Quovo will enter the Canadian market thanks in part to an investment from Portag3 Ventures. The new investment takes the data platform provider’s total funding to $20 million.
Quovo CEO and co-founder Lowell Putnam said Canada was a source of “immense growth potential” for the company given the country’s “thriving fintech ecosystem and financial institutions hungry to adopt innovative technologies.” Putnam also highlighted a strategic element in Quovo’s relationship with Portag3 Ventures. “The decision to raise funding from Portag3 was about much more than capital,” he said. “Portag3 is well connected in the Canadian financial services industry and is helping us to hit the ground running as we work to establish ourselves in the market.”
Portag3 Ventures is a Canadian-based venture capital firm sponsored by Power Financial Corporation, IGM Financial Inc., and Great West-Lifeco Inc.
As part of the expansion, Quovo announced plans to partner with Canadian fintechs and incumbent financial services companies. The company’s Director of Quovo in Canada, Brad Joudrie, pointed out that the company had already added to its Canadian institutional coverage, and included Canadian financial account types into its data model. “We’re fully committed to building a sustainable business to support the country’s growing financial services sector,” Joudrie said. “The investment from Portag3 will enable us to build out a regional team, deliver on Canadian consumer requirements, and fuel innovation in Canadian financial services.”
The investment and expansion news comes on the heels of Quovo’s launch of two new data solutions to streamline ACH transactions and payment management. ACH Verification uses instant account verification or Quovo’s Autoverified Microdeposits to authenticate key account and account owner details and ensure frictionless ACH transactions. Payment Management enables monitoring of customer accounts to accurately determine the best time to debit accounts for steady payment flow and lower NSF fees.
“Our movement into payments demonstrates the utility of Quovo’s technology across a breadth of industries, and we’re excited to deliver solutions to some of the major obstacles faced by payment originators,” Putnam said. Both solutions were developed using Quovo’s Income + Expense and Balance Estimator products, introduced last month.
Quovo’s technology offers companies connectivity and insights for millions of consumer financial accounts across more than 14,000 different institutions. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in New York City, Quovo partnered with SoFi to present How Quovo & SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication at our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2017. The previous year, the company teamed up with Betterment at FinDEVr New York 2016 to demonstrate the integration of Quovo’s account aggregation services with Betterment’s investment platform.
Last month, Quovo introduced a pair of solutions geared to enhancing critical processes in the lending value chain for loan originators and servicers. Back in December, the company launched Quovo PFM, a suite of embeddable personal finance management modules for FIs that complements the fintech’s account aggregation offering.