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MoneyGram Makes Strategic Investment in Cryptocurrency Cash Exchange

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 6, 2022
Categories: Daily news, Funding, MoneyGram

Pre-digital P2P payments and remittance player MoneyGram made a strategic investment in cryptocurrency cash exchange company Coinme this week.

The amount of MoneyGram’s strategic investment in Coinme was undisclosed, but it gives the firm a 4% stake in the Seattle-based company. As a result, MoneyGram now holds direct ownership in Coinme.

“At MoneyGram, we continue to be bullish on the vast opportunities that exist in the ever-growing world of cryptocurrency and our ability to operate as a compliant bridge to connect digital assets to local fiat currency. Our investment in Coinme further strengthens our partnership and compliments our shared vision to expand access to digital assets and cryptocurrencies,” said MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes.

The two companies originally teamed up last year to offer a crypto-to-cash product that combined MoneyGram’s mobile payments platform and Coinme’s cryptocurrency exchange and custody technology. The new product allows customers to purchase bitcoin with cash and withdraw bitcoin holdings in cash at thousands of physical point-of-sale locations.

“Our unique cash-to-bitcoin offering with Coinme, announced in May of 2021, opened our business to an entirely new customer segment, and we couldn’t be more pleased with our progress. As we accelerate our innovation efforts, partnerships with startups like Coinme will further our position as the industry leader in the utilization of blockchain and similar technologies,” Holmes added.

And while last year’s partnership between the two was limited to U.S.-based point of sale locations, Coinme CEO Neil Bergquist unveiled plans for a global launch. “We see this as an incredible opportunity to continue our strong growth and build on our leading presence in the world of crypto,” said Bergquist. “With MoneyGram’s global network and infrastructure, both [MoneyGram’s] continued partnership and strategic investment will help us accelerate our growth and international expansion.”

Coinme offers two cash-to-crypto products that enable users to purchase cryptocurrencies using cash at MoneyGram and Coinstar locations in 48 U.S. states. Since the company was founded in 2014, it has raised $19 million.

Last October, MoneyGram partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation and Circle to enable consumers using Circle’s USDC stablecoin to receive cash funding and payout in local currency. MoneyGram was founded in 1940 and is currently listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MGI with a market capitalization of $692 million.

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CSI Inks Partnerships with Cypress Bank & Trust, NYDIG

By David Penn Posted on January 6, 2022
Categories: Daily news

End-to-end fintech and regtech solution provider Computer Services, Inc. (CSI) has announced a pair of new partnerships to start the new year. At the beginning of the week, the Paducah, Kentucky-based company announced that Cypress Bank & Trust would deploy CSI’s NuPoint core platform to serve as the backbone for its integrated banking services. A de novo bank headquartered in Palm Beach, Florida, Cypress Bank & Trust will leverage its new platform to offer a suite of commercial and consumer banking services to new customers and expand its services to current trust and investment management customers.

“At CSI, our top priority is providing industry-leading technology and services that empower community banks to grow their businesses and innovate,” CSI Enterprise Banking Group President Giovanni Mastronardi said. “As a de novo, Cypress Bank & Trust has the opportunity to establish a modern technology foundation for their banking services.”

NuPoint is a cloud-based, core banking system that leverages seamless integration and the ability to connect to third-party APIs to enable banks to deploy customer-facing banking solutions and streamline back office operations. Cypress Bank & Trust President, CEO, and Director Dana Kilborne noted that the partnership will help the financial institution, which grew out of The Cypress Trust Company last year, to continue to evolve and build out its offerings.

“For the last 25 years, we have specialized in providing personalized trust services to meet the holistic needs of our clients,” Kilborne said. “To successfully expand into banking services, it is imperative that we work with a provider that has the technology advancements and proven experience to support our initiative.”

Computer Services, Inc. followed up its bank partnership announcement with a fintech partnership announcement a few days later. The company announced that it was teaming up with bitcoin innovator NYDIG to enable community financial institutions to offer a full suite of turnkey Bitcoin services. This includes giving banking customers the ability to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin from within CSI’s digital banking platform.

In a statement, Gerald Reiter, president and CEO of CSI core banking customer Granite Bank, noted the growing popular interest in cryptocurrencies and the importance of ensuring that consumers have a safe way to participate in digital asset trading and investing. NYDIG Chief Innovation Officer Patrick Sells underscored the point, emphasizing that safety and regulatory compliance need to keep up with customer enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies.

“Community banks are excited about offering Bitcoin services to their customers,” Sells said, “but they also know that they need to provide a secure and compliant environment to maintain the trust that their customers place in them.”

Founded in 2017 and based in New York, NYDIG ended 2021 with a $1 billion investment that gave the company a valuation of more than $7 billion. New investor WestCap Group led the round, which also featured participation from Affirm Holdings and Fiserv. Also involved in the funding were existing investors Morgan Stanley, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, and New York Life Insurance.

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A Chat with Huawei’s Siri Børsum on What’s Next for Digital Transformation

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 6, 2022
Categories: FinovateEurope 2022, Speaker series

Last November, I chatted with Siri Børsum, Global VP of Finance Vertical Eco-Development and Partnerships at Huawei, as part of our Women in Fintech series.

At Huawei, Børsum is responsible for building a team that ensures Huawei has all of the financial apps for their mobile ecosystem. Børsum, who recently entered into the fintech industry, gained an interest in the tech arena while working at Google in the early days. The thrill of the new industry and betting on something big excited her about the field.

During our interview, we discussed the evolution of digital transformation and what to expect going forward. Below is a brief summary of our conversation. You can check out the full interview on the Finovate YouTube channel.

How has the digital transformation narrative changed?

Siri Børsum: I think companies are focusing even more on it and, for the first time, we as consumers have actually followed. It’s been one of those chicken-and-egg type of scenarios because we’ve all seen it’s been possible but the users haven’t joined in as much as we in the industry would have hoped for.

I now think that both companies and consumers see the extreme benefit of having better technological tools to do their banking. Consumers have now experienced good customer experience within not just the finance industry but within the tech industry– they’ve seen how apps can help them in their daily lives. This makes them more demanding than ever before and when customers are demanding, we need to step up.

What are your recommendations to help fintechs and banks keep up with changing consumer expectations?

Børsum: Start to focus on it. Have it top of mind. Not just something you say you want to do, but actually something you are measured on and that everyone in any management group or the C-suite talks about all the time. They know what KPIs there are. They know the development. It’s not something that’s left to the developers on the second floor.

Make sure it’s your highest priority. Make sure it’s measured and also don’t think you can do it on your own…. Also, you don’t drive innovation without the right culture. You need to look after your people, you need to make sure they feel safe, that they dare to try new things, and that they come to you with all the ideas. They also need information. They need to know what’s possible and they need to know what’s going on in the company in order to contribute.

What’s next for digital transformation?

Børsum: I’ve tried to bet on the future and I haven’t succeeded many times– I don’t think most people do. For me, I look more at what we see now. What are the current trends and what do I wish for as a customer?

I think embedded finance is obviously the next step and we need to see that work, truly. For me, personally, I would love to see payments disappear, totally. We’ve already seen these things and were moving towards it. It won’t happen straight away, but it’s definitely the direction we’re going.

Siri Børsum will deliver a keynote address titled, “Capturing Your Customers’ Goals & Finding New Revenue Streams By Putting Yourself At The Heart Of Their Lives” at FinovateEurope which is taking place March 22 through 23 both in-person in London and digitally.

Photo by Mark Chan on Unsplash

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3 Takeaways from the Launch of China’s Digital Yuan Wallet on Android and iOS

By David Penn Posted on January 5, 2022
Categories: Daily news, List series

Will 2022 be the year that CBDCs – central bank digital currencies – finally emerge from concept to solution? One of the countries that has been most aggressive in developing these digital assets – China – announced this week that it has launched its digital yuan wallet in both the Android and iOS app stores. The launch comes after more than seven years of development and extensive field testing across the country. This includes a pilot project that involved using the digital yuan (or e-CNY, as it is also known) for transactions worth more than $5 billion as of June of 2021. The Chinese central bank claims that, to date, its digital yuan has been used in more than 70 million payments across 1.3+ million scenarios.

What does this suggest for the digital yuan in specific and CBDCs in general going forward? Here are a handful of takeaways from this week’s announcement out of China.

China is still the global leader in CBDC innovation

Talking with CBDC experts like James Wallis of RippleX about which countries are leading the way on innovation in CBDCs, China is often treated as if it is in a category of its own. Among the more advanced economies in the world, none rival China in terms of their commitment to developing a CBDC. This week’s news of China’s digital yuan wallet being made available via the Android and iOS app stores is a testament to this leadership in the field.

While the United States has certain advantages in what has been called “the digital currency space race,” the lack of institutional support compared to what the e-CNY is receiving could play a significant role as digital currencies move toward broader use. This relative lack of support is a potential challenge both inside of the U.S. as well as internationally. “In the long term, the absence of U.S. leadership and standards setting can have geopolitical consequences, especially if China maintains its first-mover advantage in the development of CBDCs,” researchers from the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank on international affairs, concluded in December.

A digital yuan challenges offerings from Ant Group and Tencent

The timing of the Android and iOS app store launches is also noteworthy. The Winter Olympic games begin in less than a month in Beijing and it is believed that the Chinese government hopes to showcase the new technology during the weeks-long event. It has been suggested that if the new digital yuan wallet gains traction swiftly enough – selected Chinese citizens in any one of 10 provinces including Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chengdu are eligible to download the wallet – there is a likelihood that the wallet will compete with commercial payment options from domestic firms like Ant Group and Tencent.

Interestingly, some American politicians are concerned enough about the presence of a digital yuan at the Winter Games that they have written a letter to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee asking that American athletes be banned from using it. The authors of the letter point to possible security risks, including potential “tracking and tracing” of athletes. The Chinese central bank, for its part, has indicated that the e-CNY will feature “controllable anonymity” that will protect data and prevent fraud.

The e-CNY could serve both China’s consumer tech and international finance goals

One of the conversations from 2021 that China watchers will be continuing in 2022 is the degree to which the country’s government is incentivizing “science-based” technology such as its semiconductor industry relative to more consumer tech/internet-based technologies. In some ways, development of its digital yuan cuts against this dichotomy. On the one hand, a digital yuan opens up consumer payment opportunities that could disadvantage commercial payment offerings, as noted above. On the other hand, the rise of a Chinese CBDC has the potential to play a major role not only in the digitization of China’s financial system, but also as a potential reserve currency for emerging countries or as a universal payment instrument for China’s economic partners.

“In the coming years, the e-CNY will likely be deployed across China as part of Beijing’s focus on bolstering domestic financial security,” Robert Greene wrote in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last July. “The e-CNY could also be used to navigate international transactions around payment systems and networks that can be shut off to Chinese financial institutions serving U.S.-sanctioned entities.”

For more on China’s plans for its CBDC, check out this white paper published by the People’s Bank of China in July of last year.

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Fractal Lands $360 Million from Alternative Asset Firm TPG

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 5, 2022
Categories: Daily news, Funding

AI-powered decision making firm Fractal Analytics landed a $360 million investment from alternative asset firm TPG Capital this week. The round brings the 21-year-old company’s total funding to $685 million.

While there is no official word on Fractal’s valuation, Fractal CEO and Co-founder Srikanth Velamakanni told Bloomberg earlier this year that the company is “assessing interest from investors valuing the company at significantly more than $1 billion.”

The funds are coming from TPG’s Asia-focused private equity firm, TPG Capital Asia. The deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of this year, is comprised of a combination of a primary investment and secondary share purchases from funds advised by private equity advisory firm Apax. Both TPG and Apax will be minority shareholders in Fractal.

As part of today’s deal, TPG’s Puneet Bhatia and Vivek Mohan will sit on Fractal’s board of directors.

“Fractal is building a great workplace and an innovative culture that’s driving significant client outcomes through our ‘user focused, decision-backwards’ approach to solving problems,” said Velamakanni. “TPG’s capabilities across all our markets and their proven success in building and supporting top AI providers is the perfect complement to the partnership we’ve enjoyed with Apax, whose insight and expertise have been instrumental in accelerating our growth.”

Headquartered in New York City, Fractal helps businesses leverage AI to power and inform human decisions. The company serves a range of industries, offering products including Senseforth.ai, a conversational AI platform; Samya.ai, a revenue growth AI; Crux Intelligence, an AI-powered analytics platform; Eugenie.ai, a tool for AI-driven operational efficiency.

Fractal employs 3,500 employees in 16 offices across the globe, including the U.S., the U.K., Ukraine, India, Singapore, and Australia. Last month, the company appointed Manish Tiwari as Chief Information Officer. Last summer, Fractal announced it is exploring an IPO. The funding route would help fuel the company’s growth now that companies have made a post-pandemic push to move their operations to the cloud. “The floodgates have opened,” said Velamakanni. “We have the scale to be a public company.”

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FinTech Automation Inks Consumer Data Agreement with Finicity

By David Penn Posted on January 5, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finicity

FinTech Automation (FTA), an infrastructure-as-a-service platform, announced that it has partnered with Finicity to access consumer data to ensure secure account validation during the account opening process. The collaboration also will drive a transition away from outdated validation methods such as time-consuming micro-deposits.

“Integrating consumer-permissioned data from Finicity’s open banking network streamlines account opening and funding, making it safer, easier, and faster, which reduces account opening abandonment for our customers,” FinTech Automation founder and CEO David Park said. “It’s a great example of how open banking can improve banking and personal financial management offerings and their customer experience at the same time.”

Courtesy of the agreement, FTA customers will be able to connect to their primary accounts in order to fund new investment accounts. FinTech Automation will also be able to use consumer-permissioned data from Finicity’s open banking platform to show customers a more holistic view of their finances that takes into account holdings across multiple financial and wealth accounts. Customers will be able to download and integrate transactions from their wealth accounts into their personal financial management tools.

“Secure account opening is crucial for financial institutions today,” Finicity President and COO Andy Sheehan said. “Open banking data can reduce the friction and mitigate the risk associated with digital account opening. FTA’s integration of Finicity’s open banking platform will further empower consumers to take charge of their financial data and financial futures.”

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and founded in 2016, FinTech Automation offers a platform that automates administrative activities, integrates enabling technologies, and supports management with instant data and dashboards. The company’s platform and Acceleration Cloud give businesses the ability to manage APIs, relationships, and methods between workers, clients, and documents in an integrated, fully-compliant fashion. With 30 fintech partners and more than 50 advisory firm clients, FinTech Automation helps SMEs take advantage of innovative new financial technologies.

Finicity has been a Finovate alum since 2014. The company participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr 2021, last year with its VP of Data Science Nick Baguley giving a talk on Connecting Siloed Financial Data: Open Banking’s Impact on the Financial Experience. A few months later, Baguley was recognized by HousingWire in its 2021 Tech Trendsetter Awards for improving income identification and categorization to recognize a broader range of income streams. Also earning plaudits in December was Finicity CEO Steve Smith, who was nominated for Executive of the Year by the Lendit Fintech Industry Awards.

Founded in 1999 by Nick Thomas, Warren Rosner, and Smith, Finicity is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company was acquired by Mastercard in June 2020 for $825 million.

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Tink Completes Acquisition of FinTecSystems

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 4, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Tink

Visa-owned open banking platform Tink has finalized its purchase of FinTecSystems. The acquisition, which was initiated prior to Visa purchasing Tink, was first announced in May of last year. The integration of the two companies combines Tink’s open banking platform and FinTecSystems’ product suite to offer a more complete solution when partnering for open banking technology.

Additionally, FinTecSystems brings Tink new customers including N26, DKB, Santander, Solarisbank, and Check24. The Germany-based open banking firm will help Sweden-based Tink build on its growth strategy and expand into the DACH region, where FinTecSystems is currently powering over 150 banks and fintechs.

“Germany is a key market for Tink, and we are excited to have acquired an innovative leader with a strong reputation for the quality of its bank connectivity and payments services,” said Tink Co-founder and CEO Daniel Kjellén. “We have followed FinTecSystems for many years and are impressed by what they have achieved. Through this acquisition, we are taking a big step into the DACH region, and we look forward to supporting the FinTecSystems’ team to further accelerate their growth.”

FinTecSystems was founded in 2014 and facilitates data analytics, digital account checks, account aggregation, and open banking payments. The company connects to more than 99% of the banks in the DACH region, and in Germany specifically, three in every four online credit decisions involve FinTecSystems’ technology.

FinTecSystems’ 78 employees have joined Tink’s team, which now sits at almost 600 employees. FinTecSystems will continue to function as an independent, regulated company in Germany.

Today’s deal comes two years after Tink landed $103 million (€85 million) in a funding round that boosted its total raised to $308 million. The acquisition also comes after Tink itself was bought out by Visa in June of 2021 for $2.1 billion (€1.8 billion).

Tink, whose open banking platform is used by more than 10,000 developers, was founded in 2012 and currently serves 18 markets from its 13 offices. The company is a two-time Finovate Best of Show Award winner, and most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019.

FinovateEurope 2022 is right around the corner. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22 to March 23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!

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Bank of Charles Town to Digitize its Commercial Lending Experience in Partnership with Jack Henry

By David Penn Posted on January 4, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Jack Henry

The latest chapter in Bank of Charles Town’s digital transformation was written today. The West Virginia-based financial institution announced that it is collaborating with Jack Henry & Associates to digitize its commercial lending operations.

“We selected Jack Henry’s lending platform because it supports our broader digital banking strategy,” Bank of Charles Town (BCT) Vice President Anthony J. Ranghelli said. “The platform will help us grow with scale and efficiency while improving everyone’s experience. Our immediate goal for the next few years is to expand our digital lending footprint geographically to support businesses in neighboring communities and diversify our portfolio.”

Bank of Charles Town has spent the past few years investing in digital banking solutions, including a new website, digital wallets, and mobile deposit functionality. This week’s announcement will enable the FI to move away from the manual backend processes that have governed its previous loan origination system. The new technology from Jack Henry & Associates will bring new efficiencies, an improved customer experience, and streamlined workflow for employees. Ranghelli noted that the partnership will enable BCT to better serve its small and medium-sized business customers, especially “niche industries” such as dentist offices and law firms which he called “a priority for our bank.”

Founded in 1871 by a coalition of Jefferson County, West Virginia farmers and business leaders, Bank of Charles Town has grown into a $511 million-financial institution serving communities in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia; Loudon County, Virginia; and Washington County, Maryland. BCT was named a Best Bank to Work For by American Banker in 2020 for a second year in a row. Alice Frazier is President and CEO.

A Finovate alum since 2011, when the company showcased its ProfitStars division, Jack Henry & Associates finished 2021 with new partners and new functionalities for its solutions. The company announced a collaboration with Envestnet | Yodlee in December and also reported that its Jack Henry Lending platform, the centerpiece of its partnership with Bank of Charles Town, has been upgraded to include tax return spreading capabilities. This move will further reduce the amount of manual work that typically burdens the lending process and will accelerate the time to loan fulfillment.

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The Conversation Continues: Catching Up with Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast

By David Penn Posted on January 3, 2022
Categories: Bambu, Help With My Loan, Long Game, Moven, Podcasting

Miss an episode of the Finovate Podcast during the holiday rush? No need to fear; the Finovate blog has got your back.

From insights into the rise of embedded finance and prospects for “technosocialism” to discussions with innovators in the field of personal finance and roboadvisory, the Finovate Podcast is your one-stop-shop for fascinating, in-depth conversations between Finovate VP Greg Palmer and fintech’s finest analysts and entrepreneurs. Today we’re sharing some end-of-year episodes of the podcast that might have slipped beneath your radar as 2021 drew to a close.

Find the Finovate podcast at Soundcloud and follow Greg Palmer on Twitter for the latest in programming news and updates.

Chris Karageuzian, CEO and Co-founder, Help With My Loan. Host Greg Palmer and Chris Karageuzian talk about how the Finovate newcomer is making the lending process more pleasant for borrowers.

“I was in the industry for 20+ years so I felt the frustration – that’s why I left and created this company. (There’s a) lack of technology and fragmented software – you have to use almost seven to ten pieces of software just to deal with one file. That’s really not productive in my opinion. We closely work with banks right now. We have 300+ banks signed up in our database and in our software. So deals get automated and matched and we are within an earshot of every deal.”

Vivek Krishnamurthy, Principal, Commerce Ventures. Host Greg Palmer sits down with Vivek Krishnamurthy for a conversation on “embedded finance” and an overview of the field’s opportunities and pitfalls.

“There’s a split between the infrastructure layers that enable third parties to launch financial services products. And then there are the instances in which financial services products are launched inside of other ecosystems. We think that latter aspect, that latter space of being able to turn on a financial services product in the customer journey inside of a non-financial services ecosystem, that’s what we think about as ’embedded finance.'”

Ned Phillips, Founder and CEO, and Mike Larsen, Head of Sales, Bambu. Host Greg Palmer talks about the challenges facing the automated investment business with Ned Phillips and Mike Larsen of Best of Show winning roboadvisor Bambu.

“We are a B2B wealthtech. So what does that mean? We design, build, and deploy those roboadvisor, savings and investment apps for financial institutions. So if a financial institution wants its own Betterment or its own Wealthfront, they come to us for the tech and we build it. And at Finovate, we built one on stage in seven minutes!”

Will Graylin, Chairman and CEO, OV Loop; CEO, Indigo Technologies. Host Greg Palmer chats with serial entrepreneur Will Graylin about contactless payment adoption, super apps, and the future of mobile payments.

“Why haven’t we adopted (contactless payments) in much more mass given that Apple Pay has been out for over seven years, and Samsung Pay has been out for six years, and Google Pay has been out there for seven years – eight years now? Why haven’t we adopted en masse? (Our situation is) unlike China’s WeChat/WeChat Pay/AliPay. For those solutions, they are adopted to the order of about 83% of all consumer transactions, whereas we’re still in single digits in the United States. Why?”

Brett King, Author, The Rise of Technosocialism; Founder of Moven. Host Greg Palmer and Brett King talk about King’s latest book, The Rise of Technosocialism: How Inequality, AI, and Climate Will Usher in a New World.

“When you think about why it is that we haven’t been able to tackle (climate change) and get agreement on this, part of the core problem is that we tend to be quite short-term focused in our planning as a species. We’re focused on the next quarter, the next year, in terms of financial reporting, or maybe the next two years or four years in terms of political cycles. But when it comes to planning out things for 20 years in our future or 30 years in our future, the big problem is we just ask ‘who’s going to pay for it?'”

Lindsay Holden, Co-founder and CEO, Long Game. Host Greg Palmer discusses loyalty, education, Millennials, and gamification with Lindsay Holden, founder of FinovateFall Best of Show winner, Long Game.

“Long Game is a mobile game. It’s an app that sits on top of your bank account and rewards customers for learning about financial literacy and for positive financial behaviors like saving. For banks, we are helping them have a branded experience that’s super-fun for customers, they can acquire new customers with us, and also increase their customer LTV through promoting their products, increasing savings, and increasing direct deposits.”

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CRIF Partners with Swoop Funding to Help Small Businesses Unlock Working Capital

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 3, 2022
Categories: Alumni News, CRIF, Daily news

Late last month, credit management solutions provider CRIF announced plans to team up with Swoop Funding, a business funding and savings platform. CRIF anticipates the partnership will help the U.K.’s community of 5.9 million SMEs access more funding and ultimately grow.

Swoop will leverage CRIF’s Credit Passport business credit scoring technology that provides real time credit scores for SMEs. This tool will benefit both Swoop and the small businesses themselves. Swoop will help match businesses with funding and savings products. For businesses with lower credit scores, this will help them potentially find previously unavailable sources for working capital. The partnership will also offer SMEs insights into their businesses’ financial performance and viability, and help them see how lenders view them.

“We designed Credit Passport to remove friction in the lending decisioning process and help SMEs get the right funding for them, when they need it, as well as to help educate businesses so they can build the most financially healthy and resilient companies,” said CRIF Realtime Chief Product Officer Glen Keller. “CRIF’s partnership with Swoop puts us at the heart of the U.K.’s SMEs with useful information at a time when they need it the most and will really make a difference to the market.”

CRIF’s Credit Passport helps bridge the gap between the financial industry and business owners. The tool leverages open banking to offer lenders a view into SME’s credit quality and will give Swoop’s SME clients insight into their own business credit score.

Swoop was founded in 2018. The company’s business funding and savings platform helps SMEs discover the right funding solution– ranging from loans to equity to grants– to fit their need. Swoop also has a business financial management (BFM) spin, and offers tools to help businesses identify savings opportunities. The company has matched its more than 79,000 customers with over $187 million in funding.

Italy-based CRIF was founded in 1988 and has more than 5,500 employees working across 70+ subsidiary companies on four continents. The firm counts 10,500+ financial institutions, 600 insurance companies, and 82,000 businesses as clients. In all, one million consumers in 50 countries use CRIF’s services. In 2020, CRIF acquired PFM company Strands to complement its customer acquisition, portfolio management, and credit collection tools. Last year, CRIF participated as an investor in nine fintech funding rounds.

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Acorns Co-Founder Secures $20 Million in Funding for New Venture, Ant Money

By David Penn Posted on January 3, 2022
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Embedded finance platform Ant Money has secured $20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Franklin Templeton’s Franklin Venture Partners, RX3 Ventures, SteelBridge Laboratories, Steelpoint Capital Partners, and Ant Money founder Walter Cruttenden. The company, whose founder also launched micro-investing platform Acorns in 2012, also completed its stock-for-stock merger with Blast. A financial services platform for gamers, Blast went live in 2018 with its Game-Based Savings technology that leverages gameplay as a way to help individuals passively fund a free savings account.

The deal brings the total number of apps on the Ant Money platform to three: ATM, Blast, and Learn & Earn. Together the trio of offerings enables users to earn money and easily fund investment accounts.

“Building an investment account early in life can help people on the road to financial success, but many people don’t start because they lack the knowledge or funds,” Ant Money’s Walter Cruttenden said. “My hope is that Ant Money, which helps people generate small amounts of money to seed accounts, can foster new growing accounts and provide increased financial security for millions.”

ATM enables users to earn micro-income by engaging anonymously with leading worldwide brands. That income can be saved or invested in the stock market via Ant Money Advisors, a registered investment company and robo advisor that is embedded in the ATM app. Users can earn a minimum of $10 for the first month of participation, and more than $100 a month afterwards if enrolled in the ATM rewards program. Learn & Earn was developed in partnership with Junior Achievement USA. The app helps users earn money by completing lessons on concepts like budgeting, launching a business, and the power of compound interest. The money earned from Learn & Earn, like the money earned via ATM, can be automatically invested in the stock market, enabling users to start saving for the future at the same time as they are learning how to be good investors.

Ant Money co-founder Michael Gleason said that the merger of the companies made sense because they shared “similar visions for helping people enter the financial investment world.” Combined with what Gleason called “overlapping management,” the companies seemed ripe for consolidation. “(It) seemed like the logical next step was to merge the companies and build a larger one together,” Gleason said.

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Credix Raises $2.5 Million

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 21, 2021
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Decentralized credit platform Credix landed $2.5 million in early stage seed funding this week. The Belgium-based company will use the fresh capital to speed up the release of its alpha version and launch its protocol on the Solana mainnet.

DRW Cumberland and ParaFi Capital led the round. The Transfero Swiss BRZ Solana Ecosystem Fund, Solana Ventures, Parrot Finance, MGNR, Mercurial, Petrock Capital, Fuse Capital, and several angel investors also contributed.

Credix was founded just last month by Thomas Bohner, Maxim Piessen, and Chaim Finizola. The team is seeking to bridge the gap between decentralized finance and real-world assets, bringing uncollateralized loans to emerging markets, starting with Latin America.

“The rise of DeFi, crypto, and stablecoins provided Credix with all the required lego blocks to rethink the end-to-end debt capital markets flow,” said Bohner. “Credix is democratizing access to credit investing for both borrowers and investors by connecting them through a decentralized credit marketplace.”

Along with today’s funding announcement, Credix also appointed four new members to its advisory team. Chike Ukuagbu, Head of Crypto Strategy-Emerging Markets at Visa; João Bezerra Leite, Former Managing Director and CTO at Bank Itaú; Reginald de Wasseige, Investor at Augmentum; and Kenneth Bok, Managing Director Blocks, ex-Goldman Sachs will all serve as advisors to the Credix team.

In the next few weeks, Credix will launch its first credit lines for Latin American borrowers. In the first quarter of 2022, the company will extend access for underwriters and liquidity providers and will open the pool to the community within the first half of next year.

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

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