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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
There are still a few weeks left of summer, but the final day of August often serves as the unofficial end of summer for many—with kids returning to school and Labor Day around the corner.
As the week begins, Finovate’s Fintech Rundown is highlighting a handful of fintech funding announcements in payments, wealth management, and capital markets, as well as interesting partnership news in DeFi and identity verification involving fintechs from Singapore and South Korea.
Visainks a strategic partnership with South Korean fintech Dunamu to develop stablecoin payments, international remittance services, and AI-powered e-commerce solutions.
Credit unions
Baton Rouge Telco Federal Credit Union launches AI-powered smart financial calculators courtesy of its partnership with Appli.
Lending
RateZiplaunches live US bank rate and mortgage rate app in ChatGPT.
Core banking technology firm Thought Machine has raised £30 million ($41 million) in funding from an unnamed Tier 1 bank. The bank, which is both a client and an investor, made its investment in May of this year.
The funding will help support Thought Machine’s R&D expansion, including a pledge to hire more than 100 new engineers in 2026.
The funding announcement comes as the company reported surpassing the $100 million revenue milestone for the year ending December 2025.
According to multiple reports, core banking technology firm Thought Machine has secured £30 million ($41 million) in funding from an unnamed Tier 1 bank that is also a Thought Machine client. The reports indicate that the investment was made in May of this year; Fintech Futures noted that the funding consisted of £9 million in primary funding and a £21 million secondary market transaction.
The investment will help power the company’s R&D expansion, including support for the firm’s new engineering office in Lisbon, Portugal, and the hiring of more than 100 new engineers. The capital will also help Thought Machine pursue its expansion in the US, having opened a new office in Miami to complement its regional headquarters in the US.
Word of Thought Machine’s spring investment comes as the firm announces that it has surpassed $100 million in total revenue for the financial year ending December 2025. This accomplishment reflects a 57% year-on-year increase in total revenue. Thought Machine also announced that, thanks to a multi-year commitment for several tier 1 bank migrations, the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) surpassed the $100 million threshold as of Q2 2026.
“Crossing the $100 million revenue threshold proves that the world’s largest banks are no longer thinking of cloud-native core technology as being solely for greenfield business, they are deploying it at scale for full bank migrations,” Thought Machine CEO and Founder Paul Taylor said. “We have established clear leadership in the tier 1 market because our platform properly fulfills the needs of banks at scale. With a strong balance sheet backed directly by our customer-investors, we have the financial maturity and the technology to power any bank, of any size, anywhere in the world.”
The investment also shines a light on Thought Machine’s other funding plans, namely a London IPO. While a consideration since the company’s Series D funding round in 2022, an initial public offering in the current financial climate is “difficult” in the words of the Thought Machine CEO. As such, he has pushed back the likelihood of a London IPO until 2028 “at the earliest,” and even criticized the merit of valuation as a performance metric relative to revenue.
“We are trying to put less emphasis on valuation and more emphasis on commercial success,” Taylor said. “Funding rounds are just not where we want the attention to be. We want the attention to be on commercial growth. Hitting revenue targets is a far better indicator of success than saying ‘look how valuable we are’.”
Thought Machine introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateEurope 2018 in London. The company offers modern, cloud-based core banking and payments solutions—Vault Core and Vault Payments, respectively—that give financial institutions greater flexibility in creating new banking products and the ability to offer payment options for every method, scheme, and region around the globe. Founded in 2014, Thought Machine has 68 banks around the world using its technology, including 18 of the world’s largest institutions, representing more than 10% of the international market.
After a thrilling weekend of World Cup matches, fans in the US are readying for this evening’s big contest against Belgium. To help you while away the hours until then, here’s a look at some of the top fintech headlines that are coming across our radar today. Be sure to check back with Finovate’s Fintech Rundown all week long for the latest updates.
Digital banking
Cloud-native core banking and payments platform Thought Machinesurpasses $100 million total revenue milestone.
Digital banking platform for small businesses Bluevineexpands its services to selected foreign-resident owners of US businesses.
Back office
VyStar Credit Union expands partnership with FMSI to advance branch performance strategy.
Agentic AI
BBVAcompletes its first AI agent-initiated transaction on behalf of a cardholder.
Banking technology company Thought Machine has teamed up with technology services provider DXC Technology.
The two companies are offering a joint solution that combines DXC Technology’s industry expertise with Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Vault Core, and payments processing platform, Vault Payments.
London-based Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018.
A newly available joint solution from banking technology company Thought Machine and technology services provider DXC Technology will help small and medium-sized banks initiate and complete their digital transformations faster. The solution combines DXC Technology’s industry expertise and full-service management with Thought Machine’s core banking technology platform, Vault Core, and its payments processing platform, Vault Payments.
“This collaboration underscores our dedication to leveraging next-generation technology to enable banks to modernize faster and deliver exceptional financial products,” Thought Machine Global Head of Partnerships Randy McFarlane said. “With modern core systems, banks are empowered to develop more innovative, customer-centric services with speed and ease. We are excited to work with DXC to accelerate banking transformation and build the future of financial services globally.”
Vault Core is Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking platform. As a cloud-agnostic solution, Vault Core gives banks the flexibility they need to select their preferred hosting option and provider. Institutions can leverage the technology to replicate their current back book of products, as well as create new financial products such as savings accounts, credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Vault Payments is the firm’s cloud-native payments processing platform and enables banks to work with all payment types regardless of method, scheme, or region. The technology embeds new and existing financial products into the payments platform, and gives users control over the entire payment life cycle.
The joint solution is designed to help smaller and midsized banks and financial institutions compete with their larger, global rivals who are able to build innovative, proprietary platforms in-house. Given the obstacles of complex vendor ecosystems and legacy infrastructures, the new offering from Thought Machine and DXC provides smaller and midsized bank with a one-stop managed service offering the technology, tools, and human talent to help them modernize legacy core banking systems, get new digital products to market faster, and ensure operational efficiency and compliance.
“With more than 45 years of experience in banking operations, DXC is deeply committed to delivering best-in-class digital solutions to the world’s leading financial institutions,” DXC Technology President, Global Infrastructure Services, Chris Drumgoole said. “Our joint solution with Thought Machine provides a comprehensive, future-ready path to modernization—enabling banks to accelerate innovation, improve operational efficiency, and reduce risk.”
Virginia-based DXC Technology partners with companies around the world to help them modernize IT systems, optimize data architectures, and ensure both security and scalability across public, private, and hybrid clouds. With more than 200 technology partners, DXC was created in 2017 in the wake of the merger between Computer Sciences Corporation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Enterprise Services business.
Headquartered in London, UK, Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. In the years since then, the company has grown into a leading core banking and payments technology provider for banks and financial institutions around the world, including Intesa Sanpaolo, Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, Lunar, Atom bank, and more.
Thanks for reading Finovate’s Fintech Rundown! We’ve got a new administration in Washington, D.C. and a new week of fintech news and announcements. We’re starting off the holiday-shortened week with a funding in the payments space and a handful of new product launches in insurtech and crypto.
We will update Fintech Rundown all week long with the latest in fintech news.
Payments
Egyptian payment orchestration platform MoneyHashsecures $5.2 million in Pre-Series A funding.
Worldline and Wixteam up to boost online commerce and payments solutions for businesses throughout Europe and Asia Pacific.
Gala TechnologylaunchesSOTpay Connect, a comprehensive payments gateway that supports open banking, direct debits, omni-channel payments, and more.
Insurtech
U.K.-based insurance intelligence platform Percayso Informunveils updated version of its Quote Intelligence platform.
Digital risk processing platform Cytorapartners with property data solutions provider Smarty to enhance property risk evaluation for insurers.
Partnerships in digital banking, identity management, and payments lead off the fintech news headlines as July begins in earnest. Be sure to check back all week long for updates and fresh announcements on the latest industry happenings.
Payments infrastructure solution for software companies Payablisecures $20 million in Series A funding.
Instant payments solutions company Zimplerannounced a new technical partnership with Swedish payments app, Swish.
Lending
ClearScoresecures $4.4 million (£3.4 million) in funding from Fair4All Finance to develop debt consolidation loan technology for the financially vulnerable.
Ireland’s CreditLogicraises $3.8 million (EUR 3.5 million) from Riverside Acceleration Capital (RAC).
Crypto / DeFi / Web3
Crypto payments company Kulipapartners with cryptocurrency wallet provider Argent and Mastercard to launch its new crypto-based payment card.
MoonPay and Meshink an exclusive partnership to ease the process of depositing and transferring crypto from exchanges.
Swiss layer-1 blockchain Shardeumpartners with Web3 security services platform Immunefi to launch bug bounty program.
Fraud and identity management
Fraud prevention specialist GBGunveils its KYB solution, GBG Detected.
Germany’s IDnow unveils a pair of new e-signature solutions, InstantSign and eID eSign.
NatWest partners with digital identity identity solutions provider OneID.
iDenfy and UAE-based SIMPal forge strategic partnership to enhance security in the telecom industry.
Insurtech
AutoRekpartners with JP Morgan Payments to enhance premium processing for insurance companies.
Digital banking
U.K.-based digital bank and BaaS platform Griffinreceives B Corp certification.
First Federal Bank of Kansas turns to Jack Henry for its hosted core processing solution.
In this latest venture, the two companies are advancing their partnership to offer core banking and payment solutions to financial institutions. Mastercard is integrating its network and digital solutions with Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking platform to help banks transition from their legacy core banking and payment technologies to cloud-native ones. Ultimately, the two hope the move will increase their efficiency, reduce costs, and create more integrated, personalized, and customer-centric experiences.
“As we expand our partnership with Mastercard, we plan to leverage their global presence and payment expertise to deliver our core banking and payment platforms to banks worldwide,” said Thought Machine CEO and founder Paul Taylor. “We are excited to simplify and enhance the modernization experience for complex banks worldwide and make it even easier for them to deliver sophisticated customer experiences.”
Today’s partnership also focuses on pay-now solutions. Specifically, the two will help financial institutions digitize debit cards linked to current accounts.
“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with Thought Machine, and they’re now our first strategic, end-to-end partner in the core banking space,” said Mastercard Europe President Mark Barnett. “We’re providing leading banks and financial institutions with a comprehensive core banking and card issuing solution that meets tomorrow’s payment needs, and we look forward to scaling our joint capabilities.”
Mastercard and Thought Machine first partnered in 2020, when Thought Machine participated in the Mastercard Start Path startup engagement program. In 2022, the two teamed up to develop Vault Payments, an issuer processing solution that leverages Mastercard’s cloud technology. Vault Payments supports various card and non-card use cases, tapping Mastercard’s extensive payment network with Thought Machine’s banking technology.
U.K.-based Thought Machine has raised $563 million in funding since it was founded in 2014. The company offers two main products: Vault Core, a tool that leverages smart contracts to help organizations design and build new financial products; and Vault Payments, a payments processing platform that enables banks to run all payment types for different payment methods, schemes, and regions across the globe. Among Thought Machine’s clients are Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Curve.
FinovateEurope 2024 will have its fair share of local talent demoing live on the Finovate stage on 27 February in London. And while we’re looking forward to the return of FinovateEurope 2023 Best of Show winner NayaOne, we’re also excited to meet a whole bunch of U.K.-based fintechs that are making their Finovate debuts:
FinovateEurope 2024 will also feature one of our most geographically diverse lineups to date. Companies from 15 different countries plus the U.K. will be on hand in just a few weeks to demo their latest fintech innovations at our annual European fintech conference.
See for yourself! Here’s a look at the range of countries our demoing companies are coming from:
This week’s Fintech Rundown features partnership and expansion news from a handful of Finovate alums, as well as some interesting fundings in the cryptocurrency and charitable giving space.
Thought Machine and Flexys announced a new partnership this week.
The partnership wil integrate Flexys Control+ debt management platform with Thought Machine’s core banking solution, Vault Core.
UK-based Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2018.
Core banking platform Thought Machine and debt management and collections company Flexysannounced a new partnership this week. The partnership will integrate Flexys Control+ debt management platform with Thought Machine’s Vault Core.
Rising consumer debt levels and legacy technology in debt management have created processes that are labor-intensive, expensive, and inefficient. To this end, the real-time integration between platforms will enable banks to enhance their debt management capabilities and modernize their banking operations with a new core. Thought Machine’s Vault Core is a cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, API-first core banking platform. It features a Universal Product Engine that gives users a great deal of flexibility in the design of new financial products created by smart contracts. This is in addition to a sizable number of pre-built financial solutions. These range from savings accounts and credit cards to Islamic banking solutions and buy now pay later (BNPL) products.
“Banks can now benefit from a seamless cloud-native ecosystem, leaving behind the constraints of legacy systems to improve efficiency, minimize friction, and vastly improve the experience for customers in arrears,” Flexys CEO James Hill said.
For its part, Control+ automates and digitizes customer engagement. This improves efficiency. But it also makes it possible for agents to offer personalized, positive experiences for customers. Emphasizing engagement over confrontation, Control+’s “intelligent debt resolution” approach empowers collections agents while protecting businesses from reputational and regulatory risk.
“Thought Machine and Flexys are removing unnecessary burden and human error,” Flexys Global Head of Partnerships Randolph McFarlane said. “In turn, this enables banks to better serve their customers, providing a superior experience in a time when customer expectations are higher than ever.”
Bristol-based Flexys was founded in 2016. In recent months, the company has forged partnerships with TSB Bank and Virgin Money. In both instances, Flexys helped the institutions manage Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) repayments and Pay As You Grow (PAYG) options.
Thought Machine finished 2023 with a partnership with Mexico-based fintech Trafalgar. The partnership marked Thought Machine’s first collaboration in Mexico, and is designed to help Trafalgar better serve its SME customers. Additionally, the company plans to launch its new Thought Machine-powered platform in Q2 of this year. Trafalgar will also leverage Thought Machine’s technology to develop and offer additional financial services ranging from virtual cards to point-of-sale (POS) systems.
Founded in 2014, Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2018. The company has raised more than $562 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Thought Machine includes Temasek Holdings and Intesa Sanpaolo among its investors. Paul Taylor is CEO.
Interested in demoing at FinovateEurope in London next month? Applications are still being accepted from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateEurope hub today to learn more.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a number of new fintech initiatives this week. Among the more interesting was a plan to bring AI-powered, conversational payments to the country’s UPI (Unified Payments Interface) system.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched the platform in 2016. Today, UPI has more than 300 million monthly active users in India. There are also 500 million merchants who use the platform to accept payments. With UPI, users can link multiple bank accounts to a single mobile app, and then make real-time, P2P transactions via mobile device or smartphone. Analysts expect daily transaction volume on UPI to reach one billion by 2026-2027.
The proposal would enable users to initiate payments from within both chat and messaging apps. “As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into the digital economy, conversational instructions hold immense potential in enhancing ease of use, and consequently reach, of the UPI system,” the RBI press release read. “It is, therefore, proposed to launch an innovative payment mode viz., ‘Conversational Payments’ on UPI, that will enable users to engage in a conversation with an AI-powered system to initiate and complete transactions in a safe and secure environment.”
Conversational Payments will be available initially in Hindi and English, with other Indian languages to be added. The technology will be available via smartphones and feature phone-based UPI channels, which the Reserve Bank of India believes will lead to broader adoption and further financial inclusion. To this end, the RBI has also proposed to bring Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to its UPI-Lite on-device wallet. Launched last fall, UPI-Lite is designed to facilitate small value transactions and now processes more than ten million transactions a month.
An investment of $50 million has given Indian debt collection software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Credgenics a valuation of $340 million. Accel, Westbridge Capital, Tanglin Ventures, Beams Fintech Fund, and other strategic investors participated in the Series B round.
Company co-founder and CEO Rishabh Goel said that the capital would do more than just help the firm expand into new markets. “This funding not only accelerates our growth, but also enables us to make a meaningful impact on the economic landscape of countries, unlocking new opportunities for financial well-being,” Goel said.
Founded in 2019, Credgenics currently serves more than 100 private banks, non-bank financial companies, fintechs, and asset reconstruction companies. The company’s debt resolution platform provides a suite of solutions including digital collections, collections analytics, litigation management, agent performance management, and a field collections mobile app. The technology leverages AI-driven intelligent automation and machine learning to bring greater efficiency to the collections process.
Credgenics handles 11 million retail loan accounts and touched an overall loan book worth $60 billion in fiscal year 2023. The company became operationally profitable this spring. This summer, Credegnics announced a partnership with Indonesia-based lender Investree. The company also was recognized as the Best Selling Loan Collections Platform in IBS Intelligence India Sales League Table for the second year in a row.
Minister of State for Corporate Affairs (independent charge) Rao Inderjit Singh provided the report to Parliament as part of the Startup India initiative. Launched by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in 2016, this initiative establishes the criteria that confers recognition by the Department. These factors include data of incorporation, as well as revenue and profit benchmarks.
Singh pointed to the “Fintech Entity Framework” as an example of one of the actions taken by the government – in this case the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) – to promote the country’s fintech startup ecosystem. This framework includes a comprehensive scheme of grants for startups, sandboxes, proof-of-concepts (PoC), accelerators, and more.
Singh also credited the government for the success of an initiative which streamlined beneficiary account opening and direct benefit transfers, and improved access to multiple financial services applications. The initiative is called the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), meaning “The Prime Minister’s Public Finance Scheme,” and it set a new world record for account openings upon its launch in 2014. This spring, the initiative reached a major milestone of more than $28 billion (₹2 lakh crore) in deposits.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Thought Machine has partnered with SME lending solutions provider Cordada.
Cordada will use the product library of Thought Machine’s Vault Core to offer customized products to SME lenders and fintechs.
Today’s tie-up, along with a recent partnership with C6 Bank in Brazil, strengthens Thought Machine’s presence in Latin America.
Core banking technology provider Thought Machineannounced this week it is partnering with Chile-based Cordada.
Under the partnership, Cordada will use Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Vault Core, to offer Latin American SME lenders and fintechs access to personalized financial tools. More specifically, Cordada will modify and tailor products in Thought Machine’s global product library that contains pre-built, ready-to-use smart contracts. This customization will enable Cordada to offer localized products to its customer base while supporting multi-currency assets.
“Vault Core will enable us to create highly differentiated financing products quickly and effortlessly without depending on the Thought Machine team,” said Cordada Cofounder and CEO Andrés Prats. “This, in turn, will empower the next generation of SME lenders to develop modern solutions as they tackle the great challenge of bridging the $1 trillion financing gap for SMEs in Latin America.”
Cordada, which currently has partnerships in Chile, Peru, and Mexico, will also use Vault Core to expand its services into new Latin American markets. Since it was founded in 2019, Cordada has deployed $3 billion in capital to lenders via 60 lenders and fintechs, ultimately impacting 5,500 SMEs across Latin America.
U.K.-based Thought Machine has raised $563 million in funding since it was founded in 2014. The company offers two main products: Vault Core, a tool that leverages smart contracts to help organizations design and build new financial products; and Vault Payments, a payments processing platform that enables banks to run all payment types for different payment methods, schemes, and regions across the globe.
Among Thought Machine’s clients are Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Curve. Today’s partnership further fuels the company’s presence in the Latin American region, following a recent partnership with C6 Bank in Brazil.
