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Finovate Global Canada: Mortgagetech, Real-Time Payments, and Top Investment Trends

Finovate Global Canada: Mortgagetech, Real-Time Payments, and Top Investment Trends
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, NCR Corporation, Ripple

This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases recent fintech news from Canada.

Royal Bank of Canada acquires mortgagetech Pinch Financial

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has acquired Toronto-based mortgagetech Pinch Financial. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the move is designed to accelerate the decisioning process for mortgage borrowers throughout the country.

“This acquisition helps us deliver on our commitment to bring the best solutions to clients on their path to home ownership,” RBC SVP of Home Equity Financing Janet Boyle said in a statement. “Pinch’s technology will help us accelerate our digital roadmap to deliver a quicker, more streamlined mortgage experience for Canadians.”

Founded in 2016, Pinch Financial offers banks, lenders, and other financial services providers a platform that allows them to verify data and automate mortgage applications. The company’s technology verifies identity, income, assets, liabilities, source of the down payment, and creditworthiness to establish whether a borrower meets the requirements—from TDS and FICO to LTV and net worth—for rate and underwriting eligibility.

RBC already plays a major role in Canada’s mortgage market. The acquisition of Pinch Financial will help the bank serve customers who prefer to apply for home loans online instead of in-person at a branch.

“We started Pinch to make mortgages more relevant and familiar for digital-first consumers—making the qualification process faster, simpler, and more transparent for borrowers,” Pinch Financial CEO Andrew Wells said. “This acquisition gives us the opportunity to bring our technology to more Canadians while being part of a team that shares our vision for innovation in financial services.”

Canada’s largest bank by market capitalization and assets—and one of the largest banks in the world—RBC serves more than 19 million clients in Canada, the US, and 27 other countries. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, and boasting more than 101,000 employees, RBC reported total assets of $1.9 trillion CAD as of October 31, 2025. Dave McKay is President and CEO.

Wealthsimple becomes first Canadian fintech to join SWIFT

Canadian fintech Wealthsimple has secured a big “first” and a big “second” this week. The firm became the first Canadian fintech and the second non-bank fintech in the world to become a member of the SWIFT global financial messaging network. The company is currently completing final technical integration and security certification ahead of a full launch with clients expected later this spring.

“Many Canadians rely on international wire transfers, and yet to date, the experience has been clunky and expensive. We want to fix that,” Wealthsimple VP of Payment Strategy Hanna Zaidi said. “Our SWIFT membership is going to unlock faster, simpler, and more transparent international money transfers for the more than three million Canadians who trust Wealthsimple.”

SWIFT’s international messaging network serves 11,000 financial institutions around the world, facilitating trillions of dollars in payment volume. SWIFT makes the sending and receiving of international money transfers more seamless and efficient, while also providing end-to-end tracking visibility with real-time status updates.

Wealthsimple’s SWIFT membership is part of the company’s overall strategy to lower costs and boost efficiency for money movement in Canada. Wealthsimple also announced that it will be an early adopter of the country’s pending Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system, making its clients among the first to benefit from instant money movement between institutions.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Wealthsimple offers a wide range of financial products and services, including managed investing, do-it-yourself trading, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending, and saving. The company serves more than three million Canadians and has more than $100 billion in assets under administration. Co-founder Michael Katchen is CEO.

KPMG: Canada fintech investment “moderated” in 2025

The bad news is that investment in Canadian fintech slowed in 2025. The good news is that this moderating pace comes on the heels of record highs notched in 2024.

KPMG International recently unveiled its Pulse of Fintech H2’25 and FY25 report. The document depicts a fintech investment landscape in Canada that has returned to more historic levels, with “sustained interest in later-stage companies, platform acquisitions, and strategically important fintech subsectors such as artificial intelligence and digital assets.”

Specifically, the comparison is $2.4 billion across 113 deals in 2025 versus $9.9 billion across 161 deals in 2024. The report notes that much of the deal value in 2024 came from two sizable transactions: Nuvei’s $6.3 billion public-to-private buyout and Plusgrade’s $1 billion private equity deal. In 2025, the two largest investments in Canadian fintech were the $898 million private equity buyout of Converge Technology Solutions and Wealthsimple’s $536 million equity raise.

The report notes that investment activity in the sector picked up in the second half of 2025, especially with regard to gains in average deal value. Dubie Cunningham, a partner in KPMG Canada’s Banking and Capital Markets Practice specializing in fintech, indicated that she believed the strength in the second half of 2025 augured well for strength in 2026. “The investment appetite for Canadian fintechs will continue to grow in 2026, as investors prioritize quality, scale, and strategic fit, signaling a market that is maturing and aligning more closely with long-term value creation,” Cunningham said.

Read the full KPMG report for much more.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based digital banking platform Zindigi unveiled what it is billing as the country’s first “fintech credit card.”
  • Indian fintech Cred secured approval from the country’s central bank to operate as a payment aggregator.
  • IBS Intelligence looked at how fintech innovation in India is evolving from transaction rails to financial data rails.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • Cross-border payments platform Neema forged a partnership with China’s Alipay.
  • NCR Voyix agreed to sell its bank technology business in Japan to NTT Data.
  • An analysis of the Australian fintech sector by Deloitte Access Economics and FinTech Australia reported that the sector could grow to $71 billion in value by 2035.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Kenya and Rwanda inked an agreement that could enable digital payments companies licensed in one country to operate in the other.
  • South African fintech PayInc and First Capital Bank Botswana teamed up to launch instant cross-border payments.
  • The Fintech Times analyzed the fintech ecosystem of West African country, Burkina Faso.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Part of Estonia’s Iute Group, IuteBank has begun operating as a regulated bank in Ukraine.
  • Lithuanian fintech PAYSTRAX announced an major expansion to its team, adding up to 150 new specialists.
  • Czech fintech Flowpay acquired Berlin, Germany-based SME financing firm Tapline.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Israel-based fintech Datarails launched a new solution to help companies reduce contract and subscription waste.
  • Kaspersky and UAE fintech Codebase teamed up to enhance digital banking security.
  • Moroccan fintech WafR secured $4 million in seed funding in a round co-led by LoftyInc Capital.

Photo by Guillaume Jaillet on Unsplash

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2026: The Year Everyone Became a Bank

2026: The Year Everyone Became a Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: David's column, Nubank, PayPal, Revolut, Ripple

So when did everyone want to be a bank?

In 2026, some of the most innovative companies in fintech are expected to obtain banking charters in the US. From bunq to Zerohash, challenger banks and crypto infrastructure companies alike have determined that the next best step for their businesses is a license to offer full banking services to customers in the United States.

What’s interesting about the companies that are seeking US banking charters now is how they tend to fall into two broad camps: the neobank challengers and the crypto-insurgents. How do these two camps see the opportunity in the US and does either camp have an advantage in terms of the likelihood of success?

The challengers: From neobank to “real bank”

Many of the fintechs currently seeking US bank charters are some of the best known names in the industry. These include the UK’s Revolut, the EU’s bunq, Brazil’s Nubank—even the US’s PayPal, which sees a bank charter as a way to expand its operations in the States.

“Securing capital remains a significant hurdle for small businesses striving to grow and scale,” former PayPal CEO and President Alex Chriss said in December. “Establishing PayPal Bank will strengthen our business and improve our efficiency, enabling us to better support small business growth and economic opportunities across the US.”

For international firms, expanding operations is a major, though not the only, reason for coming to America. In the case of Nubank, which secured conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in January, the goal is more than just expanding operations. As David Vélez, founder and CEO of Nu Holdings explained, “It’s an opportunity to prove our thesis that a digital-first, customer-centric model is the future of financial services globally.” While insisting that the company’s focus would remain on Latin America, Vélez noted “This step allows us to build the next generation of banking in the United States.”

Revolut also cited bringing a proven customer experience to the US as part of its rationale when it announced that it had applied to the OCC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a US national bank charter. “Filing for a national bank charter is a major milestone toward our vision of building the world’s first truly global banking platform,” Revolut Co-Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said. “This charter will give us the direct control needed to innovate faster and deliver the Revolut experience to millions more Americans as we move toward our goal of 100 million customers.”

The cryptos: On the road to regulatory maturity

The other major category of aspirants for US bank charters is the crypto community. This includes stablecoin issuers like Circle as well as cryptocurrency exchange companies like Kraken. Circle secured conditional approval from the OCC in December to establish a national trust bank, named First National Digital Currency Bank. The company’s statement announcing the approval shed light on the reason why crypto companies like Circle are seeking bank licenses in the US.

“As a public company, we’re focused on operating under rigorous regulatory oversight and building the infrastructure that allows digital dollars like USDC to become a core part of global finance,” Circle CEO, Co-Founder, and Chairman Jeremy Allaire said. “This important milestone will give the world’s leading institutions greater clarity and confidence to build on Circle’s platform as stablecoins and blockchain technology move rapidly into the mainstream.”

For businesses in this space, the rewards of a US bank charter go beyond the ability to market products and services to a new market—even one as large as the US. For these firms, the chance to build and secure institutional credibility via a US banking license is an opportunity that cannot be missed. Combined with benefits such as direct access to payment rails, reserve backing, digital asset custody, and tokenization, it is little surprise that some of the most innovative companies in DeFi are seeking out US banking licenses. Speaking on behalf of Ripple, which secured conditional approval to establish a national trust bank in December, CEO Brad Garlinghouse emphasized the importance of a bank charter for regulatory compliance and public trust.

“The conditional approval of our trust bank charter represents a massive step forward—setting the highest standard for stablecoin compliance with both federal and state oversight,” Garlinghouse said. “While anti-innovation bank lobbyists may claim otherwise, we are ensuring RLUSD is the most transparent and responsibly managed stablecoin in the market today.”

Risk, opportunity, and cutting out the middleman

However different the reasons may be for neobanks and digital asset companies seeking out US banking licenses right now, there is an interesting commonality between the two camps. In both instances, firms are seeking ways to transition away from the “intermediary model” in which fintechs rely on sponsoring banks. There are myriad reasons why this decade-long paradigm has endured and why it is proving inadequate for many firms, such as growing awareness of risk (including both financial institution and third-party risk), as well as new opportunities (such as the OCC’s 2021 national bank trust policy shift).

But the general takeaway is that some of the most innovative fintechs in our industry are concluding that rather than try to “unbundle” or partner with a bank, it might now be the best strategy to just become one.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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Ripple Payments Now Handles More of the Payments Lifecycle

Ripple Payments Now Handles More of the Payments Lifecycle
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Ripple

Digital asset company Ripple is expanding its digital payments platform, Ripple Payments, to create a single, end-to-end platform that consolidates the payments stack.

The California-based company aims to speed up settlement and reduce friction with a full payments infrastructure platform that allows fintechs to operate in the onchain economy by supporting payments made on both fiat and onchain rails. Using the new platform, organizations can collect money, hold it, convert it from fiat to stablecoin and back, manage liquidity, and pay it out.

Bringing all of these capabilities into a single place allows fintechs to manage their entire payments operation. Instead of using one provider for wallets, another for custody, another for FX, and another for payouts, fintechs can now do all of this through Ripple Payments.

Prompting this change are two acquisitions made in 2025. In November of last year, Ripple acquired digital asset custody company Palisade for an undisclosed amount. In August, the company purchased stablecoin-powered global payments platform Rail for $200 million. The added capabilities offer the ability to provision named virtual accounts and wallets, automate collection flows, and exchange and settle funds into operational accounts. Overall, Ripple Payments has processed more than $100 billion in total volume, with Rail adding another $10 billion annually.

“For the global financial system to evolve, fintechs and financial institutions need infrastructure that treats digital assets with the same rigor as traditional finance,” said Ripple President Monica Long. “Success in this space requires enterprise-grade infrastructure, extensive licensing, and deep liquidity—capabilities few can match. Ripple has built the blueprint for blockchain-based enterprise solutions designed to operate at global scale for regulated finance.”

By adding these new capabilities, Ripple can now handle the entire payment lifecycle. The company is positioning itself as more of a regulated global payments infrastructure provider that supports both fiat and stablecoins instead of simply a crypto rails provider. This new role places Ripple in competition with traditional cross-border payment processors and infrastructure vendors such as SWIFT, Visa Direct, Mastercard Cross-Border Services, and large correspondent banking networks, as well as fintech infrastructure players like Stripe, Adyen, and Airwallex.

By combining custody, liquidity management, FX, and payout orchestration into a single platform that supports both fiat and stablecoins, Ripple is positioning itself as a direct challenger to well-established incumbents.

Founded under the name OpenCoin in 2012, Ripple debuted at FinovateSpring the following year. The company provides blockchain-based solutions across traditional and digital finance. Its solutions span global payments, custody, liquidity, prime brokerage, and treasury management tools for banks, fintechs, payment service providers, and crypto businesses.

Ripple offers a stablecoin, RLUSD, that is designed to be used for settlement, liquidity management, and digital dollar transactions within its platform. RLUSD has surpassed $1 billion in market cap since launching in December 2024. Ripple’s cryptocurrency, XRP, is often used as a bridge asset to move value between currencies in cross-border payments.

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț

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11 Finovate Alums Raised More than $1.4 Billion in Q4; More Than $3.3 Billion in 2025

11 Finovate Alums Raised More than $1.4 Billion in Q4; More Than $3.3 Billion in 2025
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: abacus, Avalara, Basis Theory, Feedzai, Funding, Kaaj AI, Kobalt Labs, MoEngage, Offset Labs, Qolo, Quarterly Funding, Ripple

Finovate alums raised more than $1.4 billion in the final three months of 2025. The funding total in the fourth quarter of the year is the best Q4 for alum funding in more than a decade. The historic Q4 also takes the annual total capital raised by Finovate alums to levels not seen since 2021.

As we learn more about the overall level of fintech funding in the fourth quarter and for the full year, it will be interesting to see if this impressive performance by Finovate alums reflects broader investment trends in the industry.

Previous Annual Comparisons

  • 2024: $553 million
  • 2023: $1.2 billion
  • 2022: $2.7 billion
  • 2021: $8.4 billion

A total of 46 Finovate alums reported funding in 2025, totaling more than $3.3 billion. This figure represents the largest fundraising year for Finovate alums since the blow-out year of 2021 in which more than $8 billion was raised.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q4 2024: More than $132 million raised by seven alums
  • Q4 2023: More than $307 million raised by 11 alums
  • Q4 2022: More than $380 million raised by 15 alums
  • Q4 2021: More than $1.2 billion raised by seven alums

The pattern of billion+plus Q4s arriving every other year continued in 2025. 11 Finovate alums reported raising more than $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter of this year. This includes one company’s investment (Qolo’s fundraising in October) for which the amount is unknown. The last time Finovate alums raised a comparable amount in funding in the fourth quarter was in 2014, when 26 alums raised more than $1.4 billion.

Top Quarterly Equity Investments

The top equity investments of the quarter were the $500 million secured by both Avalara and Ripple. Also among the top fundraisings of the quarter was the $280 million raised in two separate, back-to-back rounds by MoEngage.

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2025.

October: More than $108 million raised by four alums

November: More than $1.1 billion raised by five alums

December: More than $191 million raised by two alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the fourth quarter of 2025, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

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Ripple Raises $500 Million on $40 Billion Valuation

Ripple Raises $500 Million on $40 Billion Valuation
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Ripple
  • Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has secured $500 million in new funding at a valuation of $40 billion.
  • The funding comes at time of great activity for the San Francisco, California-based fintech, which has announced six acquisitions in the past two years and whose stablecoin, RLUSD, topped the $1 billion market capitalization mark this month.
  • As OpenCoin, Ripple made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2013.

We shared this news in yesterday’s Finovate weekly LinkedIn newsletter (subscribe if you haven’t). But we’re happy to share it with Finovate blog readers today. Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has raised $500 million in new funding, boosting the firm’s valuation to $40 billion. The funding follows the company’s recent $1 billion tender offer at the same valuation, and comes at a time of renewed interest in digital assets such as stablecoins and the growing importance of crypto services such as custody and trading.

“This investment reflects both Ripple’s incredible momentum and further validation of the market opportunity we’re aggressively pursuing by some of the most trusted financial institutions in the world,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said. “We started in 2012 with one use case—payments—and have expanded that success into custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury, leveraging digital assets like XRP. Today, Ripple stands as the partner for institutions looking to access crypto and blockchain.”

The investment was led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, affiliates of Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace. The fundraising comes as Ripple celebrates completing six acquisitions, including two valued at over $1 billion, in the past two years. The company, which first introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateSpring 2013 as OpenCoin, has also expanded into new markets in prime brokerage and treasury management, adding to its existing footprint across payment, custody, and stablecoins.

This year, Ripple acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Rail to enhance its Ripple Payments offering as a full-service cross-border platform that leverages Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD and XRP to make international fund transfers faster and more efficient for businesses. The acquisition of multi-asset prime brokerage firm Hidden Road in October—now integrated into Ripple’s Ripple Prime platform—enables Ripple to offer its institutional clients a range of financial services including trading, custody, and derivatives for both traditional and digital assets. The company’s purchase of Palisade, a digital asset wallet and custody firm, will bolster Ripple’s Ripple Custody offering. Ripple Custody provides banks and other financial institutions with safe and secure ways to store digital assets, stablecoins, and Real World Assets (RWA).

Just this month, RLUSD surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization. Reaching this milestone in less than a year after it was launched, RLUSD is now the 10th largest, US dollar-backed stablecoin. RLUSD is the primary stablecoin used by Ripple for payment flows, Ripple President Monica Long noted in an interview with CoinDesk, adding that Ripple has processed “nearly $100 billion in payments volume to date.” Also this month, Ripple announced that its digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities were now available to customers in the US.

“The launch of OTC spot execution capabilities complements our existing suite of OTC and cleared derivatives services in digital assets and positions us to provide US institutions with a comprehensive offering to suit their trading strategies and needs,” Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said.

Founded in 2012, Ripple is based in San Francisco, California.

Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash

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Ripple Acquires Palisade to Bolster Crypto Custody Capabilities

Ripple Acquires Palisade to Bolster Crypto Custody Capabilities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Ripple

Crypto solutions provider for businesses Ripple has announced its acquisition of digital asset wallet and custody company, Palisade. The move is designed to enhance Ripple’s custody capabilities—specifically, the company’s Ripple Custody offering—to better serve the needs of fintechs, corporates, and crypto-native companies. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Ripple Custody supports banks and other financial institutions looking for safe, secure ways to store digital assets, stablecoins, and Real World Assets (RWA). Palisade’s secure, fast, and scalable “wallet-as-a-service” technology will enable Ripple to serve a broader range of customers and use cases, especially those high-speed use cases for customers that require an out-of-the-box solution built for high-frequency transactions, on- and off-ramps, and payments.

Ripple Custody is currently being used by a number of tier-1 global institutions such as BBVA, DBS, and Societe Generale. The solution serves as a “vault” for institutional cryptocurrency holdings, supporting the management of multiple vaults and a complete view across assets and venues. Ripple Custody provides a tamper-proof audit trail and cryptographic approval process to ensure compliance.

“Secure digital asset custody unlocks the crypto economy and is the foundation that every blockchain-powered business stands on—that’s why it’s central to Ripple’s product strategy,” Ripple President Monica Long said. “Corporates are poised to drive the next massive wave of crypto adoption. Just as we’ve seen major banks go from observing to actively building in crypto, corporates are now entering the market, and they need trusted, licensed partners with out-of-the-box capabilities. The combination of Ripple’s bank-grade vault and Palisade’s fast, lightweight wallet makes Ripple Custody the end-to-end provider for every institutional need, from long-term storage to real-time global payments and treasury management.”

Palisade’s technology offers fast wallet provisioning, multi-chain support, and DeFi integration. The solution also features strong governance and security features, such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC) that divides wallet keys into key fractions or “shards,” and zero-trust architecture which mandates strict verification for all users and devices that are attempting to access the network. Per the acquisition, Palisade’s technology will also integrate directly into Ripple Payments, supporting use cases that require faster, more efficient responses. It will also provide the core infrastructure for subscription payments and collection capabilities.

“Joining Ripple marks a new chapter for Palisade,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page. “Our technology will become a cornerstone of Ripple’s next-generation wallet infrastructure, accelerating their Payments and Custody products while expanding market reach globally. This partnership combines our technology with Ripple’s enterprise network and scale, regulatory expertise, and established market presence.”

A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateSpring 2013 (as OpenCoin), Ripple today boasts a global payments network with more than 300 customers across 40+ countries and six continents. The company’s payments, custody, and stablecoin solutions enable banks and financial institutions to simply and securely integrate blockchain and digital assets into their operations while remaining compliant. With payments settlement in three to five seconds, and more than a million custody wallets in circulation, Ripple provides 90% international FX market coverage.

Ripple’s acquisition announcement comes just days after the fintech reported the launch of digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities for US customers via its Ripple Prime offering. The launch was made possible by Ripple’s acquisition of multi-asset prime brokerage, Hidden Road, earlier this year, and will enable Ripple’s US-based institutional clients to execute over-the-counter (OTC) spot transactions across a wide range of digital assets including XRP and RLUSD.

“The launch of OTC spot execution capabilities complements our existing suite of OTC and cleared derivatives services in digital assets and positions us to provide US institutions with a comprehensive offering to suit their trading strategies and needs,” Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said.

Founded in 2012, Ripple is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Brad Garlinghouse is CEO.

Photo by Pixabay

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Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums

Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Ripple, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India.

RBI pushes financial inclusion; launches digital currency sandbox

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra used the occasion of the 6th Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai to encourage technologies to emphasize financial inclusion as well as better trust and efficiency as they help build the future of the country’s financial ecosystem. Fintech will be able to participate by joining the sandbox directly or via their partner banks.

Malhotra credited Indian fintech for a range of innovations that have been the envy around the world. “India’s world-class digital public infrastructure, as symbolized by systems such as UPI, Aadhaar, and DigiLocker, has not only enhanced efficiency and service delivery, but also ensured that millions of Indians enjoy easy access to a wide range of financial services.”

UPI is India’s real-time payment system that enables instant fund transfer between bank accounts via mobile apps. UPI can be used with just a mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (VPA) and has enabled everything from peer-to-peer transfers to merchant payments. UPI processes more than 700 million transactions a day.

Aadhaar is the name of a biometric digital identity system that gives all residents a unique 12-digit identification. Aadhaar is the basis for digital KYC (Know Your Customer) processes and has use cases ranging from account opening and insurance enrollment in financial services to medical record access, government benefit disbursement, and more. DigiLocker is a cloud-based digital document storage platform that enables users to store and access official documents digitally. DigiLocker is estimated to have more than 465 million registered users.

In each case, the solution has been both a significant technological innovation and a way of bringing a wider range of financial services to a greater number of communities and businesses, and individuals.

Underscoring the compatibility between financial inclusion and technological innovation, Malhotra added, “serving the privileged will be a lucrative business, but companies must focus on serving the underserved sections of society. Build for inclusion. There may be higher profits to be made by deepening access to the haves and the privileged, but prioritize building systems to expand financial services to the unaccessed, the unreached, and the unserved segments of society.”

The RBI also made headlines with the launch of its digital currency sandbox. The initiative will enable fintech firms to build and test solutions using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of its ongoing pilot project. The RBI’s first retail e-rupee pilot (India’s central bank digital currency or CBDC) went live in December 2022, and currently has more than seven million users.

The announcement was made by Suvendu Pai, General Manager at the RBI. Pai said that the launch was designed to encourage innovation in digital payments and to grow the ecosystem for India’s CBDC.

“The CBDC retail sandbox will give innovators the space to experiment and build on top of the digital rupee,” Malhotra explained. “It will help create new use cases, improve customer experience, and add value to ongoing pilots.”

Meet Finovate’s Indian alums

Would you believe that outside of the US and the UK, the next largest group of Finovate readers are based in India?

As our previous story acknowledged, India is an under-recognized superpower when it comes not only to fintech innovation, but also when it comes to making sure that technological innovations are built to benefit as many people as possible.

Finovate has been happy to host a growing number of Indian fintechs at our conference both in the US and abroad. Our most recent event, FinovateFall 2025, featured a trio of India-based fintechs—MoneyPlanned, OPL, and Sequretek—on stage and a fourth, CloudBankin, in our Impact Zone. But these are only the most recently added alums. Here are some of the Indian firms that have demonstrated their latest innovations on the Finovate stage.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Google Payment Lithuania launched its bank account verification service.
  • Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) completed its acquisition of Berlin-based fintech lemon.markets.
  • Learn how the Latvian government is preparing to adopt the second edition of its national fintech development strategy.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco de Crédito del Perú, the largest bank in the country, has launched Criptococos, a digital asset-compatible banking platform, in partnership with BitGo.
  • Chilean HR tech firm Buk acquired fintech Bemmbo to provide financial services via the new Buk Finanzas offering.
  • Brazilian Buy Now Pay Later firm Pagaleve raised $30 million in Series A2 funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • Bank of Singapore unveiled a new agentic AI tool to automate components of the KYC process.
  • Binance Japan, a subsidiary of Binance, forged a digital assets alliance with financial services provider PayPay Corporation.
  • Singapore-based equity management platform Qapita raised $26 million in Series B funding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African AI-powered fintech Optasia announced plans to raise $375 million when it goes public on South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
  • Kenyan asset financing firm M-KOPA reported its first profit of $9.2 million in 2024. The startup experienced a $24.7 million loss in 2023.
  • Check out Greg Palmer’s Finovate Podcast interview featuring Bridgit Antwi, Head of Strategy and Planning at African payments company Flutterwave.

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fenergo, Fintech Rundown, PayPal, Ripple, TreviPay, Tuum

The UK is looking to regulate Buy Now, Pay Later lenders. Meanwhile in the US, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reducing fines on previous enforcement actions. It’s a tale of two very different regulatory trends depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on.

We’ve got the latest regtech news along with the rest of the top headlines in fintech right here in this week’s edition of the Fintech Rundown!

Payments

Ripple reports that Zand Bank and fintech platform Mamo have deployed its blockchain-enabled payments solution, the first UAE-based financial institutions to do so.

French fintech Next Generation chooses enterprise platform Fireblocks to power its payment ecosystem.

Global Payments unveils new POS command center for business operations, Genius.

PayPal launches its Complete Payments service in Singapore.

Albertsons Companies offers invoice-based payment for its business customers courtesy of its partnership with TreviPay.

AAA Life Insurance partners with payments network One Inc. to support digital payment processing.

Digital banking

Finovate Best of Show winner Tuum launches suite of Islamic Banking solutions to enable financial institutions to offer more Sharia-compliant banking products.

Fraud prevention

Money and safety app for families, Greenlight, introduces Family Shield to help caregivers protect seniors from financial fraud.

Identity verification and fraud prevention services provider AU10TIX launches continuous AML risk monitoring.

MRI Software integrates Nova Credit’s Income Navigator into its fraud prevention and application qualification solution.

DeFi / crypto

Non-custodial stablecoin wallet MiniPay is now available as a standalone application on iOS devices.

Investment / wealth management

U.S. Bank Global Fund Services turns to Fenergo to digitize and streamline its investor onboarding and service experience.

Regtech

Risk management company EverC launches its AI-powered risk assessment solution for marketplaces, Smart Scan.

Photo by Martin Damboldt

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Ripple Moves into Prime Brokerage with Hidden Road Acquisition

Ripple Moves into Prime Brokerage with Hidden Road Acquisition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Ripple
  • Ripple will acquire Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, making it the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker.
  • The acquisition expands Ripple’s offerings beyond payments into trading, custody, and lending services, providing financial institutions the infrastructure they need for crypto adoption.
  • Between recent regulatory shifts in the US and Hidden Road’s capabilities, Ripple is positioning itself to become a full-service financial hub as digital assets gain mainstream traction.

Blockchain and crypto solutions company Ripple announced plans to acquire multi-asset prime brokerage company Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. The deal will make Ripple the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker.

Hidden Road was founded in 2019 to offer financial institutions a one-stop-shop of services such as clearing, prime brokerage, and financing across foreign exchange (FX), digital assets, derivatives, swaps, and fixed income. The UK-based company clears $3 trillion annually across markets with more than 300 institutional customers. 

Hidden Road anticipates that being backed by Ripple will exponentially expand its capacity to service firms in its pipeline. “With new resources, licenses, and added risk capital, this deal will unlock significant growth in Hidden Road’s business, allowing us to increase capacity to our customer base, expand into new products, and service more markets and asset classes,” said Hidden Road Founder and CEO Marc Asch. “Together with Ripple, we’re bringing the same level of trust and reliability that institutional clients are accustomed to in traditional markets—designed and optimized for a digital world.”

For Ripple, buying Hidden Road will make it a major back-end infrastructure provider for big investors trading digital assets. The company will not just offer crypto payments, but also trading, borrowing, and custody services.

“We are at an inflection point for the next phase of digital asset adoption–the US market is effectively open for the first time due to the regulatory overhang of the former SEC coming to an end, and the market is maturing to address the needs of traditional finance,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. “With these tailwinds, we are continuing to pursue opportunities to massively transform the space, leveraging our position and the strengths of XRP to accelerate our business and enhance our current solutions and technology.”

There are a few reasons why this acquisition is a huge deal for both Ripple and decentralized finance. First, it will help Ripple move beyond payments into full-scale financial services. The company, which is best known for cross-border payments using XRP, will now be able to offer trading, custody, and lending, which is the essential “plumbing” that institutional investors rely on.

Second, Hidden Road gives Ripple the infrastructure that institutions need to trade crypto confidently. By bundling execution, clearing, custody, and credit services all together, hedge fund and asset managers will be more likely to move more funds into crypto.

Finally, the acquisition positions Ripple as a strong player as US markets shift toward a more friendly crypto stance. Last week, the SEC published its official statement on stablecoins, ruling that they are generally not considered securities as long as they are pegged to USD and aren’t used or marketed for investment purposes.

With all of these aspects combined, the timing of today’s acquisition is ideal. Hidden Road will help Ripple become a full-service financial hub for crypto just as institutions are starting to take digital assets seriously again. It’s also a reminder that the structure of the future of finance will not look like it does today. Instead, it will likely be built on blockchain and driven by AI.

Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery

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Finovate Global Israel: Talking Revenue Workforce Solutions with Stav Levi-Neumark of Alta

Finovate Global Israel: Talking Revenue Workforce Solutions with Stav Levi-Neumark of Alta
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Finovate Global, MasterCard, Ripple, VISA, Xero

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features an interview with Stav Levi-Neumark, CEO and Co-Founder of revenue workforce solutions provider Alta.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Israel, Alta leverages data and AI to help drive revenue growth at every level for businesses. The company’s AI Revenue Workforce agents ensure that everyone on the team is connected, aligned, and equipped with the data insights and AI automation they need to enable their businesses to scale efficiently and grow faster. Alta’s agents have helped produce a 3x increase in qualified leads, a 15% increase in win rates, and a 80% reduction in costs.

Our conversation with Levi-Neumark is also a part of Finovate’s and Finovate Global’s commemoration of Women’s History Month. Be sure to check out her thoughts on gender diversity, current opportunities for women in fintech, as well as her advice for female CEOs.

Can you tell us a little bit about Alta and the revenue workforce solutions business?

Stav Levi-Neumark: AI is impacting almost every industry now. But go-to-market and revenue teams across many vertical markets are struggling to fully harness AI for sustained growth. Choosing the right tools to enhance capabilities of salespeople while also automating relevant tasks is a real challenge.

Alta is an AI revenue workforce that is data-driven. It supports revenue teams, allowing each person to be like a 10x version of themselves.

Alta agents automate repetitive and mundane tasks that require limited human oversight, such as researching potential leads and conducting personalized outreach across multiple channels. The agents also provide actionable insights based on real-time data across all revenue functions. This streamlined workflow helps companies achieve improved revenue growth by working more efficiently, accelerating their sales cycle, and enabling humans to focus on relationship-building opportunities, strategic, and creative work.

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

Levi-Neumark: Alta has really diverse customers across virtually every business sector, and they range from SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. We’ve been able to ramp up the number of clients we have really quickly as well, adding almost 100 customers in less than six months.

Your latest solution—AI Revenue Workforce—leverages innovations in agentic AI. Can you talk about how this technology and new product empower go-to-market and revenue teams?

Levi-Neumark: Agentic AI has endless potential to dramatically improve efficiency and drive revenue growth. By leaving automated tasks to AI agents, human-led go-to-market and revenue teams can work smarter and faster, focusing their attention where it matters most: developing strategy, building relationships, closing deals, and increasing ROI through creative thought.

AI agents in Alta’s workforce include Katie, a Sales Development Representative (SDR), Luna, an AI RevOps agent, and Alex, an AI Calling agent. The workforce can integrate into more than 50 internal and external marketing, sales, and revenue systems that include CRMs, ERPs, payment, advertising, social media tools, and more.

Alta is a very young company, founded in 2023. There has been a lot of discussion about the current environment for tech startups. How would you characterize the climate for startups today?

Levi-Neumark: The founders who thrive will be those who can harness technological advancements while building businesses with solid foundations that can stand on their own, beyond the AI hype. Here’s the advice I typically share when talking with other tech founders:

  1. Success means your customers attribute significant revenue growth directly to your product. When they look at their business results and can clearly see your impact on their bottom line, that’s when you’ll know you’ve truly succeeded.
  2. Maintaining balanced, healthy growth is key. While it may be tempting to focus more attention on one specific area of your organization, it’s critical to ensure all departments grow at an equal pace.
  3. Be proactive rather than reactive to market shifts to position yourself ahead of certain trends. When deeply focused on product development and customer acquisition, it’s easy to miss emerging signals from the broader ecosystem.

Alta recently secured $7 million in seed funding. What does this investment mean for the company and what will it enable Alta to do?

Levi-Neumark: This funding solidifies Alta’s position as an industry leader in workforce intelligence automation. It will allow Alta to continue developing out-of-the-box solutions that redefine the relationship between AI and sales teams to unlock limitless revenue growth opportunities.

We plan to utilize the investment to expand into new markets, grow operations, scale R&D, and accelerate product development to meet increasing market demand from enterprise and mid-market customers. In fact, we are currently developing our newest AI agent, Greg, a sales assistant for account executives, to further bolster our workforce’s capabilities.

You are one of very few female CEOs in the enterprise AI space. Are there unique challenges to greater gender diversity in enterprise AI compared to other areas of technology, fintech, or financial services?

Levi-Neumark: I don’t feel there are unique challenges specific to the AI space compared to other tech sectors. The gender diversity issues we face in enterprise AI mirror what we see across technology, fintech, and financial services more broadly.

The fundamental challenges remain consistent: representation gaps, unconscious bias in hiring and promotion, and the need for more visible role models.

That said, I prefer to focus on the opportunity. AI is still a relatively young field, and at the end of the day, our success is what will define us. I hope more female founders and women will enter this market and look forward to welcoming them.

What advice would you give to female CEOs, especially those who are new to the role?

Levi-Neumark: I would advise female CEOs, especially those new to the role, to build strong support networks early. Connect with other female founders and executives who understand your specific challenges—these relationships become invaluable resources for candid advice and emotional support that you can’t always find within your company.

Trust your unique leadership style and perspective. There’s often pressure to conform to traditionally masculine leadership traits, but the most effective leaders bring their authentic selves to the role. Your different viewpoint is actually a strategic advantage that can help identify opportunities others might miss.

Be strategic about which battles to fight. As a female CEO, you’ll likely face additional scrutiny and challenges. Learn to distinguish between issues that are worth addressing directly and those where it’s better to let your results speak for themselves.

Prioritize building a diverse leadership team from the start. This not only leads to better decision-making, but also creates a culture where different perspectives are valued.

Finally, remember that your visibility matters. By succeeding in your role, you’re creating pathways for others. Share your journey, mentor upcoming leaders, and when possible, be the voice and representation you wished you had when starting out.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • UK-based open banking payments company Atoa announced an integration with New Zealand-based small business platform Xero.
  • Vietnam-based Buy Now, Pay Later platform Fundiin announced a strategic partnership with Visa to enhance its credit scoring model.
  • Australia’s Bank of Queensland Group teamed up with digital lending technology company Trade Ledger.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African money movement company Chipper Cash partnered with Ripple to provide crypto-enabled cross-border payments.
  • Payment orchestration platform FinMont announced a partnership with South African online payment gateway Payfast by Network.
  • Ethio Telecom integrated its mobile money platform with Mastercard Africa to enhance finanical inclusion in Ethiopia.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg-based fintech Flexvelop secured $47.4 million (€44 million) to grow its business equipment financing model.
  • Romanian trading and investing app NAGA announced zero commissions for Romanian stocks on its platofmr
  • Estonian fintech Hoovi raised $8.6 million (€8 million) from Finish Multitude International Bank.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Dubai-based embedded payments company Enza secured $6.75 million in funding.
  • National Bank of Kuwait announced enhancements to its mobile banking app.
  • Australia-based debt resolution company InDebted launched operations in the UAE.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India-based fintech Findi raised $28.4 million (INR 243 Cr) to enhance operations of its majority-owned Indian subsidiary TSI.
  • Mastercard inked an agreement with Dubai-based Mashreq to support its launch as a digital bank in Pakistan.
  • Indian startup OneStack secured $2 million in Series A funding, with another $1 million expected.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Colombian fintech Gold raised $50 million in Series C funding to fuel further development of its e-payment solutions.
  • Uruguayan cross-border payments company dLocal enabled Airtel Mobile Money as a payment method for Google Play in Kenya.
  • UK-based AstroPay expanded access to its multicurrency wallet to users across Latin America.

Photo by davebusiness GT13

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Apiture, Backbase, Bluefin, Feedzai, Fintech Rundown, FIS, Mitek, Q2, Ripple, Trustly

The week begins with news of investment in insurtech, financial wellness, and risk management. We are also seeing a number of new partnerships in payments and fraud prevention. Check back here all week long at Finovate’s Fintech Rundown for updates on the latest fintech headlines.

Payments

FIS forges strategic partnership with payment network and Buy Now, pay later company Affirm.

Bluefin announces partnership with advanced payment terminal provider Datecs to enhance payment security.

Kivra and Trustly introduce a new generation of Autogiro to make automatic payments easier and more secure.

Trust Bank and TerraPay team up to launch payment solution for Bangladeshi students studying abroad.

StoneX and Fiserv partner to enhance cross-border payment capabilities for financial institutions.

Allied Payment Network signs 84 new financial institutions in 2024, representing an increase of 20% over 2023. 

Digital banking

Wells Fargo partners with Q2 to boost collaboration across commercial banking teams.

Alliant Credit Union turns to Backbase to enhance the digital experience for members.

Digital banking solutions provider Apiture and digital solutions company Omnicommander team up to help banks and credit unions better communicate with their customers and members.

Gold Coast Federal Credit Union enlists Tyfone to accelerate digital transformation.

Crypto / Defi

Ripple partners with currency exchange provider Unicâmbio to bring crypto-enabled cross-border payments to Portugal.

Insurtech

Australian digital-first insurance broking firm UpCover secures $19 million in Series A funding.

Via its brand Polly, European digital insurance broker CLARK launches its first fully digital underwriting solution in the UK.

Financial wellness

Malaysia-based Earned Wage Access (EWA) solutions provider Payd raises $400,000 in seed extension funding.

Mortgage and savings software provider finova launches its mobile-first onboarding app.

Risk management

Financial risk management software provider Validus Risk Management locks in $45 million in growth equity funding.

Risk intelligence platform SRA Watchtower acquires Lumio Insight.

Fraud prevention

Financial software and technology company CSI partners with Mitek Systems to launch its proprietary check fraud detection solution for NuPoint customers.

Backbase and Feedzai team up to integrate advanced security capabilities into Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform.

Regtech and compliance

Sardine AI raises $70 million to make fraud and compliance teams more productive.

Investing / wealth management

Halal investment research platform Musaffa launches new equity crowdfunding round.

Brightwave integrates Quartr’s global database of first-party information from public companies with its document analysis capabilities.

Datalign secures $9 million Seed funding to accelerate AI-powered financial advisory solutions.

Lending and credit

Finastra launches Assist.AI, an AI-powered assistant to enhance the trade finance operations within its Trade Innovation solution.

Eltropy partners with MeridianLink to help advance digital lending for credit unions and community banks.

Mortgagetech and real estate

Agora launches major expansion in Australia.

Photo by Scott Duygun

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown, Ripple, Token

With Halloween and the U.S. election on the horizon, things may be getting spookier, but that’s not the case in fintech! We’ve seen some potential good news in VC funding trends and expect that there is more to come. Stay tuned throughout the week to read the latest news this week as we post updates and evolutions.

Small business financial management tools

HubSpot to acquire B2B billing management and CPQ solution, Cacheflow.

Pivot Payables joins American Express Sync.

Lending & credit

Digital origination and decisioning technology company Amount launched its unified account opening and loan origination platform.

AperiData introduces credit score fully powered by open banking.

Investing & wealth management

Apex Fintech Solutions agrees to acquire fintech and design agency FinTron.

Facet raises $35 million to broaden access to financial advice.

DriveWealth integrates with multiple execution management system (EMS) platforms, including Bloomberg EMSX, LSEG Autex and TRAFiX. 

Regtech

Regulatory reporting software provider Regnology is acquiring CG3-1, a company that specializes in regulatory calculations for the U.S. broker-dealer industry.

Relyance raises $32 million to help companies comply with data regulations.

Open banking

Token.io and Santander team up to leverage open banking to enhance credit card repayments.

Crypto / Defi

Ripple announces readiness to launch its US dollar-denominated stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD).

Insurtech

Paymentus accelerates digital disbursements for insurance claims payouts.

One Inc and J.P. Morgan Payments collaborate to enhance unified payment platform for insurance.

Payments

Instant Financial expands pay options with the launch of Instant Direct to offer employees earned wage access.

Photo by Rizki Yulian on Unsplash

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