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Finovate Newcomer Lokyata Integrates its Credit Decisioning Technology with Infinity Software

Finovate Newcomer Lokyata Integrates its Credit Decisioning Technology with Infinity Software
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Lokyata, Startups
  • Lokyata, a credit decisioning specialist, announced a partnership with Infinity Software.
  • The integration will make Lokyata’s BankAnalyze solution available to Infinity Software’s financial services customers.
  • Lokyata, founded in 2017, made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year.

Just over a month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco, California, credit decision solutions provider Lokyata has announced that its real-time, automated credit decisioning tool, BankAnalyze, is now integrated with Infinity Software’s loan management software platform.

Courtesy of the API-enabled integration with Lokyata, Infinity Solutions will give its customers the ability to access key loan decision information. This includes customer-permissioned bank statement analysis such as average monthly net income, minimum balance, average monthly loan payments, and insufficient funds (NSF) notification histories. The integration will also enable lenders to configure both auto-fund and auto-deny rules to bring additional streamlining to the loan decisioning experience.

“At Lokyata, we are always looking to work with innovators in the market and Infinity Software is demonstrating the value of scalable, modern technology in an evolving lending ecosystem,” Lokyata CTO Steve Bireley said. “Increasingly, lenders are looking for ways to responsibly help more consumers gain access to credit, and through tools like BankAnalyze and Infinity Software’s platform, more lenders are successfully meeting that goal.”

With 20 years of experience providing lending solutions and other tools to direct-to-consumer lenders, Infinity Software has helped more than 700 businesses enhance their lending processes. The company uses a configurable loan product engine that gives lenders access to advanced accounting and reporting, as well as a built-in collections suite and access controls. Infinity Software offers a wide range of services to lenders, ranging from website design to optimized loan agreements to automated underwriting waterfalls, as well as a number of additional consumer loan solutions.

“Infinity has worked with hundreds of vendors to meet the needs of lenders in our space,” Infinity Software Director of Products Shannon Lee said. “Lokyata has proven to have a unique product that helps lenders better meet the needs of underserved borrowers and grow their business in a responsible and innovative way.”

Currently headquartered in Washington, D.C., Lokyata made its Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, Lokyata’s Bireley demoed the company’s BankAnalyze solution. The technology assesses the bank statements from a loan applicant and then provides an automated credit decision recommendation based on a combination of a weighted rules and a Lokyata score created in collaboration with the client. The company believes that using borrower-permissioned data is a major boon to the lending process, creating a more accurate, and up-to-date depiction of the borrower’s credit status. Moreover, Lokyata says that this approach “primes” near and subprime borrowers by making it easier for financial institutions to lend to “near prime” borrowers without taking on excessive risk.

Lokyata’s other products include ExcelRate, a lending and lead decision platform, and FraudBlock, a real-time identity verification and fraud intelligence solution for financial transactions. With $1.5 million in funding, Lokyata has scored more than 6.1 million loans impacting more than 240,000 customers. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $1.5 million in funding. Santosh Thiruthi is co-founder and CEO.

Photo by Diana Smykova

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Digital Bank Kroo Receives Full U.K. Banking License

Digital Bank Kroo Receives Full U.K. Banking License
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Digital banking startup Kroo received a full banking license from the Bank of England.
  • Kroo will use the new authorization to offer personal current accounts in the coming months.
  • The full banking license places Kroo in competition with Monzo, Starling Bank, and Atom Bank.

Digital banking startup Kroo just received a full banking license from the Bank of England. With the new authorization, the U.K.-based bank plans to offer personal current accounts (checking accounts).

Founded in 2016, Kroo offers a prepaid Mastercard with a tandem mobile app that provides spending insights, peer-to-peer money transfers, bill-splitting capabilities, and more. The payment card, which is biodegradable, works in more than 75 countries.

Kroo will add current accounts to its product line “in the coming months.” After launch, the company will offer its 23,000 customers the option to migrate to the new offering for free.

Kroo CEO Andrea De Gottardo said that the banking license represents a “phenomenal milestone” for the company, which has a mission to create a bank that connects people financially. “The bar to be granted a U.K. banking license is exceptionally high, and I am incredibly proud of the team and our work in achieving this,” De Gottardo added.

Having a full banking license helps Kroo differentiate itself from the massive number of competitors in the digital banking space, since the accreditation enables the bank to protect customers’ deposits of up to £85,000 via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Along with this, the license allows Kroo to offer a wider range of products, including loans and savings.

Kroo is only the second bank to earn a full banking license with a personal account since 2016. Having the full license places Kroo in competition with major digital banks, including Monzo, Starling Bank, and Atom Bank. Other European-based digital banks Revolut, Klarna, and Wise, have yet to receive their full banking licenses.

Today’s news comes weeks after Kroo closed on a $30 million (£26 million) Series B funding round. The investment brought Kroo’s total funding to $71.5 million.

Photo by James Giddins on Unsplash

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Array and Alkami Technology Team Up to Help Banks Boost Digital Engagement

Array and Alkami Technology Team Up to Help Banks Boost Digital Engagement
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Alumni News, Array, Daily news
  • Two Finovate alums – Alkami Technology and Array – have teamed up to help financial institutions offer credit and identity solutions to their customers.
  • The partnership makes three of Array’s signature solutions: My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine, available to a wider range of bank and credit union customers and members.
  • Alkami made its Finovate debut in 2009 as iThryv. Array won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2021 and again at FinovateSpring 2022.

A new partnership has been forged between digital banking solution provider Alkami Technology and financial enablement platform Array. The collaboration will bring a range of new solutions to Alkami clients that will help their customers and members better monitor their credit, benefit from anti-fraud identity monitoring, and access actionable, credit-based offers.

“Improving the digital-first banking experience is a top priority for banks and credit unions,” Alkami founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Product Officer Stephen Bohanon said. “Our partnership with Array enables banks and credit unions to provide added-value products to account holders, which increases engagement and potentially revenue as well.”

Among the solutions that will be made available to Alkami’s bank and credit union partners are Array’s My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine. My Credit Manager keeps users updated on changes to their credit score, enables them to explore different credit scenarios with a credit score simulator, allows them to conduct debt analysis, as well as see how different factors impact their credit score. With ID Protect, users can take advantage of a number of anti-fraud protections including identity and Dark Web monitoring, alerts, insurance, and restoration services in the event of identity theft. Array’s Offers Engine empowers banks and credit unions to better market their products and services to customers and members using targeted, actionable offers that are based on the individual’s actual credit circumstances.

“Today’s success formula for personal service includes a mix of in-branch experiences and digital tools that add value to account holders every time they log in,” Array co-founder and CEO Martin Toha explained. “Alkami and Array are making it easier than ever to help banks and credit unions deploy a consistent roadmap of innovative digital products for account holders.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, when it debuted at FinovateSpring as “iThryv,” Alkami has grown into a leading digital banking solution provider. The Plano, Texas-based fintech serves both retail and business customers with onboarding, engagement, and account servicing. Clients can enhance their use of the Alkami platform with upgrades and leverage both Alkami’s product suite, as well as integrated, third-party solutions to enhance and customize their experience. Alkami is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker “ALKT,” and has a market capitalization of $1.3 billion.

Winning Best of Show honors in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall last September and again in its return to the Finovate stage last month for FinovateSpring, Array is a financial enablement platform that specializes in embeddable and white label solutions. Founded in 2020, the company enables its clients to boost end customer engagement by providing them with innovative credit and identity solutions that enhance the customer experience.

Array raised an undisclosed amount of funding in June 2021 from Operator Partners and the FIS FinTech Accelerator in Partnership with The Venture Center. The company is based in New York City.

Photo by Pixabay

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Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria

Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Compass Plus, Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at two Finovate alums that are helping support fintech innovation in the Middle East and Africa.

First up is engagement banking platform provider Backbase. The four-time Finovate Best of Show award-winning company announced this week that it has forged a new partnership with Bahrain FinTech Bay (BFB). The partnership comes under the auspices of BFB’s Venture Acceleration Platform, which seeks to boost the adoption of digital banking technology in the MENA region.

Head of Partners at Backbase Middle East Mehmet Cakal said, “This new collaboration with Bahrain FinTech Bay aligns with our continuous efforts to help banks in the region with a long-term digital strategy and support them with a holistic approach towards digital transformation, to be able to meet the demands and expectations of their customers in today’s age.”

Backbase is no stranger to the MENA fintech and financial services industry. The company, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has established partnerships with a number of key players in the region. This includes the National Bank of Bahrain, Banque Saudi Fransi, and the Kuwait International Bank. In fact, Backbase Middle East was awarded “Digital Banking Provider Of the Year” honors at the MEA Finance Banking Technology Summit and Awards last month.

Bahrain FinTech Bay, a leading finech hub in the region, promotes fintech innovation by incubating fintech initiatives via innovation labs, acceleration programs, curated activities, and educational opportunities. Founded in 2017, BFB launched its Venture Acceleration Platform in order to give emerging fintechs “a launch pad and bespoke go-to-market strategies” to help them scale their businesses and take advantage of opportunities in the MENA region. The platform provides those companies selected to participate in the accelerator with market intelligence, exposure to partners, as well as assistance in implementation and regional expansion.

“Our new partnership with Backbase will strengthen our mandate to bring cutting-edge technology offerings to banks and financial institutions in MENA,” Bahrain FinTech Bay CEO Bader Sater said. “Bahrain FinTech Bay is committed to providing curated opportunities for enterprises and supporting startups in the sector to accelerate their growth and expansion efforts across the region.”

Meanwhile, several hundred miles to the south and west, fellow Europe-based fintech Compass Plus is engaged in its own outreach to markets in developing economies. The U.K.-based company, a Finovate alum since 2012, announced this week that it is teaming up with Nigerian fintech Interswitch to help it enhance its payment processing capability.

Interswitch will leverage Compass Plus’ token-based, cloud-native, API-first open development payments platform, TranzAxis, to process Verve, Visa, and Mastercard credit card transactions. Six African banks already have been onboarded onto the new platform, which has enabled Sterling Bank of Nigeria to launch the country’s first Verve credit card.

“We are delighted to partner with Interswitch, one of the biggest processors in Africa,” Compass Plus MEA VP and Deputy Managing Director Adil Ahmed said. “Interswitch has always strived to drive positive change in the region, and now that they have TranzAxis to support their ambitions, they will continue to revolutionize Africa’s payment space in the region, further strengthen the Verve payments network, and manage their Visa and Mastercard credit card business more efficiently.”

Founded in 1989, Compass Plus offers banks and financial services companies retail banking software and services to enable them to better respond to their customers’ banking needs. The company’s solutions address issues from card, account, and merchant management to card personalization, payment processing, and terminal driving to self-service channel management and both mobile and e-commerce. Compass Plus’ TranzAxis technology helps financial services companies develop and support cards, payments, transaction switching, and other retail banking activities.

Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, Interswitch began as a nationally-focused, transaction switching and processing firm. In the 20 years since then, the firm has grown into Africa’s leading integrated payments and digital commerce platform company with more than 900 full-time workers across Africa – 40% of whom are women. Named “Fintech of the Year” at the 2022 African Banker Awards last month, Interswitch also last month secured a strategic investment from LeapFrog Investments and Tana Africa Capital. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

“The evolution of fintech in Nigeria and the broader sub-Saharan region has been driven by the need to solve challenges and barriers that exist within the traditional financial system,” Interswitch founder and Group Chief Executive Mitchell Elegbe said. “Interswitch was born from the need to develop solutions that match the unique needs of local customers and merchants.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Satheesh Cholakkal

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Raisin Bank’s Newest Acquisition Helps it Expand into Bulk Payments and Cash

Raisin Bank’s Newest Acquisition Helps it Expand into Bulk Payments and Cash
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Raisin Bank has agreed to acquire the payment division of Bankhaus August Lenz.
  • The move will help Raisin Bank diversify its revenue sources by adding payment services to its product lineup.
  • Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Banking-as-a-service player Raisin Bank is adding cash and payment services to its product lineup. This comes as the Germany-based firm has acquired the payment division of Bankhaus August Lenz, a private bank headquartered in Munich. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The move will help Raisin Bank diversify its revenue sources by adding payment services. The new capabilities enable Raisin Bank to offer customers electronic payment transactions and cash solutions. Bankhaus August Lenz’s Mirko Siepmann will head up the new division, which aims to help retailers, restaurant, gas stations, and non-bank operators of ATMs, facilitate the operation of more than 4,500 ATMs in Germany. 

“As a service bank, we will act much more independently and powerfully with the expansion of our payment solutions and continue our growth in the banking-as-a-service market throughout Europe advance,” said Raisin Bank Chief Commercial Officer Dr. Andreas Wolf. “With the new business area, we can position ourselves even better as a provider for bulk payments.”

Raisin Bank, previously MHB-Bank, was founded in 1973. The bank acquired European fintech Raisin in 2019 and has since been working toward its goal to become the leading banking-as-a-service provider in Europe. The bank offers digital solutions to help startups, institutional investors, and financial service providers seeking banking licenses to enhance customer and account management, payment transactions, and lending. Raisin Bank stated in today’s press release that adding payment services represents an “important strategic step on the way to becoming a powerful full-service provider.”

Photo by Anete Lusina

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The Key to Compliance: A Conversation with Justin Beals, CEO of Strike Graph

The Key to Compliance: A Conversation with Justin Beals, CEO of Strike Graph
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Interview, Speaker series

Innovation and regulation are the ying and yang of financial technology in many respects. To this end, we caught up with Justin Beals, co-founder and CEO of Strike Graph, to talk about the relationship between fintech innovation and fintech regulation, and why compliance is something that successful fintechs are taking seriously.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Strike Graph specializes in helping companies secure critical security compliance certifications. These are the certifications that can both impact revenue and reduce the time to close, as well as demonstrate the maturity of an organization.

Why banks and financial services companies need a compliance partner.

The challenge (for banks) is that the standards that you’re trying to meet can be complex. It’s important to not only have technology, but (also) a provider of that technology with intelligence about how to meet the standard so that you don’t essentially spin your wheels trying to do things that don’t necessarily make you more secure and don’t necessarily impact compliance.

So when revenue is on the line – and that’s what the challenge is here – being unable to represent a security posture that meets certain standards (means) you might not get that partnership, you might not get that contract … You really need to do it efficiently and effectively and be able to maintain it for a long period of time.

On the role an effective compliance partner can play to help financial services companies

I think one of the secrets about compliance practices is that if there’s some aspect of your business that isn’t applicable to the standard, you’re actually not required to be assessed to it. And so what’s really important is to customize your security posture according to the types of risk that your business is meeting in the marketplace, and then respond to those risks. Then, (you are) able to talk to the assessor and say, “hey, look, you know we don’t necessarily have this particular risk. It’s not something we solve for and therefore it’s not something we need to be assessed for.” That way you get through the compliance process as efficiently as possible.

On Strike Graph’s approach to helping financial services companies meet compliance obligations

The secret sauce at Strike Graph is that we have a very intelligent SaaS platform that helps our customers customize that particular security posture based upon the risks that are impacting their business.

This is impacting any B2B company that’s sharing data. And that’s really how we describe our marketplace. And, of course, fintech handles some of the most precious transactions and pieces of data, and they have a long history of things like PCI DSS where compliance is really important. So they really do understand the value of having a good compliance practice.

Check out the rest of our interview on FinovateTV.

Photo by Pixabay

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Glia Acquires Finn AI for Undisclosed Sum

Glia Acquires Finn AI for Undisclosed Sum
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finn.ai, Glia, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Digital customer service firm Glia agreed to acquire conversational AI technology company Finn AI.
  • Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
  • Glia Co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said that Finn AI is a strong fit for Glia because of its technology, market approach, and company culture. 

Digital customer service firm Glia is enhancing its offering with its recent acquisition of conversational AI technology company and fellow Finovate alum Finn AI.

Financial terms of the agreement, which will integrate Finn.ai’s conversational AI solutions into Glia’s customer service platform, were not disclosed. Glia Co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said that Finn AI is a strong fit for Glia because of its technology, market approach, and company culture. 

“This marks a new chapter for Virtual Assistants: Verticalization with Scale,” Michaeli said. “Generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ bot providers have largely failed to meet the full potential of conversational AI, leading to the emergence of vendors focusing on specific industry verticals. Until now, none of the financial services bot vendors have been able to achieve widespread adoption on their own.”

Finn AI Co-founder and CEO Jake Tyler said that joining forces with Glia will offer Finn AI scale. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., Finn AI aims to transform customer engagement and increase financial literacy with its AI-powered conversational banking technology. Among the company’s clients are ATB Financial, BECU, United Federal Credit Union, EQ Bank, Civista Bank, and Truist Momentum.

According to the press release, Finn AI and Glia have a lot of shared clients, and Finn AI’s technology is already integrated into Glia. Post-acquisition, the company’s leadership team will take on leadership positions within Glia. As for Finn AI’s Canadian headquarters, Glia plans to use the location to establish a “Conversational AI Center of Excellence.”

Glia was founded in 2012 as SaleMove. The company offers digital communication choices, on-screen collaboration, and AI-enabled assistance tools. Glia, which has taken home 10 Finovate Best of Show awards for its live demos, most recently showcased its tools at FinovateSpring 2021. Finn AI also boasts accolades from the Finovate audience, having taken home two Finovate Best of Show awards for its demos at FinovateAsia 2016 and FinovateFall 2017.

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Payments Solution Provider SumUp Raises $624 Million at a Valuation of $8.5 Billion

Payments Solution Provider SumUp Raises $624 Million at a Valuation of $8.5 Billion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, SumUp
  • E-commerce payments enabler SumUp raised $624 million (€590 million) in a combination of equity and debt financing this week.
  • The funding round was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
  • This week’s investment gives SumUp a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion).

In a round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities – and featuring participation from funds managed by BlackRock, btov Partners, Centerbridge, Crestline, Fin Capital, and Sentinel Dome Partners – e-commerce payments innovator SumUp has secured an investment of $624 million (€590 million). The funding gives the London-based company a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion). SumUp co-founder Marc-Alexander Christ said in a statement that the capital will “enable us to continue to build out our product ecosystem, expand into new markets, (and) pursue value-adding acquisitions.”

The funding was a 50/50 mix of debt and equity and includes SumUp’s first equity infusion since 2017. The company’s total funding stands at $1.6 billion – most of which is debt financing. SumUp secured €750 million in debt funding in 2021.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Christ called the company’s new valuation “true and fair”. This statement comes months after it was reported that SumUp was seeking an investment that would give the company a significantly higher valuation – to the tune of $21 billion (€20 billion). Christ suggested that the current valuation reflects “the price people put on the company in the worst of markets” and that SumUp’s valuation was unlikely to move any lower in the future.

SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. In the years since, the company has grown to serve more than four million businesses with its payment solutions that range from card readers and point of sale solutions to business accounts and invoicing. The company began this year teaming up with Worldpay from FIS to support its global expansion efforts. SumUp will use Worldpay’s global acquiring services, including authorization, clearing and settlement, dispute management and data insights.

Also this year, SumUp announced a referral deal with Latin American and European e-commerce platform PrestaShop. The partnership gave “hundreds of thousands” of merchants on the PrestaShop platform access to SumUp’s product suite of payment solutions and business tools. Nearly 300,000 websites rely on PrestaShop’s technology, and the company sees its collaboration with SumUp as part of its strategy to enable more merchants to launch and scale their businesses.

“By partnering with PrestaShop, we will continue to expand our support for digital transformation of small businesses, by ensuring their products and services are also available online for their customers,” SumUp Head of Sales and Partnerships James Henry said. “Our partnership will enable merchants with a seamless and secure payment experience for all major credit and debit cards, an important tool in enabling small business success in today’s environment.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp is headquartered in London. Daniel Klein is founder and CEO.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin

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The U.K. Proposes 4 New BNPL Rules

The U.K. Proposes 4 New BNPL Rules
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: List series, Uncategorized

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) has seen a lot of hype since the popularity of the technology exploded in 2020. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) estimates that the U.K. BNPL market is worth $3.7 billion (£2.7 billion), and that five million British citizens have used BNPL tools since 2020. This growth is great for BNPL companies, but not necessarily so for the consumers they serve.

That’s because consumers in the U.K. are starting to take on debt to pay for purchases they’ve made using BNPL. According to a recent survey, more than 40% of U.K. consumers have done so. Citizens Advice, which conducted the survey, found that 51% of consumers ages 18 to 34 have borrowed money to pay for BNPL purchases, while 39% of 35 to 54 year-olds and 24% of people aged over 55 have done so.

The most common debt incurred to pay for purchases made using BNPL is credit card debt. Users have also borrowed money from friends and family, borrowed money from their bank overdraft, taken out loans, and have even taken out payday loans. The study also found that more than one in 10 customers of a major bank using BNPL services were already behind on their payments.

This misuse of BNPL technology is why the U.K. FCA released a set of four rules earlier this week. The agency anticipates they will protect millions of consumers.

  1. Lenders will be required to carry out checks to ensure that loans are affordable for consumers.
  2. Advertisements must be fair, clear, and not misleading.
  3. Lenders will need to be approved by the FCA.
  4. Borrowers will be be able to take complaints about BNPL schemes to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

The government will create secondary legislation by mid-2023, after which the FCA will consult on its rules for the short-term lending sector.

“Buy-Now Pay-Later can be a helpful way to manage your finances but we need to ensure that people can embrace new products and services with the appropriate protections in place,” said Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen. “By holding Buy-Now Pay-Later to the high standards we expect of other loans and forms of credit, we are protecting consumers and fostering the safe growth of this innovative market in the U.K.”

The FCA has made it clear that these regulations do not only apply to BNPL firms. Companies that extend other forms of short-term, interest-free credit will also be required to comply with the same rules. Not only that, the rules also apply to businesses who partner with a third-party lender to provide credit to their customers.

Photo by Nothing Ahead

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Shopify Unveils More than 100 New Features

Shopify Unveils More than 100 New Features
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Ecommerce company Shopify has unveiled more than 100 new announcements today.
  • Among the top new releases are a marketplace that allows fans to use their NFTs to receive personalized benefits and a tool that allows merchants to sell to their audience on Twitter.
  • The announcements were made as part of Shopify Editions, Shopify’s new, semi-annual showcase of fresh tools and updates for its merchant clients.

Ecommerce player Shopify is debuting Shopify Editions, the company’s semi-annual showcase of new tools and capabilities for merchant clients. In today’s announcement, the company is unveiling more than 100 new updates and launches to power what it is calling Connect to Consumer (C2C).

“Welcome to Shopify Editions, where twice a year we show you everything that we’ve been building,” Shopify stated on its website. “We know that brands need new ways to engage with their customers—and that means creating new connections. So this release of Editions features everything you need to win in the new era of commerce: Connect to Consumer.”

Here are some highlights of features Shopify has released so far this year:

  • Point of Sale, which helps merchants sell to customers where they are, including in-person, online, and anywhere else.
  • Hydrogen and Oxygen, which helps any size of merchant start, build, and deploy custom storefronts.
  • B2B on Shopify, an offering that enables Shopify Plus merchants to sell to other businesses on the same platform that they use for selling direct-to-consumer.
  • Shopify Markets, which makes it easy for merchants to engage with and sell to buyers in international markets.
  • Tokengated Commerce, a marketplace that allows fans to use their NFTs to receive personalized benefits such as exclusive merchandise and early access to product releases.
  • Twitter Sales Channel, a tool that allows merchants to highlight their products on their Twitter profile and sell to their audience on Twitter.
  • Tap to Pay on iPhone, which leverages a partnership with Stripe to enable Shopify point-of-sale merchants to expand into offline retail without additional hardware.
  • Local Inventory on Google, a tool that automatically notifies nearby customers when a product is available in store.
  • Shopify Functions, which allows developers to extend or replace Shopify’s backend logic with custom code.

Shopify has also released some smaller updates over the past six months. The company has added data sharing controls, money management tools, carbon neutral shipping options, and its Shopify Capital tool has increased the funding limit for first-time borrowers.

For a look into the rest of the 100+ announcements Shopify is making today, check out the Shopify Editions release page.

While many of the new releases themselves are notable, so is the way the company has decided to unveil them. By rolling up all of the new updates and releases into one large announcement, Shopify is able to make a big deal of even the smallest of updates. For fintechs with fast development cycles and international rollouts, this could be a good model for complex public releases.

Canada-based Shopify was founded in 2004 to bring ecommerce websites and tools to retailers. Since then, millions of businesses in 175 countries have used Shopify to make over $496 billion in sales. Tobias Lütke is CEO.

Photo by Pixabay

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DigiShares Receives Grant from Polymesh Association to Support Tokenization of Securities

DigiShares Receives Grant from Polymesh Association to Support Tokenization of Securities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DigiShares, Polymesh
  • Two Finovate newcomers – DigiShares and the Polymesh Network – have teamed up to promote the use of tokenization to create and manage securities.
  • The partnership comes in the form of a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF), a part of the not-for-profit Polymesh Association.
  • DigiShares is headquartered in Denmark and demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2021; Polymesh is based in Switzerland and demoed its technology a year later at FinovateSpring 2022.

Digishares, a Danish white-label platform for tokenizing real estate, is the first company to receive a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF). The EDF is a creation of the Polymesh Association, which is a part of Polymath, the company behind the Polymesh Network. The Polymesh Network is an institutional-grade, permissioned blockchain for regulated assets that was featured in Polymath’s Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring.

With $10 million in funding, the EDF is designed to financially support companies and projects that can bring value to the Polymesh ecosystem. DigiShares received its grant for integrating Polymesh and expanding the Polymesh ecosystem to DigiShares’ network of clients and partners. Additionally, DigiShares will facilitate the migration of its clients’ current ERC-1400 assets from Ethereum to Polymesh. DigiShares has supported ERC-1400 on Ethereum since 2019 and been an early supporter of Polymesh, as well, having joined the company’s partnership ecosystem back in January of 2021. The integration announced this week will allow issuers to DigiShares’ tokenization platform to create and manage security tokens on Polymesh.

“Polymath has been a long and trusted partner of DigiShares and we are proud to soon support the Polymesh blockchain,” DigiShares CEO Claus Skaaning said. “We believe that Polymesh has long term potential to lead the security token space.”

The grant award announcement arrives weeks after the Polymesh Association introduced its Ecosystem Development Fund, which itself follows the listing of Polymesh’s native token POLYX on Huobi, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world. The fund is a wager that financially backing businesses that can help promote wider adoption of Polymesh will prove an effective way to incentivize companies to build, integrate, and use the institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure.

“The Ecosystem Development Fund delivers two benefits to service providers,” Polymesh Association Head of Tokenization Graeme Moore said. “Successful applicants not only receive funding but they can also attract clients by adding a Polymesh integration to their roadmap.”

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Aalborg, Denmark, DigiShares made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring 2021. At the event, the company demonstrated its white-label tokenization platform for real estate, which adds both automation and liquidity to the property market. The DigiShares platform digitizes and automates both the financing and the corporate management aspects of real estate projects. The platform also provides a bulletin board marketplace that leverages blockchain technology and peer-to-peer trading without counterparty risk.

Among Finovate’s newest alums, Polymath demonstrated its Polymath Token Studio at FinovateSpring last month in San Francisco. The Token Studio is an interface that enables the user to create, issue, and manage blockchain-based securities. “Thanks to blockchain and tokenization we can reduce the costs of creating, issuing, and managing securities by over 90%,” Moore explained from the Finovate stage in May. “Banks, custodians, transfer agents, broker-dealers and these other service providers can give their clients new and fresh experiences, and we can create new securities and new financial instruments that previously weren’t possible.”

Polymath and the Polymesh Network are based in Zug, Switzerland. Vince Kadar is Polymath CEO.

Photo by rovenimages.com

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Product Quality Innovator unitQ Unveils its Impact Analysis Tool

Product Quality Innovator unitQ Unveils its Impact Analysis Tool
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, unitQ
  • Less than a month after its FinovateSpring demo, unitQ has introduced its Impact Analysis tool.
  • The new offering helps businesses identify both important product quality issues in their app as well as the impact of fixing those issues.
  • Impact Analysis enables companies to improve their unitQ Scores, which enable businesses to accurately compare their app with rival apps in the same industry.

Product quality platform and Finovate newcomer unitQ recently launched its Impact Analysis tool. The new offering helps businesses recognize and address critical product quality issues and the impact of correcting them.

“With Impact Analysis, teams can learn what impacts fixing an issue might have on KPIs like 1-star reviews, support tickets, brand sentiment, and more – before taking action,” unitQ Product Manager Brett Caplan wrote on the company blog late last week.

UnitQ’s Impact Analysis tool works by automatically identifying user-generated issues that will have the greatest impact on product quality if fixed. These issues – which unitQ calls “Quality Monitors” – not only guide teams toward the most important product quality concerns, but also steer the team away from concerns that may seem significant, but may have a minimal or even adverse impact on an app’s unitQ Score, as well as its rating within its own marketplace (i.e., Apple App Store, Google Play Store, etc.).

The unitQ Score enables companies to compare their app’s quality — based on Apple App and Google Play stores rating and reviews – against that of other apps from the same industry. A companion assessment, the Internal unitQ Score includes everything evaluated in the unitQ Score, but also includes user feedback culled from social media such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as data from customer support and chatbot applications. The new Impact Analysis tool enables companies to see the impact of potential improvements and changes on both scores.

“A unitQ Score closer to 100 indicates a brand has few product quality issues overall,” Caplan explained. “It means that users enjoy the product, the experience is well-designed, easy to use, responsive – and is virtually free of bugs, broken flows, and operational mistakes. Higher scores equal better products, and more satisfied customers.”

The Impact Analysis tool is powered by the machine learning capabilities of the unitQ Monitor, which measures, analyzes, and visualizes the unstructured data of user feedback. The technology translates text from more than 70 languages, normalizes and removes personally-identifiable information (PII), enriches data with sentiment analysis, and appends with product metadata. By turning qualitative feedback into quantitative data, unitQ helps companies discover important insights that enable them to improve product quality.

Headquartered in Burlingame, California, unitQ most recently demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022 in May. The company was co-founded by Christian Wiklund (CEO) and Niklas Lindstrom (CTO) in 2018. Among the company’s customers are firms such as Chime, Current, and fellow Finovate alums Klarna and Nubank.

Photo by Pixabay

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