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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Union Credit is launching out of stealth mode with $5 million in Seed funding led by CMFG Ventures.
The startup is launching in an exclusive partnership with CuneXus, leveraging the company’s continuous credit approval that facilitates loans in one click.
The partnership with CuneXus will offer Union Credit access to CuneXus’ 250 credit existing clients in the credit union space.
Embedded lending startup Union Creditemerged from stealth today and is launching with an extra $5 million, thanks to a fresh round of seed funding led by CMFG Ventures.
Facilitating today’s launch is a partnership with CuneXus, a company that helps credit unions and community financial institutions offer potential borrowers perpetual loan approval, making it possible for customers to take out pre-approved loans in one click. CuneXus was acquired by CUNA Mutual Group in 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The entity now produces more than $27 billion in loans each year.
“Ending the guesswork of lending and financing is an important step towards financial health,” said CMFG Ventures President and Managing Director Brian Kaas. “Union Credit can create real transparency via perpetual credit access. It’s a model that has the potential to completely change the way credit unions grow, allowing them to compete with fintechs and large financial institutions in their communities during the purchase experience.”
Union Credit’s aim is to help credit unions enter into new markets with a tool that offers borrowers front-end financing via merchant relationships. The company leverages CuneXus’ continuous credit approval that facilitates loans in one click. The company will use today’s investment to “focus on building out its digital lending marketplace, SDK, and a direct-to-consumer app where consumers can manage perpetual offers of credit from local lenders that want to serve them.”
California-based Union Credit was launched by CuneXus Co-founder Dave Buerger and former SVP Barry Kirby, who now serve as Union Credit CEO and CRO, respectively. Because of this tie-in, the company benefits from an exclusive partnership with CuneXus. What’s more, the newly found company will have access to CuneXus’ 250 credit existing clients, which represent 37 million end users.
“Credit unions thrive on their long-lasting member relationships, but acquiring new relationships has always been a challenge,” said Buerger. “Today that ends. Union Credit advocates for credit unions on a national scale, putting them in front of consumers at their point of need. It combines the local, competitive, and advantageous offers that credit unions are known for and gives them the sophisticated platform they need to amplify existing digital services and reach new audiences.”
Union Credit’s continuous credit approval will compete on the same level as buy now, pay later (BNPL) transactions that allow consumers to make purchases and pay for them over time rather than all at once. The company’s approach using CuneXus’ continuous credit approval technology is similar to BNPL purchases in that it makes pre-approved loans available to customers in one click, making it easy for them to access credit when they need it.
Card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning solution.
The new offering will enable consumers to pay for products directly from their mobile wallets without having to first download a mobile app – that may be rarely used again.
The web push provisioning solution was inspired in part during Marqeta’s Hack Week event back in October 2021.
Modern card issuing platform Marqetalaunched its new web push provisioning product this week. The new offering will reduce friction at the point-of-sale by enabling users to pay for purchases directly from their mobile wallets without having to download a mobile app first.
The new web push provisioning product is designed to address a major pain point for consumers: having to download an app – that may be rarely, if ever, used again – in order to complete a given transaction. Marqeta’s solution can help boost conversion rates by eliminating this requirement and thus streamlining the customer experience. Combined with Marqeta’s instant issuance capabilities, this week’s announcement reinforces and adds to the company’s leadership in the payment card tokenization space.
“Growing familiarity with digital wallets created demand for a solution that enables Marqeta customers to quickly and easily provision virtual cards and digital wallet tokens from the web for use with both Apple Pay and Google Pay,” Marqeta Chief Product Officer Simon Khalaf explained. “Our web push provisioning product meets that need and helps enable our customers to deliver a streamlined checkout experience to their end users.”
Marqeta’s offering comes as consumer adoption of digital wallets continues to show strength. According to Juniper Research, global digital wallet transactions are expected to grow 60% by 2026. Additionally, 71% of U.S. consumers in 2022 say that they have used a mobile wallet in the previous 12 months compared to 64% in 2020. Nevertheless, 75% of consumers admit to having abandoned a transaction after being prompted to download a mobile app in order to complete the purchase.
Marqeta’s web push provisioning solution, currently in beta and expected to be generally available later this year, was specifically designed to address this problem. The technology has its origins in a Hack Week event from last year, as members of Marqeta’s team realized the value of enabling brands to provision tokens from a mobile web browser. Built in partnership with both Apple and Google, the web push provisioning technology has been deployed by Bread Financial, which praised the way the product enabled the company to “offer flexible payment options that will keep the merchant’s brand at the forefront a deliver a better experience for the customer,” according to Bread Financial EVP and Chief Commercial Officer Val Greer.
An alumni of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016, Marqeta today is certified to operate in 40 countries around the world. Last fall, the company announced the launch of its Marqeta for Banking offering, which brought new banking capabilities to the company’s card issuing platform. Marqeta has forged partnerships in recent months with Raiffeisen Centrobank to power the institution’s new digital banking brand for customers in Poland and Romania – and with Blockchain.com, to power the cryptocurrency platform’s crypto-based Visa Card.
Headquartered in Oakland, California, Marqeta was founded in 2010. The firm is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ, and has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. Jason Gardner is CEO.
If you’re not familiar with OpenAI’s newest technology, ChatGPT, now is the time to spend a few minutes to sign up and play with the chatbot that has captured the world’s attention. ChatGPT leverages Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), OpenAI’s language generation model, and it is poised to disrupt a lot more than the customer service.
While ChatGPT has a multitude of use cases in the fintech industry– from automating copywriting to crafting a job description– GPT-3 is even more powerful. Accessed through OpenAI’s API, it can be tailored to suit a range of natural language processing tasks and runs on 175 billion parameters. ChatGPT has only 20 billion parameters. More importantly, firms can use GPT-3 via an API in a compliant environment.
The applications for GPT-3 across fintech and banking are seemingly endless, but I’ve outlined a handful of ways banks and fintechs can use the technology without requiring additional resources to save costs and create a better user experience.
Automate customer service interactions
Banks and fintechs can integrate GPT-3 into a chatbot or virtual assistant to lessen the volume of phone inquiries into their customer service department. GPT-3 can handle common customer inquiries, such as account balance inquiries or loan application status updates.
Enhance fraud detection
Organizations can use historical transaction data to train GPT-3 to identify patterns and flag anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activity.
Streamline document processing
GPT-3 can prove useful to firms that process a large number of documents and need to extract specific information from the paperwork. The technology can automatically extract information from financial documents, such as invoices or loan applications, which ultimately saves time by reducing manual data entry.
Create more personalized financial advice
Advisors can use GPT-3 to generate financial advice, such as investment recommendations, for their clients. In order to tailor the advice to the individual, GPT-3 will take into account customer demographics, risk tolerance, and investment goals.
Create sentiment analysis
From a marketing perspective, GPT-3 can be used to determine brand awareness and overall sentiment toward a company or brand. By analyzing customer feedback and social media interactions, companies can gain insight on new product deployments and measure customer satisfaction over time.
While many of these tools and capabilities have been available in the fintech and banking industry for over a decade, they are now even more powerful. What’s more, using GPT-3 may be more cost effective in the long run because of the range of use cases the technology presents.
Mastercard and upSWOT announced an open banking partnership this week.
The collaboration will enable upSWOT’s small business customers to access actionable insights and more readily secure financing.
upSWOT made its Finovate debut in 2020 and returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 for FinovateFall.
A collaboration between Mastercard and North Carolina-based fintech upSWOT will help banks better serve their small business clients by providing them with actionable insights and easier access to capital. Courtesy of Mastercard’s open banking platform and services delivered via its subsidiary Finicity, the partnership will bring open banking capabilities to upSWOT’s platform. This will enable SMEs on upSWOT’s platform to connect owner-permissioned financial data to 200 API-enabled apps, providing services such as accounting, payroll, e-commerce, CRM, and more.
“SMBs have long been accepted as the engines of economic growth and development but at times are underserved,” upSWOT CEO Dmitry Norenko said. “We believe that fintech innovation can dramatically reshape the success of SMBs.”
In a statement, upSWOT and Mastercard said that they will promote the new joint offering to their customers and to U.S. banks. The new features of the combined solution include:
Credit Boost: Enables businesses to share data with credit bureaus to potentially increase credit scores
Insights: Analyzes multiple data streams to suggest actions businesses can take to improve operations and profitability
Cash Flow Forecasts: Provides visibility into expected cash flows using sensitivity analysis and modeling
Bank reconciliation, cash management, business valuation, funding access, and ecommerce performance are also part of the new solution’s feature set.
“We are excited to partner with upSWOT to make it easier for financial institutions to offer their small business customers the ability to benefit from their financial data to make decisions, demonstrate their ability to manage a loan, and run their businesses more efficiently,” Mastercard EVP of U.S. Open Banking Andy Sheehan said.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Charlotte, upSWOT made its Finovate debut at our all-digital conference in 2020. The company returned to the Finovate stage last September for FinovateFall. Since then, the company has announced partnerships with Standard Chartered (SC) to launch a pilot project in Singapore and with fellow Finovate alum Cion Digital to bring embedded finance tools to more SMEs.
upSWOT has raised more than $5 million in funding from investors including Common Ocean Ventures.
Ingenico partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate transactions using the palm of the customer’s hand for in-person transactions.
To make a payment, customers hover their hand over a near-infrared sensor, which reads their palm veins to authenticate their identity and complete the payment using stored card credentials.
The unique pattern of veins in the palm is difficult for fraudsters to hack because the patterns under the skin are challenging to replicate.
Ingenico has partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate payment using the palm of their hand for in-person transactions.
Leveraging its subsidiary Fulcrum Biometrics, Fujitsu Frontech’s solution uses palm vein identification to enable consumers to identify themselves and authenticate their payments by moving their hand over a near-infrared sensor on Ingenico’s AXIUM range, the company’s Android payment terminal. The technology creates a more convenient experience for customers as it eliminates the need to take out a credit card or enter a PIN. All they need to do is hover the palm of their hand over the sensor.
The palm payment service requires pre-authentication. To enroll a new customer, the merchant takes a near-infrared scan of the customer’s palm using an Ingenico device that incorporates the Fujitsu PalmSecure-F Pro Sensor and software. The image of the palm is encrypted, tokenized, and linked to the customer’s payment card in Ingenico’s secure cloud environment.
“Palm vein biometrics is the most secure method for identifying customers and authenticating payments, said Ingenico Senior Executive Vice President of Global Solutions Michel Léger. “Palm vein identification is a much faster way of making payments than traditional chip and pin and offers several tangible advantages, with none of the security risks of other biometric methods.”
The authentication method leverages Fujitsu’s PalmSecure technology and combines it with Fulcrum Biometrics’ biometric identification solutions to use the unique pattern of veins in the palm of a user’s hand. Palm vein identification is fast, accurate, contactless, and less intrusive than fingerprint or facial recognition. Additionally, when compared to facial recognition and fingerprint biometric methods, palm veins are more difficult for fraudsters to hack because the unique patterns under the skin are challenging to replicate.
“Our palm vein technology provides the most advanced consumer protection available in any biometric modality,” said Fujitsu Frontech North America President and CEO Shuhei Oyake. “Your palm vein pattern is totally internal to your body and therefore cannot be captured without your knowledge. Our patented technology for matching palm vein templates without needing to decrypt them means that there is never a time when your unencrypted biometric could be compromised. Fujitsu Frontech North America and Ingenico together will deliver merchants and consumers a long-awaited solution for frictionless and secure payments.”
Ingenico, a branch of Worldline, was founded in 1980 and is based in France. The company offers payment services including point of sale, online payments, issuing and acquiring solutions, and digital banking tools. Earlier this week, Ingenico partnered with Klarna to make the BNPL company’s flexible payment options available at the physical point of sale. Ingenico works with more than 1,000 banks and acquirers, is active in 37 countries, and facilitates payments on more than 2,500 mobile apps.
The jury is still out on whether or not January is officially Financial Wellness Month. But savings platform Plinqitisn’t waiting around for any verdict. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based fintech announced this week that it has partnered with SUMA Federal Credit Union to help give the institution’s 7,000+ members the resources they need to become better savers.
The partnership will enable SUMA FCU’s members to access tools such as Plinqit’s Build Skills solution. Build Skills provides users with content that helps them build their personal finance awareness and savings skills, and then pays them for learning new skills. In turn, the funds earned from learning more about financial wellness can help propel users toward their Plinqit savings goals. SUMA FCU members will be able to access the functionality via SUMA FCU’s digital banking platform, thanks to Plinqit’s integration with Jack Henry’sBanno Digital Toolkit.
SUMA FCU expects the new technology will help attract new members to the credit union as well as enhance the banking experience for existing members. The institution serves communities in Yonkers and Spring Valley, New York, as well as New Haven and Stamford, Connecticut. Both regions feature sizable populations of Ukrainian immigrants and parishioners of St. Michael’s Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church. Established more than 55 years ago, SUMA FCU has more than $400 million in assets today.
“Credit unions are known for having strong relationships with their member base and SUMA Federal Credit Union has exemplified this for decades,” Plinqit CEO and founder Kathleen Craig said. She highlighted SUMA FCU’s support of local institutions, including churches, Ukrainian youth groups, and other cultural organizations. “Plinqit is proud to partner with an institution that consistently strives to make a meaningful impact in its community,” Craig said.
Plinqit made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. At the conference, Plinqit demoed its Build Skills offering – “created by Millennials for Millennials” – which aligns data, behavior, and incentives to make savings goals easier to set and attain. Last year, the company secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round, co-led by Fintop Capital of Nashville, Tennessee, and JAM FINTOP of New York, took Plinqit’s total funding to nearly $10 million.
Plinqit’s partnership announcement comes just a week after the company released its latest State of Savings Report. This survey, which measures top savings priorities for consumers, showed that 43% of consumers are actively contributing to an emergency fund for both short-term and long-term potential expenses. “While the price increases for everyday necessities leave many U.S. households with financial stress, consumers remain focused on building up their emergency savings even in these trying times,” Craig said. “Providing tools to help them be successful in their savings goal is critical for financial institutions.”
LendInvest received increased funding from Lloyds Bank this week, bringing its total warehouse investment to $367 million (£300 million).
The boost in investment will help LendInvest enter the homeowner mortgage market, a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity.
LendInvest now has more than $4.4 billion (£3.6 billion) in funds under management.
U.K.-based property finance asset manager LendInvestscored an increase in warehouse funding from Lloyds Bank totaling $367 million (£300 million) this week. The purpose of the investment is to facilitate LendInvest’s entry into the mortgage market, which the company estimates to be a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity.
LendInvest was founded in 2008 to serve as an online marketplace for property lending and investing, enabling everyday investors to access a wider variety of asset classes, including opportunities to gain exposure to the U.K. property market. The company launched its homeowner mortgage product in beta last month and plans to launch the product to a wider audience this year.
“There are a significant number of people in the U.K. with complex income streams – from barristers to actors to NHS contract workers – who find it harder to get a mortgage because of multiple income sources or less regular pay cheques,” explained LendInvest CEO Rod Lockhart. “Our offering is tailored to their needs, providing access to the finance they require to buy the home of their dreams, and without all the stress and hassle.”
The new homeowner mortgage product targets borrowers with multiple sources of income, those who are self-employed, and those who are small-business owners. The company’s technology simplifies complex mortgage cases to improve and streamline the process of closing on a home loan.
“The complexity of this part of the U.K. mortgage market makes it ripe for disruption by our purpose-built technology and is a natural evolution for us following our launch into buy-to-let mortgages in 2017,” added Lockhart.
With more than $4.4 billion (£3.6 billion) in funds under management, LendInvest is headquartered in London. The company’s funders and investors include pension funds, insurers, and global institutions including HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, and National Australia Bank. LendInvest went public in 2021 and is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker LSE. The company has a market capitalization of $141 million (£115 million).
KYC/KYB specialist Kyckr has agreed to be acquired by tech entrepreneur and billionaire Richard White.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Kyckr is an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where the company presented “Corporate Identity on the Blockchain.”
Kyckr, a technology company that provides corporations with authoritative real-time data on potential and existing customers and suppliers, has agreed to be acquired by Richard White, an Australian technology entrepreneur. White, who founded Australian technology company WiseTech Global in 1994, will acquire the company via his personal investment vehicle RealWise KYK AV Pty Ltd. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“The Kyckr team is delighted to have the strategic guidance, support, and vision that successful tech-entrepreneur and founder Richard White provides,” Kyckr CEO Ian Henderson said. “We are embarking upon an exciting evolution of our powerful offering to broaden its scope by building an integrated global software solution to enable businesses to navigate the highly complex and dynamic compliance and counterparty risk challenges that they face in an increasingly interconnected and digital marketplace.”
Kyckr specializes in providing businesses with real-time access to aggregated corporate Know Your Customer/Know Your Business (KYC/KYB) and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) data from more than 300 company registries and primary sources worldwide. This reach enables Kyckr to conduct real-time due diligence on more than 120 million companies around the globe. White noted that this capacity was especially important in a world with ever-expanding compliance laws and regulations on one hand and innovative financial criminals on the other. He described the contemporary challenge of KYC/KYB compliance as “increasingly high-risk, complex, time-consuming, and costly.”
White’s WiseTech Global bills itself as the “operating system for global logistics.” In a statement, White compared Kyckr’s ability to automate manual processes and aggregate data from real-time sources to the way WiseTech’s CargoWise solution has replaced legacy logistics systems with integrated technology. Both solutions, White indicated, are designed to “drive productivity, reduce compliance risk, and facilitate planning, visualization, and control.”
A Finovate alum since its appearance at our developers conference FinDEVr SiliconValley in 2016, Kyckr has raised more than $18 million in funding to date. The company maintains offices in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia.
The five-day World Economic Forum (WEF) began today. The annual event gathers leaders from across the globe in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the latest economic, social, and political issues. This year’s theme is Cooperation in a Fragmented World and many of the sessions are relevant to the fintech industry.
I combed through the agenda and highlighted the sessions that are most worth watching below. WEF allows the public to watch live via its website or watch the session recordings on its YouTube channel. The meat of the event begins tomorrow, and here’s what I’ll be paying attention to.
January 17
Staying Ahead of a Recession With the risk of a recession in 2023 continuing to loom over major economies, what steps can leaders take to make a potential recession as short and as shallow as possible?
Financial Institutions: Innovating Under Pressure At a time of large-scale macro shocks, how do financial actors respond to ongoing disruptions while keeping pace with technological advancement?
Technology for a More Resilient World In the face of a challenging decade, technology can be a critical tool in the transition to a cleaner, safer and more inclusive world. How should leaders be thinking about the strategic opportunities for technology to be an accelerator of progress in this new context?
Private Equity in the Real Economy Maximizing impact across the risk/return continuum and alternative asset classes has become a fast-growing trend within the investing industry. How does private equity transform the real economy through its increased focus on impact?
Tokenized Economies, Coming Alive Tokenization can allow almost any real world asset to have a digital representation on a blockchain. Given its transformational potential, which sectors will see the biggest influence from tokenization in terms of resilience, innovation and social impact?
Generative AI As artificial intelligence moves from analyzing existing data to creating new text, images, and videos, how will these improvements shift the augmentation versus automation debate and what implications will it have for industries?
January 18
Protecting Cyberspace Amid Exponential Change The confluence of rising cyberattacks and a complex geopolitical backdrop creates an increasingly challenging environment for decision-makers to predict, prioritize, and respond to cyber risks. How can leaders foster a more secure and resilient digital ecosystem to prepare for future cyber shocks?
Tradetech Meets Fintech The digitization of all aspects of international supply chains and transactions is enabling more accessible and reliable trade, financing, and payments. How can the emergence of tradetech be accelerated to meet the world’s needs?
The Quantum Tipping Point Quantum technologies have massive potential in a wide array of domains, from finance to energy. With these technologies holding the promise of unleashing new discoveries, security and performance, how close are we to a true quantum revolution of industries?
Press Conference: Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023 Geopolitical developments and the implementation of emerging technologies have re-shaped the cyber-threat and increased organized cyber-attackers’ potential for harm. This is exacerbating our interconnected energy, economic, and geopolitical crises.The Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023 examines the cybersecurity trends that will impact our economies and societies in 2023. The report includes the results of new research on how leaders are responding to cyber threats now and provides recommendations on what leaders can do to secure their organizations in the year to come.
In the Face of Fragility: Central Bank Digital Currencies Over 100 nations are exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and each has a different motive for implementation, now exacerbated by geopolitical fragility and financial instability. What can we learn from countries that have implemented CBDC solutions and can they provide resiliency in the face of global risks and the high-inflation, low-growth, high-debt economy?
The Role of Finance in a Recovery Many global economies are already in, or are projected to enter, recession in the near future. How can the global financial system support corporates and individuals to preserve jobs, maintain livelihoods, and drive further and much-needed innovation?
Investing in AI, With Care As early backers of technology, investors wield great influence over which technologies are more likely to see the light of day. There is an opportunity for investors to work closely with their investee companies to ensure benefits are maximized and risks are mitigated, especially in technologies like AI. What metrics and tools can investors use to guide and shape investments in trusted and responsible technology systems?
Turning Technologies Into the Markets of Tomorrow The promise of new technologies does not always translate into economic progress, while tried and tested technologies can be the key to unlocking growth and transformation. How should policy-makers and businesses balance the role of new and old technologies?
January 19
Financial Inclusion Beyond Access Despite progress over the past decade, 24% of adults remain unbanked and about only half of all adults in developing economies can access funds within 30 days to cover an unexpected expense. What more can technology advancements and cross-sector coordination achieve to increase inclusion for underserved individuals and businesses?
From Mass Data to Mass Insights New technologies to generate insights without exposing the underlying data is ushering in a new era for value creation in the digital economy. From mapping the genome to reducing the carbon footprint, how can business leaders unlock value from data collaboration at scale?
Investing in the Worst of Times The scale of uncertainty in today’s markets is severely disrupting an already challenging investment landscape. How are the world’s largest investors adjusting to this unprecedented context and what effect will their asset allocation decisions have on the economy at large?
Finding the Right Balance for Crypto The boom and bust in the crypto markets, compounded by the dramatic volatility in 2022, has left many with questions about the future of blockchain innovation. What would it take to craft sufficiently robust regulation to realize the benefits of digital currencies while ensuring positive macroeconomic and societal outcomes?
January 20
How to Turbocharge Development Finance The key to scaling up financing for growth-related investments in developing countries lies in reorienting and expanding the role played by international financial institutions to plug potential funding gaps. How can these institutions help scale up financing for the broader economic, environmental, and social agenda?
Global Economic Outlook: Is This the End of an Era? The engines of global growth are slowing and the number of households and businesses facing economic distress is rising. What does the future of growth look like and what policies are needed to stabilize the global economy?
Splitit partnered with Alipay to power the firm’s Pay After Delivery payment option.
Splitit is leveraging Checkout.com’s payment-acquiring capabilities to facilitate Alipay’s Pay After Delivery.
Splitit was founded in 2012 as PayItSimple. The company rebranded in 2015 under its current name.
Installments-as-a-service company Splititannounced a new tie-up with global payments platform Alipay this week. Under the partnership, Splitit will power Alibaba Group-owned AliExpress’ Pay After Delivery.
The new payment option enables shoppers to pay after delivery using their existing credit card. Pay After Delivery leverages Splitit’s Installments-as-a-Service platform that embeds a branded experience within AliExpress’ checkout flow.
Splitit, which leverages Checkout.com’s payment-acquiring capabilities to offer the new installment service, was founded in 2012 as PayItSimple. Splitit’s Installments-as-a-Service tool is similar to well-known buy now, pay later (BNPL) technologies in that it enables consumers to pay for a good or a service in installments, interest-free.
Splitit’s tool differentiates itself from BNPL, however, because it is completely white-labeled and offers customers a merchant-branded experience. Because of this, during the checkout flow, customers are not redirected to a third party. What’s more, because Splitit relies on a consumer’s existing credit card, the company does not require additional credit checks. All of this results in less friction for the customer and better control over customer relationships for the merchant.
“Our work with Alipay is a testament to the flexibility of Splitit’s platform and the strength of our new partnership with Checkout.com. Together we are providing a valuable resource for sellers and shoppers by powering payment after delivery,” said Splitit CEO Nandan Sheth. “We are thrilled to collaborate with two exemplary companies like Alipay and Checkout.com. I look forward to building on this initial launch by expanding into other markets in the future.”
Splitit is based in Atlanta with offices in London and Australia, as well as an R&D center in Israel. The company is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under ticker code SPT and also trades on the US OTCQX under ticker SPTTY and STTTF. Splitit has partnered with both Stripe and Shopify in recent years to act as an installments-as-a-service option for their merchant clients.
Denmark-based Subaio announced this week that it was teaming up with fellow Danish fintech – and fellow Finovate alum – Aiia. Subaio will leverage its partnership with Aiia to better assess creditworthiness for its new white label offering. The collaboration will streamline creditworthiness assessment through a combination of Aiia’s access to financial data and Subaio’s recurring payments detection technology.
“To create automation and a product that works for solid credit scoring across industries, we need as solid and deep quality of data as possible to label the transactions and categorize them afterwards,” Subaio Chief Commercial Officer Soren Nielsen said. “That’s why we chose Aiia to help us bring this next exciting step in the Subaio journey up to speed.”
In some ways, partnerships like this are being encouraged by regulatory decisions. The EU’s revised Consumer Credit Directive of 2021 mandates that financial services firms document customer income and recurring expenses before offering financing to help lower the number of non-performing loans.
“With Aiia, Subaio will be able to offer their customers a hassle-free, cost-efficient and data-driven solution to assess creditworthiness,” Aiia SMB & Fintech Director Tanya Slavova said. “With our high quality data in mind, this open banking empowerment will grant borrowers better loan assessments based on the accurate overview of the consumer’s actual financial situation.”
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Denmark, Subaio made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin. At the conference, the company demoed its white label subscription management service, which gives customers a comprehensive overview of their recurring payments, helps them cancel unwanted subscriptions, and provides notifications to enable customers to avoid “subscription traps.” The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateEurope 2022 in London with a demo of its automatic creditworthiness assessment solution.
Subaio has raised $4.9 million in funding from investors including Global PayTech Ventures. Thomas Laursen is CEO.
Making its Finovate debut at our all-digital FinovateEurope 2021 conference, Copenhagen, Denmark-based Aiia was launched in 2017. A leading open banking platform in Northern Europe, the company demoed its account-to-account payment services at FinovateEurope 2021, showing how the technology facilitates everything from one-off payments for ecommerce to bulk payments for SMEs using a single API. Aiia was acquired by Mastercard in the fall of 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Rune Mai is CEO and co-founder.
In other fintech news from the Nordics, Boost.ai, a Finovate alum from Norway, announced that it will bring its conversational AI technology to Nordic bank DNB. Specifically, DNB will use Boost.ai’s technology to automate more than half of the bank’s chat traffic with its Aino virtual agent. Aino presently automates upwards of 20% of the bank’s customer service requests. According to DNB, more than one million of its customers have interacted with Aino.
Boost.ai VP of EMEA Sanjeev Kumar praised DNB has “one of the many forward-thinking organizations that are reaping the benefits of embracing a conversational AI solution.” Kumar highlighted the fact that conversational AI helps free up staff to enable them to focus on higher-order and more complex customer service tasks. Headquartered in Oslo, DNB is the largest financial services group in Norway. DNB offers a full range of financial services, including loans and savings, insurance and pension products, as well as advisory services for both retail and corporate customers.
“Artificial intelligence is an important part of our digital strategy,” DNB SVP and Head of IT Emerging Technologies Jan Thomas Lerstein said. “In leveraging AI, our aim is to revitalize our value chains, creating better service for our customers and, of course, value for the bank.” Lerstein added that DNB is evaluating other AI-enabled solutions including voice APIs to help the bank reach “higher levels of personalization.”
Boost.ai made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York in 2019, demoing its virtual agent technology. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sandnes, Norway, the company introduced a new CEO – Jerry Haywood – in the fall of 2022. Haywood took over the position from founder and previous CEO Lars Selsås, who will focus on product development and innovation going forward.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Middle East and Northern Africa
UAE-based Careem Pay teamed up with Lulu Exchange to offer international remittances.
American Express agreed to acquire Israel-based B2B payments automation company Nipendo.
PayPal-owned Xoom has added international money transfers to its Debit Card Deposit product.
Leveraging a partnership with Visa, U.S. users can send funds directly to recipients’ eligible Visa debit cards.
Debit Card Deposit originally launched domestic transfers in 2020.
PayPal’s international money transfer service Xoomadded a new debit card feature today that will help users send money across international borders. Leveraging a partnership with Visa, Xoom’s Debit Card Deposit product now facilitates international money transfers.
Debit Card Deposit originally launched in 2020 to allow customers to send funds within the U.S. Today’s addition will enable Xoom customers in the U.S. to use the Xoom mobile app or web interface to send money across the international border directly to friends or family using their debit card. Recipients, who will receive the funds on their eligible Visa debit card, will be able to access the funds in real-time.
“We know that getting funds quickly and easily is important for many of our customers, which is especially true around the winter months and the holidays when people are sending money to their friends and family around the globe,” said PayPal Vice President of Remittances Wei-Lin Lee. “This expansion, through our partnership with Visa, will help more customers around the world get a fast and convenient way to access necessary funds needed for everyday essentials.”
Funds can be sent to 25 countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Lithuania, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Xoom will add more regions later this year.
Xoom was founded in 2001 and was acquired by PayPal in November of 2015 for $890 million. The company enables peer-to-peer money transfers that can be sent directly to the recipient’s bank account or debit card. Recipients also have the option to pick up physical cash at brick-and-mortar partner locations or receive the cash at their doorstep via a delivery.
