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Salt Edge and ebankIT Team Up to Help Financial Institutions Maximize the Opportunity of Open Banking

Salt Edge and ebankIT Team Up to Help Financial Institutions Maximize the Opportunity of Open Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, ebankIT, Salt Edge
  • A pair of Finovate alums — Salt Edge and ebankIT – have teamed up to help financial institutions leverage open banking to provide more services to customers.
  • The partnership will enable ebankIT’s bank and credit union clients to access accounts from more than 5,000 financial institutions.
  • Salt Edge is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ebankIT is based in Porto, Portugal.

A newly announced partnership between Finovate alums ebankIT and Salt Edge will help financial services companies in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere to maximize the opportunity of open banking. The partnership will enable ebankIT to empower banks and credit unions to access accounts from more than 5,000 banks. At the same time, working with Salt Edge – an ISO 27001 certified company licensed as an AISP under PSD2 – will ensure that open banking compliance requirements across regions will be fulfilled.

“At ebankIT, we understand that Open Banking is the way forward when it comes to humanizing the digital banking experience for millions of end-users worldwide,” ebankIT Head of Sales HQ and Partnerships Pedro Leite said. “That’s why we believe that this partnership with Salt Edge will bring great benefits to our ecosystem of financial institutions.”

With its Omnichannel Digital Banking Platform, ebankIT helps financial institutions to make digital transformations, regardless of their size. Currently licensed to FIs in 11 countries, ebankIT’s platform enables banks and credit unions to offer customer experiences across all modern digital channels, from online and mobile to wearables and the metaverse. A Best of Show winner at FinovateFall in 2019, the Portugal-based company most recently demonstrated its technology this spring at FinovateEurope.

In addition to its partnership with Salt Edge, ebankIT has teamed up with other Finovate alums in 2022. In October, the company announced that it was working with multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner MX to integrate MX’s Insights and Personal Financial Management (PFM) tools into its digital banking platform. Earlier this year, ebankIT announced a collaboration with another multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Horizn. This pact is designed to help financial institutions smoothly launch new ebankIT platform deployments for both front-line employees and customers.

Salt Edge, which demoed its technology at a part of FinovateEurope in 2018 and 2019, was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company offers both an open banking gateway – to help companies access account information, conduct payment initiation, and leverage data enrichment to turn raw data into actionable insights – as well as a PSD2 compliance hub. Salt Edge’s compliance hub provides a full-stack compliance solution for banks and electronic money institutions, strong, mobile customer authentication, and TPP verification.

“As two cutting-edge tech players pursuing to revolutionize the financial world, we strive to create innovative solutions that will improve financial services for both institutions and consumers,” Salt Edge Chief Growth Officer Alina Beleuta said. “By teaming up, we can double our forces to bring innovations to the financial landscape through seamless open banking solutions.”

Photo by Lisa Fotios

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I Was Wrong: 2023 Fintech Predictions Edition

I Was Wrong: 2023 Fintech Predictions Edition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Julie's Column, Thought Leadership

What does it take to be a fintech analyst? You have to be willing to get things wrong on occasion. Along with that, you need to be able to admit when you’re wrong. This becomes most apparent every December, when it comes time to share predictions on what the fintech industry can expect in the coming year.

Many of my predictions for 2023, which you can find published in this month’s eMagazine, were shaped from looking back at the trends I predicted for the latter half of 2022. Here’s a look at some of those trends, along with an assessment of how I did and a prediction for how the trend will fare in 2023.

Prediction #1: Beginning the era of “neo super apps”

How I did:
Wrong. With every other fintech company claiming to be a super app these days, this prediction is slightly subjective. In my opinion, however, we haven’t entered an era of neo-super apps.

What to expect:
A year ago, I would have identified the first potential U.S. super app as PayPal. However, Walmart has been making strides in this area and is getting ready to compete in the fintech arena. As a bottomline, we are still a ways out from super apps taking over fintech.

Prediction #2: Accelerating M&A activity

How I did:
Somewhat correct. In comparing M&A activity to pre-pandemic 2019 levels, M&A activity has indeed increased. Though year-end data for 2022 hasn’t been published yet, according to FT Partners’ Q3 2022 Fintech Insights Report, there have been 998 deals so far in 2022. While this represents a slight increase over the 986 M&A deals conducted in 2019, it is a large slide from the 1,486 deals closed last year.

What to expect:
The recent economic decline is causing companies to watch their pockets closely and mitigate risk where they can. Many large fintechs have already made major layoffs in order to maintain their bottomline or reduce their burn rate. These factors will contribute to both lower deal numbers and deal volume in 2023.

Prediction #3: Dwindling conversation around digital transformation

How I did:
Correct. While the need for digital transformation across verticals has not subsided, the continuous pulse of conversation around digital transformation has eased up.

What to expect:
This does not mean that digital transformation is over. In fact, many of the conversations we can expect to have in 2023– such as embedded finance, banking-as-a-service, and personalization– are built on the foundation of digital transformation.

Prediction #4: More discussion around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)

How I did:
Correct. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has not taken much action toward creating a CBDC other than issuing a discussion paper on the topic. However, there has been a flurry of activity around CBDCs across the globe. In December of 2021, nine countries had launched a CBDC, while today, 11 have launched their own CBDC. Similarly, CBDC development has increased. In December of 2021, 14 companies had a CBDC in development, while today there are 26 countries with a CBDC in development.

What to expect:
In the U.S. the discussion around CBDCs will progress, especially now that the FTX scandal has brought to light the need for more governmental intervention and oversight.

Prediction #5: BNPL takes a backseat

How I did:
Wrong. Though there have been many publications warning consumers about the dangers of misusing BNPL tools, we are still seeing a regular pulse of new BNPL launches throughout the industry. And while the CFPB published a study on the growth of BNPL and its impact on consumers, the organization has not implemented any formal regulation restricting BNPL players’ movements in the market.

What to expect:
I’m refreshing this prediction for 2023. Consumers have over-leveraged themselves when it comes to BNPL, and it is not only starting to catch up with them, but it is also catching up with the BNPL companies themselves. According to the CFPB’s study, “Lenders’ profit margins are shrinking: Margins in 2021 were 1.01% of the total amount of loan originated, down from 1.27% in 2020.”

Additionally, though the CFPB has been vague on the timing, there is looming regulation facing BNPL tools. “Buy Now, Pay Later is a rapidly growing type of loan that serves as a close substitute for credit cards,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “We will be working to ensure that borrowers have similar protections, regardless of whether they use a credit card or a Buy Now, Pay Later loan.”

Subsiding talent acquisition

How I did:
Correct. Though companies will always face difficulties trying to secure quality employees, we are no longer seeing the tech talent war that we experienced in 2021. In fact, in the latter half of 2022, we saw the opposite. A handful of fintech companies, including Plaid, Autobooks, MX, Klarna, Brex, Stripe, Chime, and more, have laid off sizable portions of their staff.

What to expect:
The painful reality is that the layoffs will likely continue into 2023 as the economy continues to contract.

Photo by Brett Jordan

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Thoma Bravo Acquires Business Spend Management Firm Coupa Software for $8 Billion

Thoma Bravo Acquires Business Spend Management Firm Coupa Software for $8 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Thoma Bravo has acquired business spend management software company Coupa for $8 billion.
  • The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2023.
  • The acquisition follows rumors that Vista Equity Partners had planned to acquire Coupa earlier this year.

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo announced this week it is scooping up business spend management software company Coupa for a total of $8 billion. The all-cash transaction will make Coupa a privately held company and is expected to close in the first half of next year.

Coupa was founded in 2006 to offer businesses spend management solutions that help them view and control their indirect spending. Some of the company’s business spend management tools include e-invoicing, travel and expense management, spend analysis, treasury management, and more. Coupa went public in 2016 and has a current market capitalization of $5.98 billion.

“For more than a decade, we’ve been building an incredible Business Spend Management Community and have proudly cemented our position as the market-leading platform in our category. We’re looking forward to partnering with Thoma Bravo and accelerating our vision to digitally transform the Office of the CFO,” said Coupa Chairman and CEO Rob Bernshteyn. “While our ownership may change, our values do not. Every one of us at Coupa will continue to put our customers at the center of everything we do and help them maximize the value of every dollar they spend.”

Today’s report follows last month’s rumors that Texas-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners planned to purchase Coupa. Vista Equity Partners is not only a well-known investor in the fintech space, it has also made a handful of large acquisitions in the fintech space in the past few years, having acquired tax compliance firm Avalara earlier this year and cloud identity solutions provider Ping Identity in 2016.

Interestingly enough, Thoma Bravo acquired Ping Identity earlier this year for $2.8 billion after Vista Equity Partners exited its investment in the company. Thoma Bravo takes a buy-and-build approach in which it acquires similar companies and consolidates them to create synergies and develop companies with greater scale, scope, and broader service offerings. Among Thoma Bravo’s other investments in the fintech space are Bottomline Technologies, Digital Insight, SailPoint, Ellie Mae, and Kofax.

Regarding the company’s Coupa purchase, Thoma Bravo Managing Partner Holden Spaht said, “Coupa has created and led the large and growing Business Spend Management category. We’ve followed the company’s success for many years and have been impressed by its consistent track record of delivering high levels of value for its global customer base. We look forward to partnering with Rob and the rest of the management team to keep investing in the company’s product strategy while driving growth both organically and through M&A.”

Photo by Matthias Groeneveld

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Finovate Global Australia: CBA Launches Tech Hub, ANZ Plus Reaches 100K Customer Milestone, Aussie Regulators Target AMEX

Finovate Global Australia: CBA Launches Tech Hub, ANZ Plus Reaches 100K Customer Milestone, Aussie Regulators Target AMEX
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Launches Tech Hub in Brisbane

Over the summer, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) unveiled its latest technology hub in Melbourne. This week, we learned that the financial institution’s hub-building game is still strong, with word that that CBA has established another technology hub, this time in the city of Brisbane.

The goal of the new hub, located in Brisbane’s central business district, is to help build the technology community in Queensland writ large. The bank is collaborating with The University of Queensland (UQ), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and TAFE Queensland to enable students and graduates to participate in CBA’s Tech Associates and Graduate programs. The new hub will also create job opportunities for technology professionals including engineers, cyber specialists, and data scientists.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Chief Information Officer Brendan Hopper pointed to COVID era trends as one reason why CBA has become especially interested in Queensland. “The COVID pandemic saw many of our technology professionals choose to relocate to Queensland to pursue a change of lifestyle,” Hopper explained. “By having the tech hub in Brisbane, our people based there will still have access to major technology employers like DBA and can make an impact in their work without having to relocate interstate.”

The technology hub in Brisbane is the third such opportunity CBA has launched this year. In February, the bank opened a technology hub in Adelaide.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a multi-national institution with operations in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the U.K. The financial institution, one of the four biggest banks in Australia (along with National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, and Westpac) was founded in 1911 by the Australian government and privatized in 1996. CBA had more than one trillion in total assets as of 2020.

ANZ’s Digital Bank Reaches 100,000 Customer Milestone

Speaking of Australia’s big banks, ANZ announced this week that its digital bank, ANZ Plus, has reached 100,000 customers, and more than two billion in deposits.

“New features, better security, along with a suite of tools and coaches to help people save more, combined with competitive rates are driving more people to ANZ Plus than ever before,” ANZ Managing Director of Design and Delivery Peter Dalton said. “(It) is the fastest growing new digital bank in Australia.”

Launched in March, ANZ Plus offers accountholders an everyday account that tracks spending, and a savings account with features to help users reach their financial goals. ANZ Plus offers 3.5% interest on savings for ANZ Save balances under $250,000; and charges neither monthly account fees nor withdrawal fees at major Australian bank ATMs. Additionally, ANZ Plus customers can schedule one-on-one sessions with a financial coach to help them uncover ways that they can enhance their financial wellness, including tips on spending less and saving more.

“We are continually adding new features to improve customer experience,” Dalton said, “and have begun piloting our digital home loan product with staff.”

Other features available on ANZ Plus include biometric logins for iOS users, as well as dynamic CVV, BPAY, pay to PayID, and the ability to join with an international passport.

ANZ – which stands for the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd – is the second biggest bank in Australia by assets. Headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, ANZ was founded in 1970 as part of the largest bank merger in Australian history at the time. In the decades since then, ANZ has grown into a multinational banking and financial services entity with more than 51,000 workers, nine million customers worldwide, and more than one trillion in assets.

Australian Regulators Take AMEX to Court

While Australian banks are expanding opportunities for technology professionals and creating new resources for financial technology users, Australian regulators are cracking down on what they believe represents bad behavior on the part of one of financial services’ biggest players.

We learned this week that the Australia Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is alleging that a pair of credit cards issued by the local unit of American Express and co-branded with retailer David Jones did not provide adequate explanations about how the cards actually work.

Specifically, regulators have filed a lawsuit claiming that customers were confused about whether they had applied for a loyalty card or a credit card. Further, the lawsuit charges that American Express did not limit distribution to customers that were exclusively interested in cards that enabled them to earn points and receive other benefits. Regulators assert that AMEX was aware of the issue as early as February, but failed to act until July.

“Product providers must monitor and review whether consumers are receiving products consistent with their needs and cannot bring a ‘set and forget mindset’ to product governance,” ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in a statement. “It is critical that providers respond to poor outcomes they identify by making changes.”

As of this time, neither AMEX nor the company that owns the David Jones department store chain have commented on the lawsuit.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Tencent’s financial division, Tencent Financial Technology unveiled a new cross-border payments business, Tenpay Global.
  • Tonga Development Bank partnered with Europe-based payments platform BPC.
  • Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia launched a new digital offering, Rize.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech Ukheshe secured new funding from DPI and Fireball Capital.
  • In a bid to boost digital payments, the Central Bank of Nigeria put a limit of $45 on daily ATM withdrawals.
  • Finclusion, a credit-based neobank based in the Republic of Mauritius, raised $2 million in equity financing and rebranded officially to “Fin.”

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Ukraine will be the first country to benefit from the new cross-border payments partnership forged between Mastercard and Paysend.
  • Deutsche Bank announced a partnership with NVIDIA to encourage the use of AI and machine learning in financial services.
  • German corporate financing platform FinCompare partnered with ING Germany.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • A pair of Egypt-based fintechs – consumer financing platform One Finance and BNPL provider ADVA One – announced a partnership this week.
  • Saudi Araban fintech Tweeq secured an e-money license from the kingdom’s central bank, SAMA.
  • bondIT, a fixed income investment technology company based in Israel and New York, raised $14 million in funding.

Central and Southern Asia

  • U.K.-based financial services platform Tide went live in India with its app and business account.
  • The State Bank of Pakistan announced that it is drafting legislation ahead of a planned CBDC launch in 2025.
  • SBM Bank India reported that it is pursuing funding to support the development of its BaaS platform.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Latin American cryptocurrency platform Bitso announced a partnership with remittance company Félix Pago to enable WhatsApp-based crypto-powered payments.
  • Brazil-based digital bank C6 partnered with Thought Machine for its core banking technology.
  • Argentine fintch Ualá to offer personal loans to customers in Mexico courtesy of a partnership with ABC Capital.

Photo by Steve Weir

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The Future of Instant Payments: Our Conversation with Bernadette Ksepka of FedNow

The Future of Instant Payments: Our Conversation with Bernadette Ksepka of FedNow
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2023, Speaker series

What innovations are making their way to the payments space in the U.S.? How will the new FedNow Service impact the current payments infrastructure when it goes online in 2023? What can fintechs do to prepare themselves and get involved with a post-FedNow payments landscape?

This year at FinovateFall, we talked with Bernadette Ksepka, Assistant Vice President and Deputy Head of Product Development with the FedNow Service at the Federal Reserve System. With the launch of the FedNow Service drawing nearer, Ksepka helped put the challenges and opportunities in perspective.

On the promise of the FedNow Service

The Federal Reserve banks are developing an instant payment service for financial institutions of all sizes, across every community in the United States, to be able to offer safe and efficient instant payments to their customers, 24×7, 365 … Recipients of those funds are going to be able to have full access to that funding to be able to better manage their cash flow, to be able to make time-sensitive payments … In the back end, banks are going to be able to settle those transactions instantly instead of (in) hours or days. It will eliminate a lot of the liquidity and credit risk that exists today.

On the impact of FedNow on the payments landscape

The FedNow Service is going to modernize the U.S. payments infrastructure. It is really going to pave the way for a big change in the future of payments. It has been over 40 years since the Federal Reserve introduced a new payments rail, so we are super-excited that the FedNow Service is going to go live in the middle of next year.

On the innovation that FedNow may help unleash

The FedNow platform is use-case agnostic, so the possibilities are really endless. And as we’ve seen demand for instant payments grow, we’ve seen use cases expand and I think there are use cases out there that we are not even thinking about. For example, there’s a lot of energy around early wage access. Imagine an employer that can pay their employees at the end of the shift or at the end of the day instead of every two weeks. That makes that employer that much more competitive, especially in a really tight job market like we have today.

Check out the full interview with the Federal Reserve Systems’ Bernadette Ksepka on FinovateTV.

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia

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BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon

BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BondIT, Daily news, Funding
  • Fixed income technology innovator bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding.
  • The investment round was led by BNY Mellon and brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.
  • bondIT made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2016.

Credit analytics and fixed income technology company bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding. The strategic investment was led by BNY Mellon and featured the participation of existing investors, as well. BNY Mellon will join bondIT’s Board of Directors as part of the investment. Valuation information was not provided when the funding was announced but, according to Crunchbase, the funding brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.

“This investment will help us accelerate innovation and offer clients a unique holistic solution for fixed income investing,” bondIT founder and CEO Etai Ravid said. “As bond investors are keen to lock in higher yields, our versatile technology and data-driven approach can help them increase automation to improve efficiency and performance, and better mitigate risk.”

Headquartered in New York and Herzliya, Israel, bondIT provides front office investment technology. The company leverages data science, explainable AI, and other advanced technologies to enable its customers to build, analyze, and manage investment portfolios. bondIT’s technology helps its clients accomplish in minutes what previously took hours or even days. Predictive credit analytics enable bondIT customers to anticipate potential changes in corporate credit risk and take advantage of potential investment opportunities before they manifest themselves in the market

“Collaborating with bondIT will allow us to deliver innovative digital solutions for fixed income investors by enabling investment professionals to explore new investment options more easily through the use of AI, further expanding their portfolio optimization capabilities for clients,” BNY Mellon MD John Goodheart said.

bondIT’s relationship with BNY Mellon extends back to 2021, when bondIT participated in BNY Mellon’s startup accelerator program. In the months since then, bondIT added David Curtis as Partner and Head of Global Client Business, and teamed up with MEAG, the asset manager of Munich Re and ERGO. The MEAG partnership, announced almost exactly one year ago, will digitize MEAG’s credit risk workflows. The Munich, Germany-based company will also use bondIT’s Scorable Credit Analytics to enhance its own credit research processes. A component of bondIT’s fixed income technology solutions suite, Scorable Credit Analytics analyzes more than 250 data points a day and translates raw data from a wide variety of financial and market data sources to provide actionable insights for investors.

“Working with bondIT is another important step in driving technological progress across our organization,” MEAG CIO of Public Markets Prashant Sharma said. “We aim to continuously increase the quality and efficiency of our investment process, and technology plays a crucial part in this.”

Photo by Pixabay

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FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Fintech in the City of Bridges, Fraud Fighting Goes Dutch, and Making Stock Trading Social

FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Fintech in the City of Bridges, Fraud Fighting Goes Dutch, and Making Stock Trading Social
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finantix, FinovateEurope 2023, Stocktwits

If your company has ever demoed its technology at FinovateEurope, then we’ve got an opportunity for you!

Alumni Alley is our special showcase exclusively for companies that have demoed on stage at FinovateEurope. Held in London at FinovateEurope, March 14-15, Alumni Alley highlights those FinovateEurope alums who are continuing to innovate in areas ranging from payments and lending to regtech and digital banking.

Visit our FinovateEurope Alumni Alley Showcase hub to learn more about this special conference feature for FinovateEurope alums.

Finantix: From Best of Show Winner to Private Banking Solution

Fintech might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Venice, Italy. But the so-called “City of Bridges” was the original home for Finantix, a fintech that emerged on the scene as a developer of software solutions to support client-facing employees in retail banking, wealth management, and financial advisory.

Demoing its Wealth Apps at FinovateEurope 2011, Finantix showed how its technology helped financial advisors move away from paper as their primary “support tool.” Instead Finantix’s technology leveraged tablets, including the iPad, to combine the simplicity of paper with the rich communication and graphic capabilities of new handheld technologies. The company’s offering enhanced all areas of customer engagement for financial advisors, from prospect coordination and client onboarding to client and portfolio management. FinovateEurope audiences were impressed, awarding the software company with a Best of Show award.

Alessandro Tonchia demonstrating Finantix Wealth Apps at FinovateEurope 2011.

Founded in 1994 and acquired by Motive Partners in 2018, Finantix today is the Private Banking Division of InvestCloud (Motive Partners purchased a majority stake in InvestCloud in 2021). InvestCloud offers a no-code software platform for digital transformation and commerce enablement within the financial industry.

In 2020, Finantix introduced new CEO Christine Ciriani. “I am delighted to take up this leadership position at Finantix,” Ciriani said when the appointment was announced. “With an award-winning product offering, our innovative client-first culture and very strong R&D, sales, and delivery teams, we are well positioned to capitalize on the investments made since Motive Partners acquired an interest in the company.”

BusinessForensics: Acquisition Bolsters Fight Against Financial Crime

Netherlands-based BusinessForensics was founded in 2008 and went live in 2010, just one year before the company demoed its technology at the inaugural FinovateEurope in London. A specialist in financial crime fighting, BusinessForensics offers businesses an integrated enterprise suite to help them manage risk, fraud, and compliance. Working with banks and insurance companies, as well as public organizations and government agencies, BusinessForensics helps companies spot fraudulent transactions with real-time monitoring of mission-critical operations. Fully integrated and customizable forensic case management and reporting give firms the ability to easily handle both exceptions and incidents.

More than a decade later, BusinessForensics’ offering, Client Risk Intelligence, consists of four modules – AML and sanctions surveillance, Know Your Customer/Customer Due Diligence (KYC/CDD), Fraud and Risk Surveillance, and Special Investigations – which combine to provide a 360 degree client risk profile.

BusinessForensics Rob van Eerden demonstrating the company’s technology at the first FinovateEurope in 2011.

BusinessForensics was acquired by Munich, Germany-based regtech cleversoft group in the fall of 2020. “To be able to fulfill the increasing regulatory demands (our customers) are confronted with, we wanted to initiate a cooperation with a larger regulatory compliance software provider and also to ignite further growth outside of the Netherlands,” BusinessForensics CEO Tames Rietdijk said. “With cleversoft we found a complimentary match that will help us reach these goals by leveraging their organizational maturity, their customer base, and provide our solutions in the DACH market.”

From 50k to Six Million: The Story of StockTwits

When StockTwits made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2011, the “community powered idea and information service” for investors and traders had just over 50,000 registered users. Today, the 14-year old company has more than six million registered users on what has become one of the largest social networks for investors and traders.

StockTwits was founded by Howard Lindzon and Soren Macbeth as a way to leverage the fast growing social media app known as Twitter to organize conversations between traders and investors about individual stocks. The company used “cashtags” with the ticker symbols of stocks (as in “$AAPL”) as a way to help index online analysis, opinions, and commentary about individual stocks, making it easier for investors and traders on apps like Twitter to source the information.

Ben Weiss, StockTwits VP of Business Development in 2011, demonstrating the company’s platform at FinovateEurope.

Last year, StockTwits secured $30 million in funding, giving the company a valuation of $210 million. This year, StockTwits launched its crypto trading platform and introduced functionality to enable individual investors and traders to buy and sell equities directly from the StockTwits platform.

“With the addition of equities trading to our existing crypto trading product, the StockTwits platform continues toward bringing a full suite of execution capabilities,” StockTwits CEO Rishi Khanna said when the equities trading functionality was unveiled earlier this year.

Photo by Recal Media

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Wells Fargo Launches New Digital Banking Platform Vantage for Commercial and Corporate Clients

Wells Fargo Launches New Digital Banking Platform Vantage for Commercial and Corporate Clients
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Wells Fargo
  • Wells Fargo launched a new digital banking platform, Vantage, for commercial, corporate, and investment banking.
  • Vantage leverages AI and machine learning to deliver more personalized recommendations and actionable insights based on clients’ unique needs.
  • The new offering comes as part of Wells Fargo’s digital transformation efforts, which include the launch of a new consumer mobile banking app earlier this year.

The new digital banking platform from Wells Fargo, called Vantage, is an upgrade of the bank’s Commercial Electronic Office, or CEO Portal. The new offering is designed to give Wells Fargo’s commercial, corporate, and investment banking clients a more personalized experience by leveraging AI and machine learning. Vantage uses both enabling technologies to provide recommendations and actionable insights based on the specific needs of clients, and refines and improves its capacity for personalization as clients use the technology.

“Our Commercial and Corporate clients’ banking needs evolve over time, which is why we’re delighted to launch Vantage, a digital banking platform that simplifies and personalizes their experience so that they can stay focused on what’s most important – growing and improving their businesses,” Wells Fargo’s Reetika Grewal said. Grewal is the head of Digital for Commercial Banking and Corporate & Investment Banking clients.

Wells Fargo’s launch of Vantage is being billed as part of the institution’s overall digital transformation efforts. These efforts include the introduction of a revamped consumer mobile app — featuring a virtual assistant called Fargo — announced in October and launched earlier this year. The new Fargo-enabled app is able to handle a variety of basic banking tasks, including billpay and sending money, as well as provide transaction details and budgeting advice. This week’s Vantage announcement also arrives in the wake of Wells Fargo’s launch of its automated, same-day loan solution, Flex Loan.

Wells Fargo has approximately 27 million active mobile banking users, trailing rivals Bank of America, with more than 32 million active mobile banking users, and JP Morgan Chase, with more than 44 million such customers, as of Q3 of last year. Further, Wells Fargo is growing its mobile banking customers at a slower pace compared to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, according to company statements published by CNBC.com.

That said, customers appear to be happy with their Wells Fargo mobile banking experience. The bank’s app came in third place in the Touchpoint Group Engaged Customer Score (ECS) banking app performance rankings for banks in the U.S. – trailing Bank of America and top-rated Citi Bank, but ranking ahead of Chase. Touchpoint Group highlighted Wells Fargo’s app upgrade as a potential source of the app’s strong rating.

Photo by Adrien Olichon

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The Four Ps of Analytics Financial Services Organizations Can’t Do Without

The Four Ps of Analytics Financial Services Organizations Can’t Do Without
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: InterSystems, Sponsored

This is a sponsored post by Tim FitzGerald, EMEA Financial Services Sales Manager, InterSystems

The use of analytics within the financial services sector has evolved over the years, with some suggesting that it could be about to evolve even further, moving from a landscape where decisions are “data-dictated”, rather than “data-informed.”

There is a distinct difference between the two concepts and the role, or lack of, that humans play in each scenario. In the case of data-informed, humans remain in the loop to make decisions and take the appropriate actions based on data and analytics, whereas data-dictated refers to applications executing programmatic actions automatically in response to some stimulus or event.

So, are financial services organisations really at a point today where human insight is no longer a vital requirement of the decision-making process and are there really just two types of data-related decision-making at play? In short, no. But it’s not completely black and white, as discussed in a recent Economist Intelligence webinar. Instead of just two options, today’s financial services firms typically implement four different categories of analytics: panoramic, predictive, prescriptive, and programmatic. Depending on the use case and the organisation, each of these types of analytics provide businesses with immense value.

Panoramic, predictive, prescriptive, and programmatic

Firstly, panoramic is about providing the business with a real time, accurate, expansive view of what’s happening inside and even outside the organization. For financial services, that might be the real-time liquidity across an entire firm.

Predictive, on the other hand, calculates the probability that events are likely to occur. For example, what’s the probability the Bank of England will cut interest rates if inflation pressures ease, as has been mooted, and how will this impact the firm’s positions?

Prescriptive analytics analyzes data to suggest the most appropriate actions to take, based on what is likely to occur, or what is already happening. This type of analytics would allow an investment bank for example to continuously predict the probability that their total market exposure will breach their risk utilization limits. With the right data and analytics platform in place, firms can also obtain prescriptive guidance that presents various options they can take to prevent or eliminate a breach, with the expected outcomes and trade-offs associated with each option.

These insights allow risk managers, who tend to have extensive experience in handling these kinds of situations, to make decisions based on their experiences, and guided by data-driven prescriptive analytics. For instance, it can help them to determine whether to initiate a hedge or unwind some positions. Prescriptive analytics therefore ensures experienced experts remain in the loop and at the heart of decision-making, rather than actions happening programmatically.

The final of the four Ps is about executing real time programmatic actions based on predictive and prescriptive analytics. Often, programmatic analytics are employed when there’s no time for human intervention, for cases like fraud prevention, pre-trade analytics, trading, and customer next-best action. Programmatic actions are also deployed in use cases when there’s simply no need for a human to be in the loop, which allows the organization to streamline operations and improve productivity.

Pragmatic application of the four Ps

Consequently, rather than moving away from a data-informed (human in the loop) to data-dictated (no human in the loop) state, the financial services sector is instead opting for the pragmatic application of any or all of these four Ps of analytics.

This use of analytics is providing firms with the capabilities needed to gain a 360-degree view of enterprise data, delivering a wide range of benefits to the business including better compliance, increased revenue generation, and improved decision support. When financial business leaders are empowered by real-time data and analytics, they are able to make decisions based on accurate and current data, not data that is weeks old, thereby eliminating errors and missed business opportunities.

Additionally, by incorporating advanced analytics into real-time processes flows, dashboards, and reporting, businesses can obtain better insights to guide decision-making, helping to understand what happened, why it happened, and what is likely to happen.

Armed with a current, trusted, and comprehensive view of what’s happening in the moment ensures financial services firms are prepared for events and disruptions that are likely to occur, can manage events and disruptions faster as they arise, and are in the best position to take advantage of new opportunities as they present themselves.

Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Canada: Clik2pay Partners with Inovatec; BMO Offers Installments; RBC Buys HSBC’s Canadian Business

Finovate Global Canada: Clik2pay Partners with Inovatec; BMO Offers Installments; RBC Buys HSBC’s Canadian Business
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Compass Plus, Finastra, Finovate Global, MasterCard, nCino, Nordigen, Nubank, ThetaRay

There are many countries whose fintech innovations are often overlooked. And Canada, America’s legendarily kinder, gentler neighbor to the north, is among them.

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech headlines emanating from the Great White North this week. The news ranges from big new fundings to new product launches to deal-making in Canada’s banking industry.

Clik2pay, a payment service provider based in Toronto, Ontario, has teamed up with lending process automation expert Inovatec. The partnership will enables Inovatec’s clients to use Clik2pay’s direct-from-account payment platform to request payments from customers. The functionality leverages Interac’s e-Transfer money transfer solution to ensure safe and secure fund movement.

“Clik2pay is always looking for ways to make the payments process simpler,” Clik2pay Chief Commercial Officer David Robinson said. “Allowing borrowers to make payment directly from their bank account in real-time through an email or text makes paying incredibly easy for the customer and allows for more efficient collections and payment reconciliation by lenders.”

The collaboration will give lenders the ability to use email to collect payments directly from customer bank accounts – and have those payments reconciled automatically on Inovatec’s platform. The process supports agent-assisted collections, as well, enabling lenders to textc customers payment links and secure real-time notification of successful payments “before the borrower hangs up the phone” the company noted in a statement.

Clik2pay is the first Canadian company to provide real-time, direct-from-account payments for businesses at almost all FIs in the country. Founded in 2019, Clik2pay relaunched its Clik2pay mobile app for small businesses last month. The new app features an enhanced user experience, including improved, simplified onboarding. Mike Bradley is founder and CEO.

Canadian banks have made fintech headlines this week, as well. Bank of Montreal (BMO), for example, announced the launch of its new credit card installment offering. Currently available to BMO’s Canadian retail credit card customers via their online banking platform, the new plan – called PaySmart – enables customers to convert eligible credit card purchases of more than $100 into smaller monthly payments.

Customers will be able to choose between three, six, or 12 equal monthly payments. No interest is charged and BMO will access a monthly fee of up to 0.9%. Because purchases are within the customer’s existing credit limits, no additional credit check or approval is required.

BMO’s latest offering is part of a suite of solutions designed to help its customers better manage cash flow and finances. These solutions include the bank’s Pre-Authorized Payments Manager, Same Day Grace feature, and BMO CashTrack.

In other Canadian banking news, Royal Bank of Canada announced that it has purchased U.K.-based HSBC’s Canadian business for $10 billion (£8.4 billion; C$13.5 billion). The move comes as HSBC seeks to bolster its business in Asia – especially China. The company has more than 130 branches and 780,000 customers as part of HSBC Canada. And while HSBC has also expressed plans to abandon its retail banking operations in the U.S. and France, it is the company’s Canadian division that has turned a profit -whereas both its businesses in the U.S. and France have not.

The acquisition is the biggest by RBC under the tenure of CEO Dave McKay, who has also tried to calm concerns about potential layoffs by noting that RBC is considered one of the best workplaces in the country. McKay also pointed to the fact that RBC has nearly 6,000 open positions and referred to the acquisition as a “talent acquisition opportunity” for RBC. HSBC Canada has $134 billion in assets and 4,200 full-time employees.

“HSBC Canada offers the opportunity to add a complementary business and client base in the market we know best and where we can deliver strong returns and client value given our financial strength and award-winning service,” McKay said in a statement.

Earlier this week we shared news that Toronto-based FinovateFall 2019 alum Buckzy Payments had secured $14.5 million in Series A funding. The company offers real-time, cross border payments services, as well as banking-as-a-service capabilities, via its embedded finance platform. The company has more than 140 bank, neobank, and fintech customers since going live with its platform in 2020. This week’s funding takes Buckzy’s total equity capital to more than $23 million. The round was led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures.

“This round of financing is a validation of Buckzy’s vision to create an intelligent and automated international payment system,” Buckzy CEO Abdul Naushad said. “We’re on a mission to build the plumbing for real-time money movement globally, the same way high-speed internet fundamentally shifted the communications industry.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazil’s Nubank announced that it will offer savings accounts and debit cards in Mexico via its digital banking arm, Nu México.
  • Chilean based alternative credit scoring fintech Destácame raised $10 million in funding.
  • Brazilian fund Latitud released its The LatAmTech Report 2022 this week highlighting trends for B2C fintech in Latin America.

Asia-Pacific

  • Finastra launched a new Center of Excellence (COE) at MRANTI Technology Park in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
  • Cambodia’s ABA Bank leveraged technology from Compass Plus Technologies to introduce instant card issuance kiosks.
  • Financial crime compliance company Napier announced its entry to the Japanese market via its financial crime risk management platform, Napier Continuum.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • ThetaRay and Ghanian mobile financial services company Zeepay partnered to help fight financial crime in remittance transactions.
  • TechCrunch profiled South African payments company Revio.
  • Kenyan payment service provider Cellulant launched its expansion to South Africa..

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg Commercial Bank announced that it has implemented and is now live on the nCino Bank Operating System.
  • ING Germany partnered with Viafintech to launch new cash service offering.
  • Estonia-based payment tracking company Transferlink announced a partnership with open banking platform Nordigen.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE-based expense management platform Qashio secured $10 million in seed funding.
  • Jingle Pay, a financial super app based in the UAE, announced a strategic agreement with Mastercard.
  • Israel-based workplace intelligence platform Shield raised $20 million in Series B funding.

Central and Southern Asia

  • KreditBee, a fintech platform based in India, raised $80 million in Series D funding.
  • Mumbai-based youth banking startup Galgal Money secured $1 million in funding.
  • M bank in Mongolia is the latest customer – and first Mongolian client – of Singapore-based B2B SaaS fintech finbots.ai

Photo by Andre Furtado

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FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Backbase Rebrands, Boku Booms, and SecureKey Finds Opportunity in Acquisition

FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Backbase Rebrands, Boku Booms, and SecureKey Finds Opportunity in Acquisition
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Boku, FinovateEurope 2023, SecureKey

This week we began our celebration of FinovateEurope’s earliest alums. In honor of FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley Showcase – a new feature designed to highlight the innovations of FinovateEurope alums – we’re highlighting the companies that introduced their innovations to Finovate’s European audience more than a decade ago – and are still among the top innovators in fintech today.

Visit our FinovateEurope Alumni Alley Showcase hub to learn more about this special opportunity for FinovateEurope alums.

Don’t Call It A Comeback: Backbase’s Big Rebrand

Founded in 2003, Backbase has been demonstrating its fintech innovations on the Finovate stage for more than a decade. Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2011, the company made its most recent on-stage appearance at FinovateFall in 2021, demoing the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform. In that ten years, the Amsterdam-based company was awarded Best of Show on four occasions, including three from the company’s demos at our conferences in London.

From its origins as a Bank 2.0 innovator, helping banks take advantage of the growing consumer interest in online and mobile banking, to its current incarnation as an Engagement Banking specialist, Backbase has demonstrated a consistent mission of enabling FIs to turn emerging technologies into opportunities for better customer service and engagement. The company’s official rebrand this fall only underscores much of what Backbase has been about all along.

Backbase founder and CEO introducing Backbase’s technology at FinovateEurope 2011.

“Our proven growth model has brought us to where we are today and it’s time to evolve our branding to reflect that growth,” Backbase founder and CEO Jouk Pleiter said. “Backbase is the innovation partner enabling traditional banks and credit unions to take the leap into the platform era, and we’re just getting started.”

Most recently, Backbase announced an expanded relationship with Boston, Massachusetts-based Eastern Bank ($22 billion in assets). The institution deployed Backbase-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform to enable it to offer new digital banking solutions.

Boku Blossoms as Mobile Payments Boom

When Finovate audiences first met Boku at FinovateEurope 2011, the San Francisco-based company had 60 employees and $40 million in equity funding. Today, the direct mobile payments company is a publicly traded entity with more than 300 employees and a market capitalization of more than $390 million. Boku processes more than nine billion in payments every year, and includes some of the largest digital brands – from Google and Spotify to Netflix and Microsoft – as customers of what it bills as the largest mobile payments network in the world.

Boku founder Mark Britto demonstrating the company’s mobile payment technology at FinovateEurope 2011.

Boku was among the fintechs to recognize early on the potential mobile payments had to bring financial services to un- and underbanked consumers that owned mobile phones, but did not own credit cards or traditional bank accounts that would enable them to participate in online commerce. The company launched mobile wallet payments in the Philippines in 2012, brought mobile payments to Sony’s PlayStation Store in 2014 and, in 2020, acquired the Estonia-based carrier billing company Fortumo for $41 million.

This fall, Boku announced that it will supply Amazon.com with its digital wallet and other local payment methods as part of a new, multi-year agreement. Boku CEO Jon Prideaux said that the partnership helped reinforce the company’s “strategic move” into digital wallet payments.

SecureKey: Acquisition As An Enabler of Further, Faster Innovation

More than ten years after SecureKey won Best of Show at FinovateEurope 2011 for its authentication technology that leveraged contactless cards to streamline the online checkout process, the Toronto, Ontario-based company announced that it had agreed to be acquired by NortonLifeLock’s digital security and privacy firm, Avast.

SecureKey CEO Greg Wolfond demoing the company’s technology at FinovateEurope in 2011.

“SecureKey’s vision has been to revolutionize the way consumers and organizations approach identity and the sharing of personal information in the digital age,” SecureKey CEO Greg Wolfond said when the acquisition was announced this spring. “By working closely with governments, financial institutions, and businesses, we have an established track record of trusted and mature identity networks that provide consumers with the secure digital capabilities they deserve.”

SecureKey’s digital identity technology enables more than 200 million secure transactions a year internationally. Prior to the acquisition, SecureKey also had made major inroads in helping organizations and institutions, including governments, embrace modern authentication technologies. The company’s Verified.Me distributed digital identity verification network and Government Sign-In by Verified.Me provide secure and convenient login options to hundreds of government services and applications online. Both authentication services are provided by Interac under an exclusive Canadian licensing agreement.

Photo by Chris Panas

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X1 Card Raises $15 Million, Adds In-App Stock Purchasing

X1 Card Raises $15 Million, Adds In-App Stock Purchasing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to more than $60 million.
  • Along with today’s announcement, X1 is also unveiling a new in-app stock investing tool that will enable cardholders to purchase stocks using points.
  • X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members.

Challenger credit card X1 has raised $15 million this week. The funds bring the company’s Series B round to $40 million and elevate its total funds to more than $60 million. The investment was led by Soma Capital and included contributions from Brian Kelly (The Points Guy) and Kyle Vogt.

While the self-described smart credit card did not provide an exact valuation, the company said that today’s round increases X1’s total valuation by more than 50% over where it stood four months ago, when the company raised $25 million in Series B funding.

X1 will use the funds to fuel growth and roll out new services for its members. One such new feature is X1’s new investing platform that enables cardholders to buy stocks in the X1 app using their rewards points. X1 will guide investors by recommending stocks based on the cardholder’s spending habits, risk preferences, investment goals, income, and time horizon. The new capability will begin rolling out to select cardholders in the coming weeks.

The company said in the press release that it has future plans to expand the stock purchasing features “to compete with more traditional investment options.” Based on this, we can expect features common to Acorns and Robinhood such as spare change investing and automatic investment deposits.

For a card with no annual fee, X1’s rewards are hard to beat. The company offers cardholders 2x points on every dollar spent, 3x points on every dollar spent for the year if transactions exceed $15,000, and 4x points on each dollar for one month of purchases for each referral. X1 has paid out more than $10 million in rewards points since exiting its beta last October.

“With X1, we want to build an iconic and enduring consumer finance brand in an industry that’s long overdue for disruption,” said X1 CEO and Co-founder Deepak Rao. “We’re honored by the reception our card has continued to receive and to have raised this funding from Soma Capital, an early investor in more than 20 unicorns. With our innovative new investing platform, we’re excited to reimagine yet another sector in the consumer financial market.”

Outside of its rewards structure, X1 has other unique features that help differentiate itself in the crowded credit card market. The company has a stainless steel card and offers users virtual card numbers that they can set to expire on a specified date in order to avoid forgetting a subscription or a free trial period. The former automatically expires after one use, while the latter automatically expires 24 hours after it is activated.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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