Duncan’s Bankjoy made its first Finovate appearance in 2016.
The company, which returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 and 2023 for FinovateFall, helps community banks and credit unions access modern banking technology. Bankjoy’s solutions help FIs better target specific market niches and deliver superior digital banking experiences.
Duncan (CEO) co-founded Bankjoy in 2015. Headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, Bankjoy has more than 60 clients, more than 120 integrations, and serves more than 1 million customers and members of banks and credit unions. This week, the company announced a new partner – Oregon State Credit Union – that will deploy Bankjoy’s online account opening and loan application.
Mountain View, California-based DataVisor made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2023.
Solutions Engineer Ryan Nichols (shown) joined company CRO Kevin McWey on stage as they demoed DataVisor’s Fraud & Risk Platform. The company’s solution supports the entire fraud workflow in a self-service solution that is single and flexible.
A software developer and solutions architect with experience at firms like CenturyLink and Internet publisher Giant Oak, Nichols joined DataVisor in 2021. As of the spring of 2023, he is both a Cryptocurrency Tracing Certified Examiner (CTCE) and a Certified Cryptocurrency Risk Specialist (CCRS).
Nate Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer with QuickFi
Nate Gibbons, QuickFi’s Chief Experience Officer, is no stranger to Finovate audience – nor to the Finovate Best of Show awards.
The company, an innovator in embedded financing for business equipment, has won Best of Show on two occasions: FinovateSpring 2022 and 2023. And Gibbons was part of the winning team both times (along with colleague Jillian Munson, VP of Process & Automation with QuickFi).
An alum of the University of Rochester Simon Business School, Gibbons is also a Certified Lease and Finance Professional (CLFP). Previous to his tenure at QuickFi, he was Project Manager and subsequently Vice President at First American Equipment Finance.
The company is an Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion firm that consists of The Urban Labs (services) and Lexicon (products). The Lazu Group made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring, demoing its CULTURL Heritage Calendar that offers “content, ideas, and resources for creating timely communication to promote empathy and curiosity and encourage cross-cultural dialogue.”
Lazu is a speaker, a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an author. Her book, From Intention to Impact: A Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, was published this year. Lazu is also a former banking professional, having worked as EVP and Chief Experience and Culture Officer for Berkshire Bank in Boston.
ModernTax founder and CEO Matthew Parker introduced his company to Finovate audiences last year at FinovateSpring. ModernTax is a data company that makes tax and financial data on non-public entities more accessible. The company has created a verification platform that includes more than seven million businesses, and ModernTax has validated tax records for “hundreds of thousands” of them.
Before launching ModernTax, Parker was co-founder and CEO of Rapidly.co, a SaaS platform that connects accountants, enrolled agents, and tax professionals to their clients online. We caught up with him last fall to talk about the founding of ModernTax and what it means to have a more transparent financial ecosystem.
FinGoal first introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateFall in 2021. But it was the company’s return to the Finovate stage the following spring that earned the Colorado-based fintech its first Best of Show award.
Led by Ariam Sium, VP of Product (shown) and Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst, FinGoal’s demo of its Aggregator Switch Kit showed how developers can readily transition from their current data aggregator to access the most enriched and reliable data available.
Finovate VP and host of the Finovate podcast Greg Palmer sat down with Sium in the wake of FinGoal’s Best of Show win last year. Check out their conversation from last summer.
AI Squared made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023. The company, founded in 2019 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., specializes in helping companies integrate AI and machine learning functionality into any web-based application. Leading the company’s demo was founder and CEO Benjamin Harvey.
With a Master’s degree and a Doctor of Science in Computer Science – as well as years spent as both a Research and Assistant Professor – Harvey brings a wealth of academic experience to the challenge of entrepreneurship and innovation in the fintech space.
We discussed this, and other aspects of his background and goals, in a Finovate blog interview back in August of last year.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi’s latest e-commerce technology allows business borrowers to shop and consummate financing for business equipment – all within minutes, instead of days or weeks.
Features
Embeds easily into lender or manufacturer’s website
Offers 100% digital, borrower self-service, and accessible 24/7
Provides automated credit, contract structuring, and business verification
Why it’s great
With this latest technology, banks and manufacturers can now offer a combined online shopping and financing experience that is 100% digital, fully self-service, and able to be completed in minutes.
Presenters
Nate Gibbons, CXO Gibbons oversees QuickFi’s customer experience strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements to the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, VP, Process & Automation Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. She develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
From digital transformation and payments to customer experience and the future of finance, the Finovate Podcast is a great way to hear from some of the most innovative talents in fintech.
Finovate VP Greg Palmer talks with Nate Gibbons of QuickFi on reimagining business financing and successfully managing rapid growth. Demo video.
Greg Palmer sits down with Tom Baran of 9Spokes on open banking and personalization in the SMB space. Demo video.
Greg Palmer interviews Jens Hinrichson and Robert MacDonald of 1Kosmos on the future of password-optional authentication. Demo video.
Greg Palmer talks with Deepak Jain of Wink on the future of biometric payments. Demo video.
Greg Palmer chats with Maya Mikhailov of SAVVI AI on on no-code AI solutions you can implement right now. Demo video.
There’s still one more day to enjoy FinovateSpring. But as far as the live demo portion of our program is concerned, the Best of Show celebrations have begun. With that in mind, please join us in congratulating the winners of Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2023.
1Kosmos for its technology that automates user onboarding for workers and customers, protecting against stolen and synthetic identities while eliminating ATO and fraud. Video.
9Spokes for its technology that unlocks the potential of open data, giving financial institutions a powerful set of tools to engage business customers. Video.
Flybits for its personalization platform that enables financial institutions to deliver best-in-class personalized digital banking experiences. Video.
QuickFi for its 100% digital, self-service equipment financing platform that enables business equipment financing in minutes. Video.
SAVVI AI for its technology that helps any FinCo team build and deploy AI apps in minutes. No data scientists, pre-existing data, or custom infrastructure required. Video.
Wink for its biometric payments and identity platform that enables users to say goodbye to passwords and fraud – and say hello to secure and simple authentication. Video.
On behalf of the entire Finovate team, we want to thank all of our demoing companies, our partners, and our sponsors. We also want to express our gratitude toward our attendees in the fintech and financial services industry who bring so much positive energy to our events. We look forward to seeing you again next year right here in San Francisco for FinovateSpring 2024!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their six favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2023 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi’s latest e-commerce technology allows business borrowers to shop and consummate financing for business equipment – all within minutes, instead of days or weeks.
Features
Easily embeds into lender or manufacturer’s website
100% digital, borrower self-service, and accessible 24/7
Automated credit, contract structuring, and business verification
Why it’s great
With this latest technology, banks and manufacturers can now offer a combined online shopping and financing experience that is 100% digital, fully self-service, and able to be completed in minutes.
Presenters
Nate Gibbons, CXO Gibbons oversees QuickFi’s customer experience strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements to the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, VP, Process & Automation Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. She develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
For a second year in a row, Finovate is commemorating Black History Month by showcasing those Black and African-American founders and executives who demoed their company’s fintech innovations on the Finovate stage in 2022.
Ariam Sium – VP of Product with FinGoal
Sium not only leads Product at FinGoal, the self-described “Listener. Thinker. Doer” also led FinGoal to a Best of Show award at FinovateSpring last year. In her role at FinGoal, Sium said that she uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly changing world of fintech.
FinGoal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall in September. The Boulder, Colorado-based company offers an insights platform that helps financial institutions better understand their customers.
Joseph Akintolayo – CEO and Founder of Deposits
Akintolayo is a “builder of ethical products that solve complex problems in fintech, insurtech, and social enterprise.” As CEO and founder of Deposits, Akintolayo heads a startup that offers banks, brands, and communities a plug and play solution to deliver financial services such as payments and lending, without requiring coding experience.
Deposits made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September. The Dallas, Texas-based company was founded in 2021.
Left to right: Joseph Akintolayo and Samuel Ailemen of Deposits
Samuel Ailemen – Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits
As Director of Mobile and Identity at Deposits, Ailemen helped lead the company’s demo at FinovateFall 2022. A fraud prevention expert who is “building cool stuff everywhere”, Ailemen leverages his talent as “a software engineer who loves research” to solve real-world problems using new technologies.
Nathan Gibbons – Chief Experience Officer at QuickFi
Gibbons oversees the customer experience at QuickFi, a company that provides “nearly instant,” self-service 24/7 term financing to business equipment buyers. Demoing the company’s technology at FinovateFall last year, Gibbons and colleague Jillian Munson earned QuickFi its first Finovate Best of Show award.
A C-suite executive with QuickFi since 2018, Gibbons previously spent more than 11 years as Project Manager and later Vice President with First American Equipment Finance. QuickFi was launched by founders of First American Equipment Finance in 2018.
Michael Duncan – CEO and Founder of Bankjoy
Founder and CEO of Bankjoy, Duncan demoed his company’s Business Banking Platform at FinovateFall 2022. The company he launched in 2015 offers a range of modern banking technology solutions, including mobile and online banking, as well as a banking API.
Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan spent more than four years as a Programmer/Analyst and later Software Development Manager at Michigan First Credit Union.
Michael Broughton – CEO and Co-founder of Altro
Broughton co-founded and is CEO of Altro, a solution that helps consumers build credit through non-traditional recurring payment processes such as rent and even monthly subscriptions to services like Netflix. Altro’s app is free-to-use, and helps increase financial literacy while boosting existing credit and helping stabilize credit histories. The company made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring.
Broughton is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for the USC Credit Union (since 2017), and was both a Scout at Sequoia Capital and a Thiel Fellow at The Thiel Foundation.
Christen Wright – Head of Product at Spave
As Head of Product at Spave, Wright was part of the three-person demo team that won Best of Show at the company’s Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring. Spave is a financial wholeness solution that enables users to easily save and donate as they purchase products and services. The Spave app provides purchase tracking and analysis, goal setting, group giving, and more.
Wright has a diverse background, having served in senior management roles at AT&T and Delta Air Lines. A member of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a mentoring and empowerment organization for African American youth, Wright is a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, where he earned an MBA.
Anthony Heckman – as Director of Sales at unitQ
Heckman was part of the founding team at unitQ, a company that turns customer insights into data-driven decisions for firms ranging from Chime to fellow Finovate alum Klarna. At FinovateSpring 2022, Heckman led the company’s live demo of its unitQ monitor, which serves as a centralized, searchable, repository for customer feedback.
Heckman founded TWC Advisors in October of last year. The firm specializes in providing go-to-market and sales support to early-stage, high-growth, VC-backed startups.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
QuickFi® allows business borrowers to obtain low, fixed-rate business equipment term-loans in minutes, instead of days or weeks. The borrower completes the loan process on a mobile device, 24/7/365.
Features
Includes flexible integrations for global manufacturers, serving direct, dealer & ecommerce sales channels
Uses disclosed, fixed interest rates on borrower-friendly terms, with no hidden fees or costs
Available 24/7
Why it’s great
The QuickFi® platform dramatically improves the business borrower experience by enabling self-service, borrower-friendly, digital financing 24/7/365.
Presenters
Nathan Gibbons, Chief Experience Officer Gibbons is CXO of QuickFi and oversees the platform’s customer experience strategy, leveraging automation and technology to enable dramatic improvements in the borrower experience. LinkedIn
Jillian Munson, Technology Project Manager Munson leads core technology projects at QuickFi. Munson develops seamless user experiences for both internal and external business processes. LinkedIn
