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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Thomson Reuters agreed to acquire tax automation software company SurePrep for $500 million in an all-cash deal.
“The acquisition will support our strategy to empower tax and accounting professionals with the very best technology to simplify workflows, drive insights, and improve efficiency,” said Thomson Reuters President of Tax and Accounting Professionals Elizabeth Beastrom.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
Business information services firm Thomson Reuters recently announced it is acquiring tax automation software company SurePrep in a $500 million all-cash deal. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
Thomson Reuters offers four tax and accounting solutions: Checkpoint, a suite of online research and information; ONESOURCE, tax compliance technology; CS Professional Suite, integrated tax and accounting software; and Onvio, cloud-based software to manage projects, billing, and more. Purchasing California-based SurePrep will enable Thomson Reuters to accelerate its investment in advancing the automation and customer experience of its tax tools.
The two companies first partnered in April of this year to offer solutions for tax and accounting professionals. Once the two companies are combined, Thomson Reuters will bring its client base of tax and accounting professionals a suite of complementary solutions.
“Thomson Reuters sees significant value and opportunities in SurePrep,” said Thomson Reuters President of Tax and Accounting Professionals Elizabeth Beastrom. “The acquisition will support our strategy to empower tax and accounting professionals with the very best technology to simplify workflows, drive insights, and improve efficiency.”
SurePrep was founded in 2002 and has since grown to draw more than 23,000 tax professionals to its client base. The company leverages AI to help accounting firms increase productivity by collecting, processing, and extracting data from client documents. SurePrep then enters that data into firms’ tax compliance software. The company is expected to generate approximately $60 million in revenue this year and grow more than 20% each year for the next few years.
Before jumping into the content of this post, I’d like to recognize and thank our military veterans and their families for their continued sacrifice.
The Association of Military Banks of America (AMBA) is launching a new debit card called the Patriot Card.
The card is launching in partnership with digital accounts and payment processing company MOCA Financial.
AMBA will donate a portion of the interchange generated by every swipe of the Patriot Card to military and Veteran support organizations and causes.
The Association of Military Banks of America (AMBA)unveiled a new debit card today called the Patriot Card. AMBA, a military bank trade association, is launching the new payment card through a partnership with digital accounts and payment processing company MOCA Financial.
The Patriot Card aims to offer Veterans a safe, flexible, and reliable card that they can use to receive, spend, and save their government benefits. Features of the new card include a virtual card option, fee-free person-to-person transfers, card-to-card transfers, and low fees.
AMBA will donate a portion of the interchange generated by every swipe of the Patriot Card to military and Veteran support organizations and causes.
“AMBA is thrilled to offer Veterans a new, safer, and more flexible option to receive payments and manage their finances,” said AMBA President and CEO Major General (Ret.) Steven J. Lepper. “We teamed with MOCA because they share our determination to help Veterans achieve financial success. The Patriot Card will provide Veterans who prefer not to use bank or credit union accounts to manage their money an alternative that is equally safe and secure.”
Transactions made using the Patriot Card will be routed across either VISA’s network or the Armed Forces Financial Network (AFFN). AFFN serves consumers of more than 375 military banks and defense credit unions and will enable users of the Patriot Card to access more than 800,000 ATMs and 2.3 million retail locations across the globe.
“We’re honored to be able to play such a monumental role in serving Veterans worldwide,” said MOCA President Shawn Sinner. “We hope that this advancement continues to make life easier for Veterans, Military, Military Spouses, and families.”
Financial inclusion has been a rising hot topic in the past few years. Providing underserved populations with the tools they need to manage their finances and build their wealth has been a top goal across many banks and fintechs, especially those focused on credit and underwriting.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Gregory Wright, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Experian. Wright was a keynote speaker at this year’s FinovateFall event in New York. He offered key takeaways from his keynote, discussed opportunities for banks when it comes to financial inclusion, and talked about how they can prepare and plan to scale their operations.
Key takeaways from his keynote
I talked about innovation in three parts. The first part was about innovation with purpose. I think being mission-driven and wanting to have an impact in the world helps drive not only what you want to do as a business, it helps drive growth and [has an] impact on consumers and who you serve in the communities you live in. And that also can drive employee engagement; they love to work on something that actually has meaning beyond just making money.
The second part is innovation through scale. So, think about platforms. Think about global scale, how we leverage platforms and data, and cloud computing, and modern APIs so that you can innovate faster, get products to the market faster, and really have an impact not only for your business, but for your clients.
And in the third part, we talked about innovation with analytics. We live in this new world where cloud computing, advanced APIs, and modern APIs pull data from multiple data sources. [They are] able to do that in real time with advanced analytics and automating model deployment. We can bring together things that we’ve never been able to bring together before. That enables us to do analytics and credit scoring in ways we’ve never been able to do before.
On how banks and fintechs can leverage data and technology to drive financial inclusion
So, let’s just talk for a minute about conventional credit scoring. Today, the conventional credit scores can score about 81% of the U.S. population. That’s one-fifth that are not being scored or that are credit invisible. With ExperianLift, we can score between 93% to 96% of the U.S. population. That is a step change in performance. And that’s because we use more data, better analytics, bringing it all together in a big data platform and making it live instantly for consumers. So lenders, banks, fintechs– they need to be doing that every day to score more people, drive financial inclusion, and have better business outcomes.
How do we represent consumers in their time of need? There are one-to-two million credit reports pulled every day. These are the most important financial moments in consumers’ lives. We can help represent that. And I know fintechs want to create a consumer experience that is delightful, seamless, digital, easy. And with analytics and big data platforms, they can make that happen. We can help partner with fintechs to use things like Experian Lift, or, even better, Experian Boost, where we’re allowing consumers to come in, connect their bank account, add data to their credit report in real time based on the bills they pay, and improve their credit score before they even apply for something. We’ve worked with a lot of fintechs to figure out how we not only allow consumers to contribute to their credit report and get a better outcome, but also we can help them with better analytics and scores to score more consumers and get to a better outcome. This is not only good for consumers, because they get to a better financial outcome, it’s good for them. They’re scoring more people, getting to “yes” more often, and helping build their business.
What should companies implement now to prepare for future growth?
It comes down to what they’re trying to do and how they want to grow. I really advocate for innovating with purpose. [They should think] about how they want that consumer experience to feel and what that consumer journey is. How do they make it more digital, more seamless? How do they get to “yes” more often?
And again, we’ve talked about the platform capabilities from Experian that can help them. We’ve talked about how we can go from analytics and model development all the way to production through the Ascend platform. Things that normally take nine-to-twelve months to get a new score into market, into production, through compliance, and through their IT queue suddenly, we can do that in one platform from the analytics to deployment in real time. That’s something that any lender, any bank should be doing because it’s going to help get to “yes” faster, deploy better models in real time, pull data sources from not just the credit bureau but from anywhere. That means you can drive better customer outcomes, get to “yes” more often, not add more risk, and eventually build great businesses.
Apiture, a digital banking solutions provider, launched its Data Engage solution this week.
The new offering helps financial institutions access data-driven insights into how their customers are using Apiture’s digital banking platform.
Data Engage was made possible courtesy of a partnership between Apiture and Pendo. Both companies are based in North Carolina and made their Finovate debuts this year.
Digital banking solutions provider and new Finovate alum Apitureintroduced its Data Engage solution this week. The technology, made possible courtesy of a partnership with fellow Finovate newcomer Pendo, will give banks and other financial institutions access to data-driven insights into how their customers are using Apiture’s digital banking platform. Data Engage further gives these firms tools to provide in-channel guidance and personalized messages to boost customer engagement. Pop-up messages, marketing notices, tutorials, and more are examples of the kinds of communications that can be leveraged to educate users and encourage adoption of new features.
The new offering is the first of four modules available from Apiture’s Data Intelligence solution. This technology gives users a variety of data analytics and benchmarking tools to help attract, retain, and cross-sell digital banking customers.
“With Data Engage, our clients can easily evaluate their users’ activities and enhance the online experience using no-code, highly intuitive tools that promote the expanded use of digital banking capabilities,” Apiture CEO Chris Babcock said.
Taking the Finovate stage for the first time at FinovateSpring in May, Pendo offers analytics, in-app guidance, and feedback capabilities to enable developers to create software that delivers better, more productive experiences for users. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Pendo claims that its “software that makes your software better” produces 15% decrease in support tickets, 30% more qualified leads, and a 5% reduction in customer churn.
“This partnership enables Apiture’s clients to harness data-driven intelligence,” Pendo co-founder and CEO Todd Olson said. “It maximizes user engagement with their digital banking solution. And the best part? It delivers a better user experience.”
Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, Apiture made its Finovate debut in September at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demoed its technology that can embed banking capabilities into the software of non-financial, third-party businesses. Apiture used the example of a travel agency that had embedded its technology to support basic banking tasks such as opening an account, viewing account balances, and transferring funds between accounts.
Apiture’s new product news comes in the wake of the company’s latest partnership announcement. In September, Apiture announced that Newtek Business Services Corporation had selected its digital banking platform to support the digital capabilities of Newtek Bank. Over the summer, Apiture reported that it had secured $29 million in funding in a round led by Live Oak Bank. The investment boosted the North Carolina-based fintech’s total funding to $69 million.
Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between First Data Corporation and Live Oak Bank, Apiture has more than 300 bank and credit union clients in the U.S. – and more than 300 employees of its own. With more than 40 core interfaces and over 200 fintech partners, Apiture’s digital banking platform has been praised by entities ranging from Javelin and IBS Intelligence to American Banker and Forbes.
J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard partnered to launch Pay-by-Bank, an ACH payment tool that leverages open banking.
Billers who offer consumers an option to a pay via ACH can integrate Pay-by-Bank into their existing payments page.
Pay-by-Bank is currently in a pilot phase with a small number of U.S. billers, but will be rolled out to more billers in 2023.
Today’s news proves you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks. ACH, a technology that is 50+ years old, is getting a makeover with open banking.
J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard have joined forces this week to launchPay-by-Bank, an ACH payment tool that leverages open banking and consumer-permissioned data to make it easy for users to pay bills directly from their bank accounts.
“We realized years ago that the way people think about money and commerce is changing,” said Mastercard North America Executive Vice President Chiro Aikat. “They want to pay and get paid how they choose, where they choose and when they choose. We’re excited by this new partnership with J.P. Morgan Chase, and our opportunity to empower people with enhanced payment experiences.”
Billers who offer customers an option to pay using ACH can integrate Pay-by-Bank into their existing payments page. Customers who opt to use the new technology will be prompted to find their bank, complete the bank’s account login process, and share their bank account information with JP Morgan Chase.
Pay-by-Bank makes for a better user experience. Consumers will no longer need to type in their routing and account number each time they go to pay a bill. As for the billers, they will not be faced with the liability of storing consumers’ account information.
“Billers and consumers both get greater payment choice,” said Aikat, “but the partnership also propels payments innovation on two fronts — in the ease of the user experience and in the security of data sharing.”
J.P. Morgan Payments Head of Payments and Commerce Solutions Max Neukirchen echoed this sentiment. “The technology behind Pay-by-Bank reduces the likelihood of unauthorized transactions and frees our clients from the need to retain — and the responsibility to securely maintain — consumer banking information,” Neukirchen said.
As an additional benefit to consumers, Pay-by-Bank leverages machine learning to estimate the optimal time to initiate the payment based on the consumer’s historical transaction behavior and risk patterns. This helps reduce the risk of non-sufficient funds for the consumer and helps ensure the merchant receives the payment on time.
Pay-by-Bank is still in a pilot phase with a small number of U.S. billers and merchants, but J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard anticipate they will expand the program next year.
Update: Binance has called off the agreement to buy FTX.
If you’ve spent any time reading fintech news in the last 24 hours, you know that Binance has agreed to buy the non-U.S. unit of FTX. For those in the crypto world, this is a big deal. Why? It’s a riches-to-rags story– almost like crypto’s moment of an Enron-like collapse.
The downfall of FTX is part of a long story, which multiple outlets have already covered in great detail. Here are the highlights. FTX is considering a sale because it is reportedly facing liquidity problems. The crypto exchange’s cash flow issue is the result of the devaluation of its digital currency, FTT. The coin is currently trading at just under $3.50.
What happened?
Why has the value of FTT been destroyed? FTX minted FTT to lend to Alameda Research, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading platform founded by FTX owner Sam Bankman-Fried. Alameda Research borrowed stablecoins against FTT, and sent the stablecoins to FTX. This cycle made it appear that FTT was valuable even though it was essentially nothing more than printed money. Alameda Research has reached insolvency and FTX is now worth nearly nothing, despite the fact that investors valued FTX at $32 billion earlier this year.
FTX rival Binance stepped in earlier this week announcing a non-binding agreement to purchase the non-U.S. unit of FTX. If the deal goes through, Binance will be the largest player in the crypto space. “This elevates Zhao as the most powerful player in crypto,” Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex Solutions told the Financial Times. “Zhao’s view of the world will matter a lot more, in terms of how he wants to interact with regulators and policymakers . . . the weight of his views will be much more powerful.”
What this means for fintech
Crypto is down all around Cryptocurrencies were having a tough year already. Many outlets were referring to this year as a “crypto winter,” a time during which cryptocurrency values have been depressed when compared to prior periods. This scandal only intensifies this. According to Forbes, “the total market capitalization for crypto has slid to $860 billion in the last 24 hours.”
Expect more regulatory scrutiny Cayman Islands-based Binance and Bahamas-based FTX may be beyond any meaningful regulatory scrutiny. However, this event has caught the eyes of regulators across the globe. Yesterday, in fact, Republican member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee Patrick McHenry issued a statement imploring Congress to take action. “For years, I have advocated for Congress to develop a clear regulatory framework for the digital asset ecosystem, including trading platforms,” said McHenry. “The recent events show the necessity of Congressional action. It’s imperative that Congress establish a framework that ensures Americans have adequate protections while also allowing innovation to thrive here in the U.S. I look forward to learning more from FTX and Binance in the coming days about these events and the steps they will take to protect customers during the transition.”
Consolidated industry Experts have suggested that crypto wallets will eventually be whittled down to a handful of meaningful players, just as Apple and Android serve as the two main operating systems. If Binance’s acquisition of FTX goes through, the two players will be Binance for non-U.S. wallets and Coinbase for U.S. wallets.
Overall, there are lots of lessons to be learned from this, and more will come as the story develops. Perhaps the top takeaways are the simplest ones. Be ethical. Be honest. Be humble.
Tonik is adding two new loan products to its suite of banking tools.
The new offerings include Flex Loan, an unsecured personal loan, and Big Loan, a home equity line of credit.
Tonik received the first digital bank license issued by the Philippines’ central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
Tonik is one of the first neobanks in the Philippines. Today, the Singapore-based fintech announced it is adding two new lending products to its existing suite of digital banking tools.
The new offerings are called Flex Loan and Big Loan. Flex Loan is an unsecured personal loan that doesn’t require collateral and offers borrowers up to $4,300 (Php 250,000) at a rate of 2.49% monthly interest for a term of up to 24 months. Big Loan is a home equity line of credit of up to $43,000 (Php 2,500,000) that enables users to borrow against the equity on their home when they offer their property to the bank as collateral.
“Powered by our purely digital platform and the most competitive market rates, Flex Loan and Big Loan offer accessible, safe, and badly needed credit for the huge underserved market in the Philippines,” said Tonik Founder and CEO Greg Krasnov. “With these new loans, we are excited to speed up efforts in accelerating credit inclusion in the country.”
Big Loan may be Tonik’s most notable new product. That’s because home equity lines of credit are relatively new to the Philippines. Tonik’s Big Loan offering marks one of the first fully digitalized collateral product available in the Philippines. Once the borrower applies for the loan and submits the necessary paperwork, Tonik makes the funds available within seven business days.
Tonik’s other banking tools include Stash, a savings account; Group Stash, a group savings account; Time Deposit, a high-interest savings account; Quick Loan, its flagship personal loan; and physical and virtual debit cards.
Tonik received the first digital bank license issued by the Philippines’ central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Founded in 2018, and with offices in Singapore, Manila, and Chennai, Tonik has raised $175 million from top international investors, including Sequoia India, Point72 Ventures, and Mizuho Bank.
Digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding.
Agent IQ’s technology helps bankers develop more meaningful customer relationships by blending enabling technologies like AI with human talent, expertise, and empathy.
Agent IQ made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring and returned to the Finovate stage in September for FinovateFall.
In a round led by Mendon Venture Partners and featuring participation from Acronym VC, Sierra Ventures, and FNBO, digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The investment, according to Crunchbase, takes the company’s total capital raised to $18.5 million.
Agent IQ CEO and co-founder Slaven Bilac said that the critical task of developing meaningful customer relationships can be lost in the drive toward the convenience and speed of digitalization. “Agent IQ exists to change this narrative,” Bilac said. He added that the company will “leverage this capital to lead community banking toward an environment where customers derive the same level of personal benefit through the digital channel as they traditionally did through the branch, while enabling banks and CUs to differentiate themselves with personal, seamless, and efficient service.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2015, Agent IQ offers digital platforms that help their clients enhance customer relationships and customer satisfaction. Agent IQ’s solutions also help companies become more efficient, which leads to greater profitability and lower costs. With an approach that supports augmenting the human banker with technology rather than trying to replace human bankers with technology, Agent IQ effectively blends innovations like AI and machine learning with the critical customer engagement features of human empathy and creativity.
“The company is at the forefront of relationship banking,” Mendon Venture Partners Founding Partner John Clausen said, “helping banks engage customers in ways that they have come to demand.”
Agent IQ’s funding news comes just a few months after the company demoed its Lynq platform at FinovateFall in September. Lynq enables financial services consumer to choose and engage with a personal banker across all digital channels. The technology features configurable, built-in Augmented Intelligence that helps bankers better connect, engage, and support their customers. At the same time, the platform helps them become more efficient by automating typically mundane, manual tasks. Lynq offers video chat, AI-powered real-time insights, and messaging capabilities with the ability to translate real-time to more than 100 languages.
Agent IQ began the year with news that Texas-based Extracto Banks would deploy its Lynq digital assistant and chat service. This made Extracto Banks the first financial institution in Texas to partner with Agent IQ. The institution’s EVP and Chief of Strategic Design Chris Kincaid said that Agent IQ’s technology gave the bank “a transformational approach to meeting our customers where they are.”
Finastra has announced a strategic alliance with Ohio point-of-sale (PoS) financing and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) company Jifiti.
The alliance will bring new PoS financing capabilities to financial institutions in Finastra’s Banking-as-a-Service ecosystem.
Finastra was formed via a merger between Finovate alum Misys and D+H in 2017.
Just last week we highlighted the state of Ohio as a place where innovation in fintech and insurtech was thriving. Today, we learn that financial software company and Finovate alum Finastra has inked a strategic alliance with one of Ohio’s fintech innovators: Columbus-based point of sale financing company and Buy Now, Pay Later platform Jifiti.
The collaboration will bring embedded financing capabilities to financial institutions in Finastra’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) ecosystem. These capabilities will enable banks to empower merchants with point-of-sale financing options such as Buy Now, Pay Later and split payments. Whether transacting online, in-store, or by call center, consumers will be able to access this expanded range of financing options. Jifiti’s platform will be pre-integrated with Finastra’s systems, making deployment easy for financial institutions currently using Finastra to power their core banking operations.
Finastra Senior Director for Solution Management, BaaS & Orchestration Jeanette Kescenovitz put the partnership in the context of the recent launch of Finastra’s BaaS embedded consumer lending offering. “We look forward to leveraging Jifiti’s best-in-class retail point-of-sale solution to give financial institutions a simple way to provide a seamless, embedded finance offering with a fully digital-first experience,” Kescenovitz said.
Jifiti offers a modular, white-label platform that supports a wide range of point-of-sale financing options. These options include installment loans, lines of credit, split payments, BNPL, and B2B financing. Founded in 2011, the company introduced its B2B Buy Now, Pay Later solution for banks, lenders, and merchants last month. The addition of the offering for business customers significantly enhanced the capabilities of Jifiti’s platform, enabling the technology to cover virtually all types of Buy Now, Pay Later options.
“The B2B market was the next logical step in our journey at Jifiti,” company CEO and co-founder Yaacov Martin said when the launch was announced. “We aim to give every customer the financing that best suits their needs. Now we can help our bank and merchant partners extend that same level of customization to their business customers through specialized B2B-embedded finance.”
Checkout.com and Shieldpay announced a partnership this week.
The collaboration will bring Checkout.com’s merchant clients more transaction processing options, including digital escrow.
This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating.
Global payments platform Checkout.com and digital payments solutions provider Shieldpay have aligned this week. The two have joined forces to offer B2B merchants more transaction processing options.
In addition to straight-through processing, or processing transactions without manual intervention, merchants using Checkout.com will have access to Shieldpay’s payment engine and digital escrow capabilities. Shieldpay’s technology helps businesses add trust, transparency, and extra security when conducting transactions online. In an era when digital payments fraud is at an all-time high, it is essential for both the buyer and the seller to instill trust in the payments process, especially when dealing with high-value transactions.
“Together with Shieldpay, we’re bringing our merchants even more value and flexibility for their B2B transactions,” said Miyesa Hussain, Strategic Partnerships at Checkout.com. “Shieldpay’s digital escrow technology is truly innovative and further enhances the payout process for our customers. We’re excited to see where this partnership takes us.”
Shieldpay’s digital escrow tool was created to protect buyers and sellers across multiple deal types– including M&A, supply chain payments, capital raising, domain name transfers, real estate transactions, and more. The company offers KYC and KYB checks on all parties, full transparency, and flexible and efficient contracts. Leveraging this tool, Checkout.com customers can hold funds in safeguarded accounts until both the buyer and the seller are satisfied that the conditions of the transaction have been met. Once they approve the transaction, the money is then transferred to the verified merchant or the marketplace customer. Shieldpay can also help marketplaces disburse funds to submerchants.
This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating. Shieldpay has already helped a handful of Checkout.com’s merchant clients manage complex payments. As an example, the two provide the payment flow for in-person digital payment acceptance company KodyPay*. In the arrangement, Checkout.com acts as the acquirer and provides a payment gateway facility to accept payments, while Shieldpay provides seller verification and disbursement.
“We are both on a similar mission as payments innovators and the services that our platforms offer to the market work in perfect harmony, said Shieldpay Head of Partnerships Daniel Dunne. “With these key drivers aligned, we are looking forward to the future of this partnership and growing together, and we are now envisioning new opportunities to further collaborate.”
*In other news, KodyPay announced a $5 million Pre-Series A financing round.
Real-time payments software company ACI Worldwide has appointed Thomas Warsop as its Interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Warsop was formerly the non-executive Chair of the ACI Worldwide Board of Directors. He replaces Odilon Almeida, who was the company’s CEO from March 2020 until now. Almeda was named CEO after Philip Heasley – who had served as CEO and President for 15 years – retired. Independent board director Adalio Sanchez will assume the role of non-executive Board chair.
“As ACI advances its vision to lead the real-time payments revolution, the Board is determined that now is the right time to transition to a new leader focused on accelerating our technology transformation and delivering operational excellence across our business,” ACI Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee Chair Mary Harman said.
A member of the company’s board of directors since the summer of 2015, Warsop became non-executive chairman seven years later in June of 2022. In addition to his tenure on the ACI board, Warsop brings his experience as Group President at Fiserv to his new position. Warsop has led a number of private equity firms previous to joining the ACI board including One Call Care Management, York Risk Services Group, and The Warranty Group. He also held executive roles at Electronic Data Systems, ranging from President of the firm’s Business Process Outsourcing unit in the Asia Pacific to Vice President of Global Financial Services.
“ACI is uniquely positioned to support banks, merchants, and billers around the world,” Warsop said in a statement. “We have market-leading software platforms in use at many of the world’s leading financial institutions and are poised not just to benefit from, but to drive, the rapidly approaching real-time payments revolution.”
ACI Worldwide’s C-suite news comes less than a week after the company announced third quarter results. The report included a 35% year over year increase in new ARR bookings, as well as “notable booking success across all segments, providing visibility into future revenue growth,” then-CEO and president Almeida said. At the same time, the company the impact of inflationary pressures on both interchange revenue and foreign exchanges rates. Adjusted EBITDA for Q3 was down year over year, but the company did iterate its full-year guidance.
Challenges notwithstanding, ACI Worldwide has continued to forge partnerships with institutions around the world, helping them enhance their payment operations. The company teamed up with Sweden’s Westpay in September, who will deploy ACI Secure eCommerce to bring new capabilities to its in-store payment solutions. Also that month, ACI Worldwide announced a partnership with loan management software provider GOLDPoint Systems. ACI will help the Provo, Utah-based company to digitize its billpay operations via its ACI Speedpay solution, which is used by thousands of billers in the U.S.
Founded in 1975 in Omaha, Nebraska, ACI Worldwide is currently headquartered in Miami, Florida. The company is a leading force driving innovation in real-time electronic payments for banks, processors, billers, networks, and more. ACI Worldwide serves 19 of the top 20 banks worldwide, enables more than 80,000 merchants, and provides electronic billpay technology for thousands of organizations. Processing more than 225 billion consumer transactions a year, the company serves more than 6,000 customers in 95 countries around the world.
A publicly traded fintech on the NASDAQ under the ticker “ACIW,” ACI Worldwide has a market capitalization of $2.4 billion. The company has been a Finovate alum since 2011, demoing its business banking solution in partnership with mShift at FinovateFall. ACI Worldwide returned to the Finovate stage five years later to lead a presentation on its latest innovations in ecommerce payment technology at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016.
2022 is marking the beginning of an economic downturn. Consumers are feeling the pain associated with high inflation, corporations are seeing decreased stock performance, and startups are experiencing lower funding amounts, lower valuations, and lower M&A numbers.
The volume of fintech merger and acquisition activity in the first three quarters of 2022 has so far totaled $116 billion. This is down significantly when compared to the volume the sector saw last year, which totaled $349 billion. In fact, the 2022 year-to-date amount is the lowest M&A volume since 2017, when M&A volumes totaled $90.5 billion.
When it comes to the number of deals, FT Partners found that there have been 998 fintech M&A deals so far this year. This is down when compared to last year’s total of 1,486. However, the deal number is already higher than those in any of the past 10 years. In fact, 2020’s total deal number is only 969.
