This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Merrill Wealth Management launched Merrill Advisor Match, a tool to connect people with the right advisor.
Using Merrill Advisor Match, customers answer a set of questions that helps match them with a list of financial advisors.
The launch comes at a time when one third of affluent Americans are not currently working with an advisor.
Bank of America’s Merrill Wealth Managementunveiled a new offering this week that offers a technological approach to matching consumers with financial advisors.
The tool, Merrill Advisor Match, connects people seeking financial advice with a Merrill financial advisor that suits their preferences and needs. After answering a set of questions, consumers looking to be matched with an advisor receive a personalized list of potential candidates who they can review. Once they’ve finalized their decision, they can use the tool to schedule a meeting with the advisor of their choice.
The questionnaire asks customers where they are on their financial journey, which areas of their finances they would like help with, how they prefer to spend time during their meeting, if they are a planner or are spontaneous, and more.
Mobile screenshots of Merrill Advisor Match
“We’ve combined a century of bringing Wall Street to Main Street with a personalized digital experience that takes the guesswork out of finding the right advisor,” said Merrill Wealth Management President Andy Sieg. “Merrill Advisor Match is an industry-changing innovation that reflects our modern Merrill strategy, helping to connect more investors to advice from the best advisors in the industry.”
Merrill Advisor Match partners advisors with consumers based on a number of factors, including the customer’s engagement preferences, guidance style, and personality traits. These elements are assessed in the questionnaire and are based on a Merrill study that indicated that 90% of affluent Americans prefer to work with an advisor who matches their communication style, 83% select an advisor based on their personality, and 93% choose their advisor based on whether they deliver financial results.
This digital-first approach to selecting an advisor will resonate with affluent Americans, one-third of whom are not currently working with an advisor. By leveraging matchmaking technology, Merrill Advisor Match creates a user experience similar to those used with dating and social sites that customers are accustomed to. This familiarity ultimately makes the process more approachable.
“For those who don’t have a connection in their personal network,” explained Merrill Chief Operating Officer Kirstin Hill, “Merrill Advisor Match uses research and qualitative analysis to break down barriers to professional financial advice.”
Cash management innovator Jiko raised $40 million in Series B funding today.
The company’s technology enables businesses of all sizes to store their cash in higher yielding “spendable T-bills.”
Jiko also announced the launch of its Jiko Money Storage solution, which will soon enable 34/7 money movement on the Jiko Network.
Among the more interesting fintechs innovating in the cash management space, Jikoraised $40 million in Series B funding today. Jiko enables companies of all sizes to move cash into and out of short-term U.S. Treasury bills (known as T-bills).
Jiko “spendable T-bills” provide transparent pricing and near instant liquidity, blending the safety and yield of T-bills with the flexibility of cash. The Oakland, California-based fintech leverages its status as a broker-dealer, as well as its technology stack and bank charter, to operate more cost-efficiently than other cash storage options.
“Today’s CEOs, CFOs, and corporate treasurers must be increasingly nimble in the face of factors such as inflation, supply chain disruption, and geopolitical conflict, while still managing their company’s risk exposure – making it paramount that cash deliver yield through safe and secure strategies,” CEO and co-founder of Jiko Stephane Lintner said.
“That need is at the heart of why we created Jiko, and with this additional funding, we look forward to continuing our work to transform how money can be moved and stored – exemplified by our milestone launch of Jiko Money Storage.”
Jiko Money Storage, also announced today, enables businesses to store cash securely in the form of T-bills with on-demand liquidity at leading custody bank BNY Mellon. Jiko will soon make the holdings movable 24/7 on the Jiko network.
The company’s Series B round was led by Red River West. Trousdale Ventures, Owen Van Natta, Temaris & Associates, La Maison Partners, BPI France, Airbus Ventures, Anthem Ventures, Upfront Ventures, and Radicle Impact also participated. The investment adds to the $47.7 million the company has raised to date via its Series A and seed funding rounds.
“It’s rare to come across a fintech team quite as ambitious as Jiko’s,” Airbus Ventures Partner Claas Kohl said. “Jiko’s network presents uncompromised safety combined with the efficiency of a modern tech stack and is equipped to soon support multi-currency financial activity.” Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Jiko advisor Larry Summers said, “In today’s macro environment, cash should be put to work – not sit idly in bank accounts. I don’t endorse any products or platforms, but I am excited by the innovation that Stephane and his team are delivering for money storage and look forward to continuing to advise them.”
AML surveillance technology specialist Hawk AI forged a strategic partnership with digital onboarding and business KYC solutions provider Know Your Customer.
The partnership will give businesses an integrated anti-fraud solution that will help them avoid the problem of siloed compliance technologies.
Munich, Germany-based Hawk AI made its Finovate debut in May, demoing its technology at FinovateSpring in San Francisco, California.
Hawk AI, an anti-money laundering surveillance technology company for banks and fintechs, announced a strategic partnership with Know Your Customer this week. The alliance will combine Know Your Customer’s digital onboarding and business KYC solutions with Hawk AI’s transaction monitoring technology. The new offering will give businesses an integrated anti-fraud solution to enhance their defense against financial crime.
“There is a wave of technological innovation taking place in RegTech,” Hawk AI CTO and co-founder Wolfgang Berner said, “from cloud native infrastructure enabling scalability, real-time native processing in a performant, safe and secure way, to fully explained AI and machine learning that augment traditional AML approaches and ensure efficient and effective crimefighting.”
Berner also underscored the challenge of fraud prevention solutions that are not well integrated. “Cutting-edge technology is not enough if information remains siloed,” he said. Berner noted that Know Your Customer shared Hawk AI’s “vision of modular solutions that foster a more holistic approach to fighting financial crime.”
Hawk AI’s Steve Liú, General Manager North America
Processing billions of transactions in more than 60 countries every year, Hawk AI’s technology leverages explainable AI and cloud technology to detect financial crime while keeping false positives low. The company reported that reducing false positives can help AML compliance officers save up to 70% of their workday, enabling them to focus on more complex compliance challenges.
Hawk AI made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco. Headquartered in Germany, and founded in 2018, the company demoed its AML Surveillance Suite. The technology blends AI with traditional, rule-based strategies to monitor financial transactions in real-time and help financial institutions and fintechs better detect suspected cases of fraud, financial crime, and money laundering. This method helps identify minor, easily missed anomalies that can be overlooked by traditional rule-based approaches alone.
Hawk AI includes financial services consultancy Capco, and KYC and customer onboarding specialist Ondato – as well as fellow Finovate alums like Visa, Mambu, and Diebold Nixdorf – among its partners. A member of the RegTech 100, Hawk AI has raised $10 million in funding from investors including BlackFin Capital Partners and Picus Capital. Co-founder Tobias Schweiger is CEO.
Crypto friendly banking platform Juno has raised $18 million. The Series A round was led by ParaFi Capital ‘s Growth Fund. The fundraising included a sizable number of investors including Greycroft, Antler Global, Hashed, Jump Crypto, Mithril, 6th Man Ventures, Abstract Ventures,, and Uncorrelated Fund.
As part of the investment, Juno announced the launch of a new loyalty token, Juno coin (JCOIN). The program acts similarly to credit card rewards points schemes, and tokens will only be distributed to verified account holders. Juno users can earn JCOIN by spending crypto with their Juno debit card or by taking their paychecks in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum or USDC. The company says that more than 75,000 customers in the U.S. take and invest at least a portion of their salary in cryptocurrency every month on its platform.
Juno offers cryptocurrency checking accounts that enable individuals to earn, invest, and spend in crypto. The checking accounts are free to open, and both crypto deposits and withdrawals are free, as well. The accounts are FDIC insured, courtesy of a sponsorship by Evolve Bank & Trust. Note that the USD holdings in the account, not the crypto holdings, are covered.
A merchant and developer-first payments orchestration platform, Elements was credited for its ability to “take the complexity out of crypto payments,” by Circle Chief Product Officer Nikhil Chandhok. The Elements acquisition will help make it easier for merchants to integrate their current PSP relationships with Circle’s crypto payments solutions. “Providing well-designed payment products that can facilitate seamless, efficient, frictionless and delightful customer experiences are key to empowering merchants to take advantage of these next-gen payment solutions,” Chandhok said.
An issuer of both USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC), Circle enables companies around the world to leverage digital currencies and public blockchains to facilitate payments, commerce, and financial technology. Founded in 2013, the Boston, Massachusetts-based company recently announced partnerships with GIANT Protocol to facilitate tokenized mobile data and with non-profit Mara Foundation to help developers in Africa build DApps and blockchain solutions.
There are big changes at the top for New York Digital Investment Group – more popularly known as NYDIG. The cryptocurrency investment company began the week with news that both CEO Robert Gutmann and President Yan Zhao were stepping down from their positions. Replacing them will be Tejas Shah, who will become NYDIG’s new CEO, and Nate Conrad, who was promoted to President.
Shah was formerly NYDIG’s Global Head of Institutional Finance. Conrad was previously NYDIG’s Global Head of Payments. Both Shah and Conrad joined NYDIG in 2020. In their new roles, both executives will be tasked with boosting investment in the company’s mining franchise and accelerating bitcoin adoption via solutions like the Lightning Network, which facilitates payment by bitcoin.
Speaking of investment, NYDIG’s C-suite personnel news came at the same time that reporters uncovered an SEC filing revealed that NYDIG had raised $720 million for its institutional digital asset fund. According to the filing, 59 investors participated with an average investment of $12 million.
Founded in 2017, NYDIG is among the industry’s biggest custodians of cryptocurrencies. The company holds more than $1 billion in digital assets for its customers.
As more card issuers authorize cardholders to transact in cryptocurrencies, it becomes increasingly important to make sure that card issuers are up-to-date and compliant with the regulations that govern digital assets. This week, we learned that Mastercard had launched a new solution, Crypto Secure, designed to enable issuers to determine the risk profile of crypto exchanges and other crypto providers, before specifying which purchases of cryptocurrency should be approved.
The new offering will enable issuers to accurately identify the crypto exchanges from which their cardholders are buying crypto, measure transaction approvals and declines, review their exposure to crypto risk at a portfolio level, and compare themselves to a peer group of financial institutions.
“Crypto Secure will provide card issuers with a platform that allows them access to insights which will improve the safety of crypto purchases,” President of Mastercard Cyber and Intelligence Ajay Bhalla said.
Crypto Secure is powered by CipherTrace, a cryptocurrency intelligence company Mastercard acquired just over a year ago. CipherTrace’s data analytics and algorithms provide insight into more than 900 cryptocurrencies, helping companies bring better security to their crypto-related operations. The Menlo Park, California-based company was founded in 2015.
We mentioned the Lightning Network earlier in our look at the goals of the new leadership team at NYDIG. Just recently, a company based in Vancouver, Canada, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, announced that it has secured $2.25 million in seed funding for its technology that brings the benefits of bitcoin’s Lightning Network to the payments rails of southeast Asia.
Hivemind Ventures led the round for Neutronpay, which disclosed the investment last week despite raising the money in June. Participating in the investment were Republic Cavalry, Ride Wave, Studio, Iterative, Fulgar Ventures, along with individual investors. Among these individual investors is Lisa Shields, founder and CEO of Finovate alum FISPAN.
The company has already put the new capital to work, adding talent with an eye toward boosting its capacity to develop enterprise APIs, soon, a consumer mobile app. ‘”Laying the infrastructure for Lightning across South East Asia would make it very easy for locals to better transact with each other and for the rest of the world to transact in the region – whether while on vacation or for doing business,” Neutronpay founder and CEO Albert Buu said.
Embedded finance player Railsr closed a $46 million Series C round comprised of $26 million in equity and $20 million in debt.
Company CEO and Co-founder Nigel Verdon is calling the investment “a significant step” in the company’s route to profitability.
The new capital brings Railsr’s total funding to $187 million.
Four months after rebranding from Railsbank, embedded finance platform Railsrclosed $46 million in funding today. Company CEO and Co-founder Nigel Verdon is calling the investment “a significant step” in the company’s route to profitability.
The Series C round consists of $26 million of equity, which was led by Anthos Capita and included existing investors Ventura, Outrun Ventures, CreditEase, and Moneta. The rest of the round was comprised of $20 million in debt, which was led by Mars Capital.
Railsr said that the new capital, which brings its total funding to $187 million, will empower the company to continue to invest in its platform and help it enable its customers to offer embedded finance experiences to their end users.
“We set out to challenge old finance and this is what we will continue to do. Our strategy and success to date has come from the way we prioritize customers, invest in technology, empower teams and execute relentlessly to continue our journey,” said Verdon.
With more than 300 customers– including HelloCash, Sodexo, and Payine– Railsr offers a range of embedded finance offerings. The company believes that customers want to focus on frictionless and fun experiences, not finance. Railsr offers banking-as-a-service, along with embedded payment cards, mobile wallets, credit tools, and rewards tools.
Railsr has been keeping busy as of late. Along with its rebrand, the company recently appointed Rick Haythornthwaite as its first Chairman, promoted Chief Product Officer Stuart Gregory to Chief Operating Officer, and promoted Jane Thorburn to serve as Chief of Staff.
Headquartered in the U.K. and founded in 2016, Railsr declined to disclose its current valuation but referred to it as a “fair value.”
U.S. Bank introduced a new tool to give small business owners the ability to see a 90-day forecast of their cash flow.
The new offering is the latest innovation from U.S. Bank’s Business Essential suite of banking and payments solutions.
U.S. Bank made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, the bank demoed its Cards-as-a-Service (CaaS) technology.
U.S. Bank unveiled a new solution to enable small business owners to see a 90-day forecast of their cash flow. The tool allows users to leverage external data from their clients along with their own U.S. Bank accounts to provide more comprehensive insights. The offering is designed to address what U.S. Bank Chief Digital Officer Irv Henderson called “a top concern for today’s business owners.”
“Giving our clients the ability to forecast their cash flow outlook, including, in the future, the capability to consider various scenarios, will provide them with vital information to make smart decisions for today and the future,” Henderson said.
U.S. Bank’s new cash flow tool gives users a 90-day historical view along with its forecast of account balances up to 90 days ahead. The bank plans to introduce additional functionality to enable users to build “what if” scenarios and observe the impact of those scenarios on future cash flow.
The tool is currently available to clients of U.S. Bank from their online dashboard. Part of U.S. Bank’s Business Essentials suite of banking and payments solutions, the cash flow tool is the bank’s latest effort to “bring together digital capabilities and the power of data” to provide small businesses with actionable insights, according to Henderson.
U.S. Bank made its Finovate debut a year ago at our all-digital FinovateFall 2021 conference. At the event, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based bank demonstrated its Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) technology that enables companies to extend corporate credit digitally. With the touch of a button, virtual cards -with precise spend limits, tokenization, and encryption – can be pushed to users’ mobile wallets in real time. The Card-as-a-Service solution also gives businesses the ability, via API integration, to build custom virtual payment experiences in their ecosystem.
The parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, U.S. Bancorp serves millions of customers through a range of businesses including consumer and business banking, payment services, corporate and commercial banking, wealth management, and investment services. The institution has $591 billion in assets as of June 2022.
Dutch bank ABN AMRO has partnered with bicycle rental company Swapfiets to offer Swapfiet clients access to ID & pay.
With ID & pay, customers can sign up and pay for a service in seconds while securely storing their ID in a single app.
ID & pay works across multiple merchants and service providers. ABN AMRO likens it to “to having a Google login combined with PayPal.”
ABN AMRO is flexing its payment innovation muscle this week in a new partnership. The Dutch bank is teaming up with bicycle-as-a-service company Swapfiets to launch a new functionality that combines payment and identity authentication.
Swapfiets is leveraging ABN AMRO’s ID & pay, a tool that allows customers to sign up and pay for their Swapfiets membership using an electronic ID. When new and existing Swapfiets clients want to pay for their monthly bicycle rental membership, ID & pay allows customers to sign up and pay in seconds and enables users to securely store their e-ID in a single app.
“ID & pay originated from a need we identified among our business clients. A need to offer their customers a much simpler onboarding and payment process,” said ABN AMRO Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer Edwin van Bommel. “This app beats every other onboarding process in the market as an easy-to-use way for customers to provide ID and pay for products and services.”
What’s unique about ID & pay is that, once users sign up initially, they can use their verified identity and payment credentials to pay at other merchants and services that also use ID & pay. ABN AMRO likens the functionality to having a Google login combined with PayPal, but with credentials held within ABN AMRO’s secure, in-app environment.
“We hope this collaboration will make even more people enthusiastic about cycle memberships and our underlying idea of owning less and using more,” said Swapfiets CEO Marc de Vries.
This isn’t ABN AMRO’s first foray into the subscription management space. In 2020, the bank partnered with Subaio to integrate Subaio’s white label subscription management feature into Grip, ABN AMRO’s PFM app that enables users to see all of their recurring payments in one place.
ABN AMRO demoed alongside Fincite at FinovateEurope 2019, where the pair showcased how Fincite’s Automated Advice Engine offers clients and advisors investment recommendations based on ABN AMRO investment strategies.
Today’s global expansion marks Lemonade’s fourth European country. In addition to the U.S. and U.K., Lemonade is also available in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Lemonade entered the insurance sector with its flagship renters insurance offering in 2015 and now has a market capitalization of $1.54 billion.
U.S. insurtech Lemonade already has notoriety among mainstream consumers in the U.S., and today, the New York-based company is once again expanding its geographic reach by launching in the U.K.
“Insurance as we know it hails from the U.K., as do I. So both professionally and personally bringing Lemonade to the U.K. is a homecoming of sorts,” said Lemonade Co-CEO and Co-founder Daniel Schreiber. “We believe the millions of local renters will appreciate what Lemonade has to offer. After all, who doesn’t want instant, transparent, personalized, and mission-driven insurance?”
Starting today, U.K. residents can sign up for Lemonade’s personal property coverage, Lemonade Contents insurance. Coverage plans start at $4.52 (£4) a month. The Contents insurance covers individual personal items of up to $2,260 (£2,000) each, and offers total coverage up to $113,000 (£100,000). Lemonade also offers add-on coverage for theft and loss-related incidents, accidental damage to mobile devices, and expert help through legal protection.
This isn’t Lemonade’s first international expansion. The company has also launched in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. For this move, however, Lemonade is relying on the U.K.’s largest insurance carrier, Aviva, which counts 18.5 million customers across the globe.
“By joining forces we can ensure compelling propositions reach a broader range of customers, including renters, an under-served yet growing segment of the U.K. insurance market,” said CEO of Aviva U.K. & Ireland General Insurance Adam Winslow. “In our 325 year history we have adapted and thrived in a changing world and our partnership with Lemonade is a marker of our intent to continue just this.”
Lemonade entered the insurance sector with its flagship renters insurance offering in 2015, when AI-driven, digital first insurance offerings were hardly commonplace. Today, the company has expanded to offer homeowners, auto, pet, and life insurance products. Lemonade went public in 2020 and now trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker LMND with a market capitalization of $1.54 billion.
A financial institution serving area creatives, Nashville, Tennessee-based Studio Bank has partnered with Corserv.
The credit card issuing program provider will enable Studio Bank to launch a comprehensive credit card program featuring virtual cards, automated credit decisioning, and more.
Founded in 2018, Studio Bank is the first newly chartered de novo bank to launch in Nashville in more than a decade.
“We are excited to launch this next level of innovation,” Studio Bank Chief Experience Officer April Britt said. “Our clients have a unique set of credit card and payment needs as business owners, leaders, and creatives. We have been able to partner with Corserv to create a program to provide an enhanced credit card user experience with all the conveniences of the modern economy.”
A digital financial institution, Studio Bank is designed to bring banking services to Nashville area creatives. And by “creatives,” Studio Bank looks to serve a variety of creative communities: from musicians and code writers to entrepreneurs, social activists, and even parents working to build better lives for their families. Founded in 2018, Studio Bank was the first newly chartered de novo bank to launch in Nashville in more than 10 years. Reaching profitability in its second year of operation, Studio Bank has assets of more than $750 million as of the end of Q2 2022.
Studio Bank’s partnership with Corserv comes less than a month after the bank announced raising $38 million in new funding. The fresh capital includes $18 million in equity issued this spring as well as $20 million in unsecured notes issued from Studio Financial Holdings, a new holding company also announced last month. “As I have always said from the founding of Studio Bank, we offer the sophistication and capability of a large, regional bank coupled with the customer service of the very best community bank we could create,” Studio Bank CEO and President Aaron Dorn said when the funding was announced. “Our growth and expansion into key communities in Middle Tennessee show we are fulfilling that promise.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Corserv offers a turnkey credit card issuing program that gives financial institutions the ability to offer branded credit cards to consumers, businesses, and commercial customers. The company’s program includes features such as virtual card support for ePayables, automated credit-decisioning, sales and servicing portals, transparent reporting, and hosted and secure PCI compliant software.
“Our program is designed to enable banks, like Studio Bank, to own their credit card financials without the need to add expertise, infrastructure, or staff,” Corserv CEO Jerry Craft said. “We look forward to providing Studio Bank with the tools to serve their unique customer base with innovative payment solutions for their evolving needs.”
This year, Corserv has partnered with regional financial institutions such as Massachusetts-based BayCoast Bank, Madison-based correspondent bank Bankers’ Bank, and The Bank of Missouri (TBOM). In August, the company received Visa Ready Certification for its Payment Cards as a Service APIs (PCaaSA) issuer processor program.
Societe Generale will become a majority stakeholder in U.K.-based payment processor PayXpert.
The acquisition will help Societe Generale adapt to new consumer behavior stemming from the use of new technologies such as Buy Now, Pay Later.
In turn, PayXpert’s merchant clients will benefit from additional payments, financing, and insurance solutions.
France-based investment bank Societe Generaleannounced today it will become a majority stakeholder in U.K.-based payment processor PayXpert.
The acquisition aims to help Societe Generale adapt to new consumer behaviors stemming from new technologies and tools such as Buy Now, Pay Later and integrated insurance services. “Societe Generale constantly adapts its offering and innovates to address new customer journeys,” the company said in a blog post announcement.
Specifically, PayXpert’s technologies will help Societe Generale broaden its offering for retail and online merchants and continue in its quest to be a leading player in payment acceptance in Europe. As a result of the acquisition, PayXpert’s merchant clients will benefit from additional payments, financing, and insurance solutions.
“The acquisition of PayXpert would enhance our payment solutions offering by providing increasingly comprehensive and innovative services to our retail and online merchants,” said Aurore Gaspar Colson, Deputy Head of Societe Generale Retail Banking in France. “It reflects our determination to maintain an integrated approach to payments and is consistent with Societe Generale’s long-standing and innovative policy of cooperation with fintechs.”
Founded in 2008, PayXpert offers point-of-sale technologies for both online and in-person transactions, as well as solutions for subscription and recurring payments, data management, business intelligence, and more. Among the company’s clients are Uber, Santander, and Gucci. PayXpert was a finalist in the for the Best Mobile Payments Solution category in the 2020 Finovate Awards.
Private Equity Firm EQT has agreed to acquire B2B accounts receivable and payments company Billtrust.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year for $1.7 billion.
This move will take Billtrust back to a privately-held company, following its public debut on the NASDAQ in 2020 after closing a SPAC merger.
B2B accounts receivable and payments company Billtrustannounced today it has agreed to be acquired by EQT Private Equity for $1.7 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023.
Once finalized, the deal will take Billtrust from the public markets. The company went public in 2020 in a SPAC merger valued at approximately $1.3 billion. Billtrust is currently listed on the NASDAQ and has a market capitalization of $1.52 billion.
“This transaction marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Billtrust, our customers and employees while providing shareholders an immediate and substantial cash value with a compelling premium,” said Billtrust Founder and CEO Flint Lane. “We believe B2B payments and accounts receivable continue to be ripe for massive disruption and innovation, and our partnership with EQT will provide us with greater resources and flexibility to build on our leadership position.”
Billtrust was founded in 2001 to offer a suite of solutions that simplify and automate B2B commerce through cloud-based software and payment processing solutions. In 2018, the company launched its Business Payments Network (BPN) that connects buyers, suppliers, and financial institutions to simplify and streamline electronic payment acceptance. The company also offers tools for credit risk managers, ecommerce solutions for wholesale distributors and manufacturing businesses, payments acceptance tools, and more.
For EQT, a Sweden-based private equity firm with $100 billion in assets under management, this marks its third fintech deal. Others in the firm’s fintech portfolio include SaaS cloud banking provider Mambu and payment acceptance company Mollie.
“The Billtrust platform features modern solutions, a compelling value proposition, and, like EQT, a commitment to innovation and transformation in the digital era,” said Arvindh Kumar, Partner and Co-Head of EQT’s Global Technology Sector Team. “Additionally, the Company operates at the intersection of software, fintech, and payments—sectors in which EQT has deep familiarity and a track record of success. With proprietary end-to-end solutions that generate value for all stakeholders and across economic cycles, Billtrust is poised to advance its leading offering in the underpenetrated accounts receivable automation space.”
This is a sponsored post by Tim FitzGerald, EMEA Financial Services Sales Manager, InterSystems, Gold Sponsors of FinovateFall 2022.
In today’s fast-moving landscape, financial services firms are under increasing pressure to remain competitive and generate more revenue by developing new products and services faster, while still leveraging their existing resources.
In recent years, this has seen many financial services organisations turn to external fintech solutions to help accelerate innovation and quickly obtain new digital capabilities. And so, fintech partnerships have become critical components of financial institutions’ growth strategies, rather than the technology experiments they started out as.
To ensure innovation success, it’s vital that financial services organizations can easily leverage and provision new fintech services and applications by seamlessly integrating with their existing production applications and data sources. But the true value and potential of fintech solutions can’t be unleashed until integration is quick and easy.
As many firms will attest, arduous and costly integration can see the value of such initiatives dwindle before their very eyes – sometimes to be lost altogether. Common challenges can range from unforeseen issues tying up precious IT resources, to costs spiraling out of control and timescales sliding drastically from what was planned or what is desirable. Ultimately, these delays can result in the loss of any competitive edge as rivals launch similar solutions much faster.
Ensuring successful integration
Fintechs have become increasingly attractive as they incorporate the latest technologies, modern application methodologies, and deployment platforms. However, for banks to make effective use of these opportunities, those technologies need to be woven into its existing infrastructure, much of which is likely to be based on legacy technology.
Consequently, successful integration requires an understanding of the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of those legacy systems. It also demands knowledge of the underlying data architecture and how to connect the new technology to systems that weren’t built to be connected to in such a way. While this isn’t an unsurmountable problem, getting it right will take resources, budget, and time.
Careful consideration is also needed when undertaking the integration to ensure that the resulting architecture doesn’t become overly complex. After all, if it comprises multiple technology layers from different vendors, all with differing versions and releases, any future change could impede the bank’s ability to take advantage of the benefits they set out to achieve.
Next will be to determine how data from existing systems will be fed into the new system and in what format. To get around this, it’s all too easy to layer extraction tools upon a myriad of other tools, including transformation tools, data lineage, master data management, databases, and data lake technologies. However, what firms are then left with is a multi-headed monster that no one person truly understands. This approach to data integration is also complex and costly to design, deploy, manage, and maintain. Fortunately, adopting a smart data fabric approach, a next generation architecture, can provide a way for financial services organizations to overcome these challenges.
Achieving bidirectional connectivity
By leveraging a smart data fabric, it is possible for institutions to connect and collect real-time event data and obtain unmatched integration capabilities using just one holistic platform. This approach eliminates the complexity and inefficiencies of manual integrations and other legacy approaches to integration and enables firms to integrate applications faster and more efficiently. It does this by essentially creating a dynamic real-time, bidirectional gateway between cloud-based fintech applications and their own production applications and data assets.
The smart data fabric integrates real-time event and transactional data, along with historical and other data from the large number of different back-end systems in use by financial services organizations. It transforms the data into a common, harmonized format to feed cloud fintech applications on demand, thus providing seamless, real-time, bidirectional connectivity and integration with the bank’s existing legacy enterprise data, production applications, and data sources.
Not only does this help firms to realize faster time to value and achieve simpler implementation that is easier to maintain, but it also gives financial services institutions the agility needed to innovate faster and keep critical initiatives on track. Additionally, it helps to futureproof their architecture by making it easier to incorporate any fintech applications and technologies available in the marketplace, thereby empowering them to react to new opportunities and changes in their environments.
Ultimately, there is immense value to be unlocked from fintech solutions and applications. However, that is only possible through swift and simple integration. By implementing a smart data fabric-enabled data gateway, financial services organizations can quickly and easily integrate new solutions within their existing infrastructure to ensure they are able to keep pace in a rapidly evolving landscape.
