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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Banking technology company Sandstone Technology appointed a new CTO this month. The company unveiled today it has selected Anthony McKew to fill the role.
With more than 35 years of experience in banking and technology, McKew has worked for companies including Linkly, Premier Technologies, and SecurePay. He has expertise in designing and managing enterprise-grade platforms for major retailers, government agencies, and digital operations for vendors and service providers.
“I am extremely pleased with the addition of Anthony to our Leadership team as our Chief Technology Officer,” said Sandstone CEO Abhish Saha. “This is an essential role, supporting our customers across the globe and being a key driver of our ongoing business strategy and growth. Anthony’s intimate understanding of Financial Institutions and their security and technology needs will be of great value to both our customers and our staff.”
McKew, who began his appointment on January 9th of this year, fills the shoes of Sandstone’s former CTO Chaitanya Pinnamaneni.
Sandstone was founded in 1996 and currently offers a suite of tools for loan origination, its BankFast mobile app that offers end users a seamless experience between web and mobile channels, and intelligent document processing tools that enable banks to capture, classify, and extract data stored in borrower-submitted documents.
The Australia-based company formed its most recent partnership with Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to offer a single platform that covers all its third party origination channels and limits exposure to legacy systems. In March of last year, Sandstone launched an innovation hub to capture emerging opportunities from new enabling technologies.
“At Sandstone we pride ourselves on our longstanding strategic partnerships with our customers, where we look to solve business problems together, not just provide a service,” said Sandstone CEOMichael Phillipou. “As the banking landscape continues to evolve apace, we’re excited to start working alongside our customers to develop solutions that grasp tomorrow’s opportunities, as well as today’s.”
Ping Identity has forged a partnership with device identification platform Fingerprint.
The partnership will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology into Ping Identity’s identity orchestration service, DaVinci.
Ping Identity made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateEurope in London.
Ping Identity, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016, announced a partnership with U.S.-based identity tech innovator Fingerprint. The collaboration will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology with Ping Identity’s DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service to enable users of DaVinci to accurately identify devices and stop fraud.
Fingerprint’s device identification platform provides 99.5% accuracy and, upon integration with PingOne DaVinci, will enable companies to enhance the customer experience by reducing the need for friction-producing multi-factor authentication for known users. The integration will enhance onboarding for new customers, as well. “Our mission is to empower developers to build safe and seamless Internet services,” Fingerprint CEO Dan Pinto said. He said that the partnership with Ping Identity would help show the effectiveness of the company’s device identity technology in a broad range of digital user journeys.
Fingerprint teamed up with Ping Identity as part of the latter’s Global Technology Partner Program. Growing the program and adding companies like Fingerprint is part of Ping Identity’s goal of delivering “better, more frictionless customer experiences” according to company SVP of Product Management Loren Russon. “Our partnership with Fingerprint leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey,” Russon said.
PingOne DaVinci enables users to design secure and seamless customer experiences across an entire technology ecosystem. The platform’s no-code orchestration and drag-and-drop interface mean that anyone who can whiteboard an experience can orchestrate it using DaVinci. Users build, design, and refine workflows, and then easily optimize these workflows with A/B testing and, where necessary, quickly deploy fixes and changes.
Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the sixth consecutive year, Ping One was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The company was acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in an all-cash $2.8 billion transaction. When the deal was closed in October, Ping Identity founder and CEO Andre Durand credited the way that “identity security and frictionless user experiences have become essential in the digital-first economy.” Durand added that, “with the support of Thoma Bravo, Ping Identity can further accelerate innovation to deliver the easy and secure digital experiences customers demand from every industry.”
Stripe and Amazon have agreed to “significantly expand” their partnership.
Under the agreement, Stripe will process a notable portion of Amazon’s total payments volume.
The two have been partners since 2017.
Payments infrastructure company Stripeannounced today that Amazon has agreed to “significantly expand” its use of its core platform, recruiting the California-based company as a strategic payments partner in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.
While there is no specific breakdown, Stripe said that it will be processing a “significant” portion of Amazon’s total payments volume across its business units, including Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime, and more.
The two companies first partnered in 2017 to fuel Amazon’s expansion in Asia and Europe, as well as to support purchases made on high-traffic shopping days such as Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
“In particular, we value Stripe’s reliability,” said Amazon VP of Payments Max Bardon. “Even during peak days like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, Stripe delivers industry-leading uptime. We appreciate Stripe’s relentless commitment to putting users first.”
The partnership also marks a continuation and expansion of Stripe’s reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides the payment company’s core computing infrastructure. Leveraging AWS, Stripe has been able to increase developer productivity and accelerate product development.
“We couldn’t run without AWS—and we wouldn’t want to,” said Stripe CTO David Singleton. “AWS is our customers’ first choice. The platform gives Stripe enormous developer leverage, which we then deploy in service of our users.”
Stripe was founded in 2010 and today processes hundreds of billions of dollars every year for businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 500 firms. The company acts as a one-stop shop for almost every payment need, including embedded payments, payment acceptance, billing, invoicing, and more. Stripe, which released its own App Marketplace last May, has raised a total of $2.2 billion across 20 rounds of funding.
Today’s positive news comes at a good time for both companies. Last November, Stripe laid off 14% of its workforce and, earlier this month, the company’s internal valuation was cut to $63 billion, down from the company’s $95 billion valuation in March of 2021. Amazon has also been in the headlines for recent layoffs, with plans to cut 18,000 jobs.
Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer wrapped up a year’s worth of fintech conversations with this handful of episodes featuring Finovate Best of Show winners, innovative bankers, and insightful venture capitalists.
“What you should understand about our fund is that it’s all B2B. There are four themes that we specifically focus on – the key one is modernizing financial institutions. And whether that’s banks or insurers or asset managers or wealth managers, I think it’s all about bringing the technology, the digitalization, and more to these institutions to increase their competitiveness.”
Michael Ruttledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology Services, Citizens Bank
“We set out a bold vision to modernize the technology platforms and infrastructure through something we called Next Generation Technology Strategy. What I’m most excited about are some of the key critical businesses we have been able to enable. We’ve done a tremendous job moving to the cloud; we partner with both AWS and Azure and, with AWS, we’ve actually built a platform that’s really been able to unleash developers.”
Melanie Pickett, Head of Asset Owners, Americas, Northern Trust
“I joined Northern Trust specifically to launch a fintech within the bank called Front Office Solutions, where we serve the world’s largest and most complex endowments, foundations, family offices, and pensions, and help them with the very complex portfolios that they’re managing and some of the very complex data management challenges that they have.”
Neepa Patel, Founder and CEO, Themis
Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Themis founder and CEO Neepa Patel on expecting more from your compliance department. Episode 153.
“Themis is a collaboration tech platform. Think of something like Airtable or Jira or Monday, but specifically created for governance, risk, and compliance workflows. Our modules represent different workflows that your company is already doing, but are probably doing it in the most inefficient way possible. We’ve brought all those tools that you’re using (and) put that information into one holistic view so that you get a better sense of what’s going on with compliance in your company.”
Don Shafer, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist, Quilo
Finovate’s Greg Palmer talks with Quilo co-founder and Chief Evangelist Don Shafer about the company’s transformative approach to funding loans. Episode 152.
“We need(ed) to build a platform that would enable a banker or credit union to provide all of their customers (with) a way to get a loan quickly. And so with Quilo, we’ve timed it over and over. If you’re already a customer of a bank or a member of a credit union, you can get your phone and apply, go through approvals and get funded, and have the money show up in your debit card in less than 70 seconds.”
FNZ has acquired digital fixed income trading company YieldX.
The acquisition will combine FNZ’s investment platform, which represents more than 20 million investors across the globe, with YieldX’s digital infrastructure.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Wealth management firm FNZ snapped up some new tech talent today with the acquisition of digital fixed income trading company YieldX. Terms of the deal, which will combine FNZ’s full-service investment platform with YieldX’s digital infrastructure, were not disclosed.
FNZ anticipates the buy will help it further its mission “to deliver personalized investment solutions to more people across the wealth management industry.” Furthermore, YieldX’s focus on technology will help FNZ provide more investment options at scale, offering investors more variety and transparency.
“We have a joint vision of opening up wealth by transforming the wealth management industry through more transparent, accessible, and personalized technology solutions. YieldX’s solutions perfectly complement our existing strengths and will further differentiate our offering for the benefit of all clients,” said FNZ CEO of North America Tom Chard. “The acquisition also provides a unique opportunity to accelerate our growth and presence in the U.S. as we continue to add market leading capabilities to our global wealth platform. We’re incredibly pleased to welcome Adam and Steve, as well as the wider YieldX team to FNZ. Like us they are highly innovative, customer obsessed, and are an invaluable addition to our team.”
Founded in 2004, FNZ helps financial institutions offer personalized wealth management services to their end users. Acquiring YieldX will help the firm deepen its digital offerings that match clients with fixed-income opportunities that meet their preferred term, yield, and risk tolerance. FNZ currently represents more than 20 million investors across the globe, with more than $1.5 trillion in client assets under management. The firm’s partners include over 650 large financial institutions and 8,000 wealth management firms in 21 countries.
YieldX was founded in 2019 and has since raised $36 million across three rounds. The company’s most recent funding came in 2021 from its integration partner Envestnet, which invested $18 million in YieldX. The company’s clients range from wealth and asset managers, to global B2C financial services and technology providers.
Once the acquisition is finalized, YieldX Co-founders Adam Green and Steve Gross will join FNZ as the company’s CEO of Asset Management and Head of Asset Management Strategy, respectively.
Earnix, an Israel-based company that provides insurers and banks with real-time, dynamic pricing and rating solutions, introduced a new Chief Executive Officer this week. Robin Gilthorpe will take over the top spot at the firm effective February 1st, replacing outgoing CEO Udi Ziv, who served as Earnix’s CEO for six years.
“Today’s end-customer demands unparalleled experience, alongside highly personalized and customizable solutions,” Gilthorpe said in a statement. “Earnix solutions serve as the go-to platform for financial services companies to address the growing demands of the world’s leading financial and insurance companies.”
Gilthorpe is a finance and insurance industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience at firms such as TIBCO, Vertexone, and Watersmart Software. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at insurtech company Salty where he helped generate a “nine-figure outcome” in the firm’s sale to CDK Global.
Founded in 2001, Earnix made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. In the years since then, the company has forged partnerships with companies like AI cloud platform DataRobot, cloud insurance software company Majesco and, last fall, J.D. Power. Also last fall, Earnix unveiled its Underwrite-It solution which helps businesses build and manage rules and decision logic to enhance decision-making during the underwriting process.
Earnix has raised more than $100 million in funding. The company includes Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) among its investors.
The seed funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. ZIM also was the entity behind the $100 million credit facility 40Seas received this week. The agreement comes with an option to extend the credit facility to $200 million.
40Seas leverages AI and data analytics to determine creditworthiness, and offers flexible payment arrangements to provide small importers and exporters, freight forwarders, and sourcing agencies with critical working capital. The company made its soft launch in October of last year and says that it already has financed transactions for “dozens of SMEs.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that small businesses represent more than 40% of all cross-border trade volume. Nevertheless, compared to large, multinational corporations, SMEs are “seven times more likely to be denied trade financing,” according to the World Trade Organization. Among the obstacles to these firms are siloed banking jurisdictions, working capital constraints, legacy processes, and more. To this end, 40Seas helps exporters get paid as quickly as possible and gives importers payment options that enable them to grow their businesses without incurring sizable additional debt.
“Given today’s harsh macroeconomic conditions, now more than ever, SMEs need easy access to financing to have the best chance of survival,” 40Seas co-founder and CEO Eyal Moldovan said.
40Seas is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Shenzhen.
Last month CTech published a short list of what it called the “five most promising early-stage fintech startups” in Israel. The list was based on the opinions of “prominent investors in the Israeli market” and looked at both “business potential” and “managerial depth.”
The businesses represented included travel insurance (Faye), an automated accounting platform (Trullion), a compliance platform (Sedric), a loan exchange for SMEs (Lama AI), and a payments workflow automation company (Nilus). Combined, the five companies have raised more than $47 million in funding from investors including Viola Ventures, F2, Third Point Ventures, Greycroft, Homeward Ventures, StageOne, Foundational Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
We’ll keep an eye on these and other innovative fintechs that are helping build Israel’s unique fintech ecosystem.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
What are the biggest obstacles to digital transformation in banking and financial services? For Leda Glyptis, self-described “recovering banker” and author of the new book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, the fault lies not in the stars, but in bankers themselves.
Fortunately, Glyptis sees bankers as the solution, as well.
“For years I have been blogging and speaking about how the biggest obstacle to progress inside banks is people. And that the only hope for change are also people,” Glyptis told Fintech Futures as the date of the world premier of her book was announced earlier this month. “What is so often approached as a technology journey often falls down or triumphs around the humans that keep on keeping on, the dreamers, the builders, the plumbers, and the storytellers of banking transformation.”
Leda Glyptis will discuss her experiences and insights as a veteran of the banking business in an afternoon keynote address on Day One of FinovateEurope, March 14 through 15 in London. Titled “The Problem With Digital Transformation is You,” Glyptis will discuss the human and structural obstacles to digital transformation with a focus on the kind of mentality and leadership bankers need to embrace in order to bring about the changes in banking and financial services that consumers increasingly demand.
For Glyptis, there is no reason – and no time – to wait for the rise of a younger, more digitally-native generation to do the work of transforming financial services. The time to act is now, and the ones to act are bankers — with “grit, determination and energy to drive change,” Glyptis insists. “Like us.”
Bankers Like Us will be available for pre-order on Friday, January 20th, and is expected to ship after February 10th. This provides plenty of time to get your copy of the book ahead of Glyptis’ keynote at FinovateEurope in March. At the event, after Glyptis’ afternoon keynote address, we will also host a special Networking Break & Book Signing with the author.
In addition to her work as an author, Glyptis is the Chief Client Officer at 10x Banking, a cloud-native core banking platform provider based in London. She is also a Non-Executive Director at leading U.K. cash deposit platform, Flagstone. Glyptis has a PhD in Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and shares her thoughts on banking and financial services as a columnist – and “resident thought provocateur” – with Fintech Futures. Her latest columns have tackled topics such as the importance of preparation, the role of pain in learning, and the challenge of maintaining the courage of convictions.
Be sure to visit our FinovateEurope 2023 hub to save your spot at our upcoming fintech conference, March 14 through 15 – featuring author Leda Glyptis’ keynote address on the afternoon of Day One.
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.
