In a world of rebrands, reintroductions, and redirections, it is always impressive to see a pivot that sticks.
Moven, which announced its transition toward financial wellness and distributed smart banking a year ago this month, has teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Digital Onboarding. Together, the two fintechs will support user adoption of a turn-key digital bank-in-a-box, making it easier for banks and financial institutions to improve customer engagement on digital platforms.
“The pace of digital disruption in the banking industry is only going to quicken, and financial institutions have to rethink how they leverage digital channels,” Moven founder and Executive Chairman Brett King said. “Providing a new channel is one thing; getting existing and new customers to embrace that channel is an entirely different challenge, and frankly a tremendous opportunity for bankers.”
The partnership brings together Moven’s ability to provide users with data-driven, actionable insights into their financial health with Digital Onboarding’s digital messaging, personalized microsites, and proprietary action widgets to make account-related services more accessible and streamlined. The collaboration recognizes the challenge that digital banks represent to traditional banks and credit unions, and seeks to give them the tools to keep their own customers and better engage new, more digitally-demanding, ones.
“Neobanks are raising billions of dollars and investing heavily in advertising to lure U.S, consumers away from traditional financial institutions,” Digital Onboarding CEO Ted Brown said. “Now is the time for banks and credit unions to double down on investing in their existing customer and member bases. I am excited to collaborate with Moven to help banks and credit unions build long-lasting relationships by motivating financially health behaviors.”
The collaboration between Moven and Digital Onboarding is the most recent, big partnership Moven has entered into since its pivot. Late last year, the company announced that it was working on a turnkey digital bank-in-a-box project with another Finovate alum, Q2. Picking up its second patent for its financial wellness technology in January, Moven also has worked recently with New York-based digital asset manager NYDIG and Japan-based Kyushu Financial Group.
Speaking of NYDIG, the company secured $200 million in funding earlier this week in a round led by Stone Ridge Holdings Group and other strategic partners.
Moven will leverage its relationship with NYDIG to offer banks plugins that will enable them to offer bitcoin-related products. Moven CEO and CRO Kesh Talwar put the NYDIG partnership in the broader context of fintech and cryptocurrency’s parallel, but distinct paths toward prominence. “The growth of fintech platforms and of cryptocurrencies have both been striking, but the two worlds have largely been separate.” And because consumers are most likely to try new technologies when they are introduced by institutions they trust, Talwar sees a clear path to boosting cryptocurrency adoption by enabling banks to play a bigger part.
NYDIG Head of Bank Solutions Patrick Sells concurred. “Many banks have felt left behind with the rise of fintech, but today, banks have the opportunity to capitalize on the fact that their customers strongly prefer them to be in the lead when it comes to Bitcoin.”
Photo by Budgeron Bach from Pexels