Email

4 Reasons to Believe Cryptocurrencies Are Here to Stay

4 Reasons to Believe Cryptocurrencies Are Here to Stay
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2021, List series

On the final day of FinovateFall a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk with James Wallis, Vice President of RippleX, Central Bank Engagements, and CBDCs, on the topic of blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and the potential traction both are gaining within mainstream finance.

Wallis offers an unqualified “yes!” in response to the question of whether or not digital assets and the technology that makes them possible are gaining in popularity with financial institutions. Pressed for examples that support his conviction, Wallis had more than a few examples to share with our attendees. Below, we excerpted a few highlights from his remarks on where to look and what to watch for as the financial sector begins to shift from crypto-curious toward a potentially more enduring embrace of the technology.

Trade Finance

“Traction is being gained. It has been steadily growing over the past four or five years. A few examples, or proof points, particularly in the blockchain space: there are a number of trade finance initiatives around the world, different consortiums are live and running, facilitating trade finance with different blockchain platforms.”

“With RippleNet we have a global network for cross-border payments, which is blockchain based, and we use a native crypto, XRP, to facilitate cross-border payments in what we call ‘on-demand liquidity’.”

Tokenization

“We’re seeing lots of different assets being tokenized, whether that’s NFTs, or securities, whether it’s currencies … That, I think, is a big trend. I think the World Economic Forum has predicted that something like 10% of the world’s GDP will be tokenized by 2027. I think that equates to around $24 trillion of goods and assets being tokenized.”

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)

“It’s a very busy environment right now. I think there’s a clear distinction between research and proof of concept versus building out real systems. Among the ones that are furthest ahead in building out real systems, China is probably the biggest one of scale. They are still in pilot mode; they are not fully operational. But they have had a number of pilots in different cities around China, and also are looking now to do some pilots cross border, as well. On the other end of the scale in terms of size, you have the Bahamas with their sand dollar, which is up and running.”

“Others that have done a lot of great research and are fairly well along but have not really pulled the trigger to go live yet are in Sweden with their digital e-krona and then, of course, Singapore with the Monetary Authority there. They have had a number of different projects over the last several years.”

Commercial bank interest rising

“I’ve seen personally a big uptick (in interest) in the last three or four months from commercial banks, household name banks wanting to understand more about what their role will be or could be in a CBDC. You know, when commercial banks start paying attention to something its because they’re either feeling there’s an opportunity to make more money or they feel there’s a threat against them.”

“A lot of early work was really wholesale: bank to bank transfers through central bank accounts. And that’s a valid use case. There’s been a trend in the last 12 months more towards retail, people looking at digital cash or other use cases around retail. Most of those, so far, have been domestic. In the Bahamas it’s really allowing people to send digital money to each other across the different islands there. But we are seeing an increase in interest, as is the Bank of International Settlements, in cross-border CBDCs: so how do you transact, say, with a digital U.S. dollar to a digital Euro to a digital yuan? I think use cases will just keep coming and coming, to be honest.”

Photo by Alesia Kozik from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Starling Bank Expands in Europe with B2B Banking and Payments Services

Starling Bank Expands in Europe with B2B Banking and Payments Services
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news

U.K. digital bank Starling announced plans to expand its banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution.

Starling launched its BaaS offering, Starling as a Service, in the U.K. in 2018. The company currently has 25 BaaS customers, including Raisin, CurrencyCloud, Moneybox, and Vitesse.

Starling as a Service will expand to the European Union in the first half of this year. Specifically, Starling aims to bring the service to companies in France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Spain.

The BaaS offering will enable businesses to build their own embedded financial products. While the business client offers the financial product to its end customers, Starling handles all technical and regulatory details involved.

Starling CEO Anne Boden described the European markets as a “great fit” for Starling due to the region’s “thriving” fintech scene. “We have seen a consistent and growing demand for digital financial services, further accelerated by extended lockdowns and a shift in consumer behaviors in key European markets,” said Boden, “and it is clear that Starling can power new and exciting opportunities for businesses across Europe.”

Starling as a Service takes advantage of the embedded finance trend that has been building since last year. By leveraging third party fintech solutions, any business can itself become a fintech by offering financial services to its customers. In Starling’s case, Starling as a Service will enable businesses to provide savings and current accounts, digital wallets, data processing, and payment cards.

Today’s news comes after Starling scored $376 million in funding in March and acquired Fleet Mortgages in July of this year. Headquartered in London, and with offices in Southampton, Cardiff, and Dublin, Starling has amassed $922 million in funding since launching its digital bank in 2014.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Fintech-as-a-Service Innovator Rize Raises $11.4 Million

Fintech-as-a-Service Innovator Rize Raises $11.4 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

In a round co-led by Alpha Edison and Morpheus Ventures, fintech-as-a-service platform Rize has secured $11.4 million in Series A funding. The company, founded by Justin Howell and Kirk Voltz six years ago as a B2C fintech firm, has since transitioned into a B2B platform dedicated to “making fintech infrastructure simple, accessible, and ubiquitous for all financial builders.”

The investment takes the Arlington, Virginia-based company’s total funding to $13.4 million.

Writing about the investment on the company’s blog, Howell put his company in the same cohort as fintech innovators – and Finovate alums – like Plaid and DriveWealth. These firms, like Rize, started out as consumer plays, but developed into fintech infrastructure companies as their understanding of challenge of “building intuitive financial user experiences” grew. Realizing that there was more to enhancing the user experience in financial services than UI/UX improvements, Howell and the Rize team concluded that the underlying financial infrastructure was the problem and Rize’s “uniquely flexible approach” could be part of the solution.

Rize’s platform leverages Synthetic Account technology to enable banks, fintechs, and brands to build a wide range of financial account types ranging from checking and savings accounts to brokerage, FBO, and business accounts. The technology also supports quick and secure money movement options including ACH and wires, as well as mobile check deposit and physical and virtual cards.

This summer, Rize unveiled its Developer Toolkit, which enables innovators to build a prototype financial services application in less than 30 minutes. The toolkit features a comprehensive suite of technologies – a self-service sandbox, a launchpad, a software development kit (SDK), a command line interface tool (CLI), and a boilerplate app – designed to help developers both focus on the core elements of their solution as well as get their solutions to market as quickly as possible.

“When we set out to become the best-in-class fintech infrastructure platform, we knew that meant heavily investing in the developer community,” the company said in July when the toolkit was launched. “Our mission is to get clients to market faster, with less effort – and that begins with not only providing great documentation, but creating tools that enhance our builder’s experience and significantly cuts down on development time.”

In today’s funding announcement, Howell said that the funds raised in the Series A would enable Rize to continue innovating on its core solutions, including its Developer Toolkit. The new capital will also support other initiatives such as improving the Rize Admin platform, UDAAP monitoring, and security systems. The funding will also support the launch of new offerings including brokerage accounts and new crypto and credit-related solutions.

In addition to Alpha Edison and Morpheus Ventures, Rize counts Raptor Group, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Third Prime, Red & Blue Ventures, Graham Holdings, Walkabout Ventures, and Rucker Park Capital among its investors.

Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Winning Top-of-Wallet with a Digital-First Strategy

Winning Top-of-Wallet with a Digital-First Strategy
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fiserv, Sponsored

This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Amanda Glincher, Director of Marketing, Fiserv

It’s no surprise that a digitally issued card shortens the time frame between when a consumer receives a new card and when they begin using it for spend. Yet, digital issuance is just one step on a digital-first journey and without a full strategy, that newly issued card might not bring with it the added spend issuers are expecting.

Yes, consumers want digital-first cards, but they are also in search of digital-first options when it comes to all of their other banking activities. From the first engagement someone has with a new financial institution, each traditional activity should have a digital counterpart.

Applications that win

The beginning of a banking relationship often begins with a consumer applying for an account. Creating an application process that is seamless and reduces barriers is the best way to start the cardholder’s digital experience. As noted in The Financial Brand, when an application takes more than five minutes to complete, abandonment rates increase to as high as 60%. To reduce abandonment and improve the customer experience, applications can be limited to the necessary data.

Add to the convenience by allowing applicants to switch between devices to complete an application without losing their place in the application flow, especially in situations where any documentation or uploads are being requested.

Immediate access

Once you’ve approved a new account, increase usage rates by providing immediate access to a new card. In a world where our groceries are delivered within the hour and the world’s library of movies and music is available to stream in seconds, time really is of the essence with today’s consumer.

70% of digitally issued cards are used within five days, compared to a physical card that won’t even be delivered for 7-10 business days.

Make usage a breeze

“Manually entering my card details and verifying my identity is so fun” is a statement that has never been uttered. Once a card has been digitally issued, make using the card simple by enabling push-to-wallet. There are many benefits to giving cardholders this ability and it is among the most essential parts of a successful digital-first strategy. In addition to the seamless experience for the cardholder, push-to-wallet provides more opportunity for you to capture top-of-wallet for both the physical and digital wallet, as well as bypassing the marketing of competing cards.

Top-of-wallet opportunity

When a card is pushed directly into a Google or Apple Wallet from your app, it provides immediate access and the ability to spend in-person, online, and in-app. With over 85% of U.S. retailers accepting Apply Pay, a digitally issued card that is pushed to wallet is available for use nearly everywhere.

In addition to the availability of the card, the ease-of-use enables consumers to go about their regular spending and utilize your card without missing a beat.

Bypassing the competition

While push-to-wallet is the more convenient way to add a card for a consumer, it’s also the simplest way for an issuer to avoid competition. A customer who chooses to manually add a card to Apple Wallet will be greeted by an offer to apply for an Apple Card. When a card is directly provisioned to a digital wallet, the cardholder bypasses the manual entry point at which they would be offered another product.

Sweetening the deal with offers and rewards

A list of retail discounts, benefits pamphlets, and APR offer checks are among the many mailings we receive from financial institutions. These offers are more accessible and beneficial to digitally savvy cardholders when they are offered, visible, and available in-app.

Not only is this a preferred way for customers to access offers, but a digital-first model allows financial institutions to make personalized offers in the moment – special financing opportunities and location-based discounts – enhancing the cardholder experience and capturing even more spend.

Give insight into all the places a card is stored

For existing cardholders, instant issuance of a replacement card can be made even more valuable by providing information on all the places the old card was stored. A list of existing retailers where their card is on file or is being used for recurring purchases allows cardholders to make sure the card is updated everywhere it needs to be – providing a smoother journey with uninterrupted spend.

Control in the palm of their hands

While card controls and alerts are a standard today, they are also an essential part of a digital journey. Allowing individuals to set limits on transaction types, locations, and amounts – and receive alerts – reduces fraud, minimizes inbound call center activity, and gives cardholders the security of managing their cards 24 hours a day. Controls can include the ability to turn cards on and off, set spending limits, create location boundaries, and report a missing card. Alerts allow cardholders to create notifications for a variety of scenarios, and to keep a close eye on the transactions charged to their account.

The importance of a fully digital journey

While all of these features are beneficial on their own, it is when they come together as part of a full digital strategy that they provide the most value to both the cardholder and the financial institution. Digital issuance is a key part of going digital-first, but it is the combination of this suite of digital-first tools that provide the best cardholder experience.

Photo by Jahangeer Bm from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Cross Border Payments Infrastructure Innovator Buckzy Payments Inks Partnership with M2P Solutions

Cross Border Payments Infrastructure Innovator Buckzy Payments Inks Partnership with M2P Solutions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Buckzy Payments, Daily news

Asia’s largest API infrastructure company, M2P Solutions, will leverage the real-time, cross border payments ecosystem developed by Buckzy Payments to enable its customers to offer better payment services in many of the more underserved corridors in the MENA region. Clients such as banks, exchanges, and money transfer operators (MTOs) will be the partnership’s chief beneficiaries; targeted markets include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

“We are clearly aligned in our mission to improve global banking and transaction settlement services that unlock the borderless banking and global economic opportunities for all,” Managing Director for Buckzy in EMEA Adrian Brown said. “Combining Buckzy’s network with M2P’s API platform delivers an outstanding customer experience and competitive advantage for customers.”

Buckzy’s network enables real-time, cross border payments around the world. The company’s technology gives both businesses and financial institutions the ability to expand their offerings via white-label solutions on a secure platform. Moreover, Buckzy’s ecosystem also empowers these organizations to make collections and receive payments in local currency. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and founded in 2018, Buckzy demonstrated its solution one year later at FinovateFall. At the conference, Buckzy Global CMO Lindsay Mulligan showed how the company’s technology powered instant, on-the-go digital wallet transfers and top ups, as well as multi-currency transfers and instant email money transfers with just a few clicks and without transaction fees.

Business Head of M2P Solutions for MENA, Vaanathi Mohanakrishnan, underscored the importance to the company of opening up these regional opportunities. “A lot of M2P’s strategy hinges on enabling fintechs to deliver solutions leveraging our infrastructure and partner network,” Mohanakrishnan explained. “We are excited to be partnering with Buckzy to deliver frictionless cross border payment experiences to customers in the MENA region.”

Delivering real-time cross-border payments to 47 countries, Buckzy Payments was recently named to the CIX Top 20 Early roster of innovative Canadian technology companies. With offices in the U.S. and India, as well as Toronto, the company has raised $3 million in funding from investors including Dash40 Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Revel Partners.

Photo by Louise Brawn from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives

Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Capital One, Daily news, Signifyd

A new partnership between Finovate alum Signifyd and Capital One will bring the fraud prevention specialist’s Authorization Rate Optimization solution to the bank’s payment ecosystem. The integration will help boost authorization rates and reduce the number of orders on Capital One credit cards that are inaccurately declined due to suspected fraud. This will increase revenue for retailers, as well as enhance customer lifetime value. Capital One will benefit from stronger cardholder loyalty, while cardholders will enjoy a more secure, online shopping experience with less friction.

“We are so pleased to partner with Capital One to solve a strategic issue for the ecommerce world,” Signifyd CEO Ra Ramanand said. “The very largest ecommerce sites globally can work directly with issuers to optimize their auth rates, but what do other merchants do? They come to Signifyd because we can optimize payment acceptance through our deep product integrations across the financial ecosystem.”

Signifyd’s Authorization Rate Optimization technology will be integrated with Capital One’s Enhanced Decisioning Data API. This will give Capital One enhanced data and fraud insights to help establish whether or not a given transaction should be approved or declined at the bank authorization stage. The solution provides identity intelligence across the entire shopper journey, delivering instant insights from the Signifyd Commerce Network at checkout, and helping authorization rates go up and the number of false declines go down.

An increase in false declines are, in some ways, the predicable outcome of the arms race between retailers and fraudsters. As fraud becomes more sophisticated, with more attacks and intrusions taking place earlier in the transaction process, both banks and merchants have found themselves increasingly declining payment at the authorization stage. The Economist reported that up to one in eight e-commerce dollars are currently declined during payment authorization, and the Aite Group reported that 62% of the merchants it surveyed admitted that their false decline rates have gone up in the last two years.

“There is no reason (why) merchants and banks should miss the opportunity to create seamless customer experiences at checkout,” Signifyd General Manager, Payment Solutions Okan Ozaltin said. “Working directly with issuing banks such as Capital One means Signifyd can offer the kind of ecommerce protection that makes life better for merchants and their loyal customers.”

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2013, Signifyd has become a leading, enterprise-grade fraud prevention platform. This year, the company was recognized by G2 in its 2021 Summer Report as a leader in the space as well as being first in market presence. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Signifyd has raised $390 million in funding, including a $205 million Series E round closed in April that was led by Owl Rock Capital. In addition to its partnership with Capital One – itself an alum of Finovate’s developer conference FinDEVr – Signifyd has teamed up in recent months with B2B payments specialist Adflex and, this spring, launched its Return Abuse Prevention Solution, which helps retailers better manage the $43 billion problem of fraudsters who abuse the refund and return system.

“Unfortunately, fraudsters and a subset of consumers are becoming more aggressive and ingenious when it comes to taking advantage of return policies meant to make life easier for shoppers,” Signifyd Vice President of Product Gayathri Somanath said when the solution was introduced. “Return Abuse Prevention relies on Signifyd’s network data, machine learning models and our new Decision Center module to give retailers the tools they need to stay ahead of this increasing, revenue-crushing trend.”

Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Has the Pandemic Actually Benefited Women in Fintech?

Has the Pandemic Actually Benefited Women in Fintech?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Julie's Column, Thought Leadership

The pandemic has not only shined a light on the inequalities of women in the workplace, it also created a larger gap, especially for working mothers. Between mandatory home schooling and a lack of childcare, the workload that women bear around the house is increasing.

There have been plenty of studies and articles stating that these demands are placed unfairly mothers, have made it difficult for them to advance in their career, and have caused many mothers to drop out of the workforce entirely.

I don’t want to minimize the headaches that moms (and truly everyone) have endured over the past 20 months. However, it’s worth pointing out a few ways that the pandemic economy has actually benefitted working mothers, specifically mothers working in fintech (myself included).

Flexible hours

The need for employees to balance work with home schooling and childcare motivated many workplaces to embrace more flexible working hours. As long as employees produce quality work, put in the necessary hours, and attend mandatory meetings, many are able to set their own schedule that works with their family.

Moms are always on call, whether to nurse a baby, help with homework, solve an argument, or change a diaper. So being able to step away from the computer to take care of pressing tasks is a huge benefit.

Remote working is the new norm

Prior to the pandemic, many workplaces were strictly against remote work, even when in-person collaboration wasn’t necessary. While commuting into an office five days a week has its benefits, it also comes with its share of difficulty. Not only does the extra time of the commute add up, but there is also more time and money spent on a professional wardrobe and makeup.

For breastfeeding mothers, long commutes are especially burdensome because the more time spent away from the baby means the more times mothers have to pump, store milk, and wash and sterilize bottles.

Meetings and conferences come to you

I included this point because of personal experience. My son was nine months old when I attended my first conference after maternity leave. Because I was still nursing, I chose to bring him with me to FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Even though I was physically at the conference, I still missed out on much of the content because I had to step out to nurse him so frequently.

In comparison, at FinovateFall 2021 last week, I was able to attend the show digitally from my home office with my newborn daughter on my lap. I was so much more present during the demos and discussions since I wasn’t running back and forth from the venue to a hotel room.

In this post-pandemic way of work, many businesses have made a point to offer digital experiences either in place of or alongside physical meetings. Now that so many more meetings and conferences offer a digital option, women do not have to miss out in the event they need to care for a sick family member or if they have a gap in childcare.

Normalizing home life

Perhaps the biggest upside of the pandemic is that it has shed a light on the full breadth of women’s duties outside of the workplace. Not only this, but colleagues are more accepting of times when family life collides with work. I’ve worked from home for 11 years, and prior to the pandemic I would have been mortified if my two-year old was audible outside of my office door on a conference call.

In this new era, colleagues and clients are much more open to home life. In fact, I’ve videoconferenced with people who not only don’t mind seeing and hearing children in the background of calls*, but they also ask me to bring them to the computer so that they can say hello to their children on the other end of the screen.

*At least within reason. Yes, children can be quite annoying sometimes.

Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateFall’s Best of Show Goes International

FinovateFall’s Best of Show Goes International
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bambu, Dreams, Finovate Global, Horizn, InfoCorp, Ripple, VeriTran

FinovateFall 2021 wrapped up a little over a week ago. Our return to live fintech conferencing produced one of our largest number of Best of Show winners (nine) to date. The event also gave us the one of the highest percentage of non-U.S. based Best of Show winners for a FinovateFall event.

This week’s Finovate Global Alumni Profile gives us an opportunity to take a closer look at the quartet of international fintechs that wowed our audiences with their latest innovations in New York City last week.

A Finovate alum since 2016, Bambu has made most of its Finovate appearances at our international shows in Hong Kong, South Africa, Dubai, and Berlin. The company is a multiple-time Best of Show winner, earning its first award in its second Finovate appearance at FinovateAsia in 2017, its second Best of Show award a year later at our conference in Capetown, and its third Best of Show trophy just last week in New York.

Bambu offers a next-generation B2B roboadvisory platform for both financial institutions and fintech disruptors. Powered by the company’s proprietary algorithms and machine learning technology, Bambu’s cloud-based platform has 300,000 end users in ten countries around the world. This summer, the company announced the acquisition of investment management technology provider Tradesocio, a move that will help expand Bambu’s reach internationally.

“After five years of building solid foundations, Bambu is now entering a phase of rapid growth,” Bambu CEO Ned Phillips said when the acquisition was announced in July. “This deal helps us in three key areas: it expands our product offering into stocks and crypto, it gives us a wider global footprint, and enables us to scale our team effectively to match exponential demand. We believe this positions us well for our Series C and ambitions of becoming the global leader in WealthTech.”

Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Dreams earned its second Best of Show award last week at FinovateFall. The company, founded in 2014, is among the more recent Finovate alums, joining our roster last year for our all-digital FinovateEurope conference.

Dreams offers engagement banking solutions that leverage insights from cognitive and behavioral science to enhance financial wellbeing. Launched as a B2C offering, the company has expanded into the B2B2C space, offering its solutions to banks to help them boost digital engagement with their customers. This year at FinovateFall, Dreams demonstrated the savings module of its white-label banking platform, which features debt management and micro-investing functionality, as well as new social/viral features.

Over the past year, Dreams has announced partnerships with Singapore-based financial services software provider Silverlake Symmetri and Ukrainian commercial bank UKRSIBBANK, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas Group.

“Our financial wellbeing platform – which is built upon behavioural science and personal finance management principles – will provide the perfect tool for UKRSIBBANK to help its customers make better financial choices and become more sustainable in the way they handle their finances,” Dreams CEO and founder Henrik Rosvall said when the collaboration was announced. “This partnership will also help UKRSIBBANK safeguard the loyalty of its customers and futureproof its digital banking offering against a growing number of challenger banks and fintechs.”

Hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, digital adoption platform Horizn was launched in 2012. The company is dedicated to helping financial institutions leverage micro-learning, social technology, gamification, and advanced analytics to enhance employee performance, fuel client adoption of new technologies, and boost revenues. With a global reach of more than 40 countries in North and South America, Asia, and Europe, the company has enabled its clients to realize 85% employee adoption rates and a 20% increase in mobile platform usage.

Horizn made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateEurope in London. The company earned its first Best of Show honors at FinovateEurope in Berlin three years later, and picked up its second Best of Show award the following year at our all-digital event FinovateFall 2020. “It’s great to see Finovate recognize the impact that Horizn is having on banks worldwide,” company CEO Janice Diner said last year. “While COVID-19 may have accelerated the shift to digital, Horizn ensures bank customers stay digital.”

In addition to their Best of Show winning technology demonstrations, Horizn has also provided Finovate with some of its most compelling keynote speakers. Both Diner and Senior Vice President for Global Sales Steve Frook have shared their insights during the Conference Days component of our Finovate events. Frook’s FinovateEurope presentation, Landing Your First Bank Customer, was a highlight of our Berlin conference last year. And Janice Diner’s epigrammatic reminder that “if you build it they will come is a myth” remains as a good a piece advice for fledgling fintechs as you’ll ever hear.

The rise of fintech in Latin America has been one of the most impressive developments in global financial services in recent years. This is partly why the Best of Show award won by Uruguayan fintech Infocorp last week at FinovateFall feels so special.

Making its Finovate debut in the spring of 2017, Infocorp demonstrated its IC Campaigns platform that enables financial institutions to coordinate marketing and commercial operations via all available channels to better identify the optimal, next action for each client. The technology takes the omnichannel banking and seamless user experience requirements of modern banks to another level by helping institutions set up shorter-cycled, more agile campaigns that deliver increased conversion rates and higher ROI. Last week at FinovateFall, Infocorp introduced its Mobile Native App, a new solution that brings hyper-personalized experiences for every user in a single bank app.

Inforcorp CEO Ana Inés Echavarren spoke to the importance of “the mobile challenge” in a conversation with fintech analyst and thought leader Jim Marous in the weeks leading up to Infocorp’s return to the Finovate stage in September. “Everywhere the mobile channel is the one of choice now among users,” she explained. “Adoptions have gone up in all the implementations that we have in all the countries that we know of.” As far as Echavarren is concerned, this means that there has been a “mindset shift” in which the mobile experience and the user experience increasingly have become synonymous. To this end, Echavarren said, “we are no longer talking about the bank application, but about the user application.”

Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Montevideo, Infocorp has more than 40 successful deployments, 10+ million active users on its platform, and processes more than 120 million transactions a year.

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 Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

RBC’s Nomi Spend Management Tool Adds Forecasting

RBC’s Nomi Spend Management Tool Adds Forecasting
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) launched two new capabilities for its NOMI financial intelligence platform. Unveiled today, NOMI Forecast shows users their future cash flow. The app also has increased its security with the launch of two-step verification upon login.

“At a time when Canadians are more conscious than ever of their daily finances, and banking digitally more frequently, they expect solutions that help them confidently manage their money and safeguard their accounts and information,” said RBC SVP Digital Peter Tilton. “With NOMI Forecast, we’re giving clients next generation cash flow advice and insights to take the stress out of balancing their accounts. Equally important, 2-Step Verification will work to provide clients added peace of mind as they navigate this rapidly evolving digital banking landscape.”

NOMI Forecast works by showing users all of the pre-authorized payments they have coming over a seven-day period. By accounting for known upcoming expenses, the forecasting capability offers users better visibility of their account activity and helps them have more control over their finances.

With the two-step verification process, users can select their mobile device as the primary channel to access the account. If they attempt to login with another device, they receive an in-app notification to verify their session. Unlike two-factor authentication, there is no security code delivered via email or text. Instead, the user presses a button to continue their session.

In a press release, RBC said that the two new features demonstrate the bank’s “commitment to add value, enhance security, and create peace of mind” for clients.

Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation

Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Ocrolus

Financial document automation platform Ocrolus pulled in $80 million in Series C funding today. The round was led by Fin VC and included participation from Thomvest Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Oak HC/FT, FinTech Collective, QED Investors, Bullpen Capital, ValueStream Ventures, Laconia, RiverPark Ventures, Invicta Growth, Stage II Capital, and Cross River Bank.

The New York-based company now boasts $127 million in funding and is valued at over $500 million. Ocrolus plans to use the funds to expand U.S. operations and “more aggressively” build products for banking and mortgage lending.

“Our platform helps lenders automate underwriting and intelligently leverage cash flow and income data for credit scoring,” said Ocrolus Co-founder and CEO Sam Bobley. “By enabling lenders to more quickly analyze diverse sources of financial data, Ocrolus levels the playing field for every borrower, providing expanded access to credit at a lower cost.”

Ocrolus was founded in 2014 to create a document processing automation solution that helps lenders classify, capture, detect, and analyze financial documents to make better lending decisions. To accomplish this, the company leverages AI, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop (HITL) optimization. The HITL component serves as Ocrolus’ key ingredient to differentiation because it ensures an enhanced level of accuracy when analyzing data derived from documents.

The company, which won a Best of Show award at FinovateFall last week for its document analysis technology, has benefitted from the recent acceleration of digitization brought on by COVID. In today’s lending environment, FIs need to offer online options to compete. We spoke with Ocrolus’ VP of Solutions Nicole Newlin last year on the effects of this digitalization.

Ocrolus’ client list is as impressive as it is extensive, including firms such as Brex, Enova, Lending Club, PayPal, Plaid, and SoFi. Accommodating for a recent uptick in demand, the company added more than 75 employees this year and plans to boost its hiring efforts next year, focusing specifically on machine learning and data science professionals.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Rent-to-Rewards Specialist Bilt Locks in $60 Million in Funding

Rent-to-Rewards Specialist Bilt Locks in $60 Million in Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

It’s becoming easier and easier to earn awards from everyday – or every month – transactions. Bilt, a fintech that enables renters to accrue points that can be redeemed for rewards, announced this week that it has raised $60 million in new funding. The investment, which included Mastercard and Wells Fargo among its chief contributors, gives the company a valuation of $350 million.

Launched earlier this summer, the company has since introduced its solution to more than two million rental units across the U.S. The company’s founder, Ankur Jain, said that Bilt is the first and only coalition of major property owners to offer this kind of solution and noted that “15 of the top 20 property owners” have become involved.

Also participating in the funding were some of the country’s biggest real estate companies including AvalonBay Communities, The Blackstone Group, Douglas Elliman, Equity Residential, GID-Winsor Communities, LENx, The Moinian Group, Morgan Properties, Starwood Capital Group, and Related.

Tenants can earn points by either renting from a member of the Bilt Rewards Alliance of more than two million rental homes or by making transactions using the Bilt Mastercard. Points can be used in a wide variety of ways, including travel, fitness club membership, paying rent, or even as part of a down payment to help pave the path to homeownership. Via the Bilt Mastercard, cardholders can earn up to 50,000 points a year toward rent, and earn an unlimited amount of points that can be used on other transactions.

Bilt sees major opportunity in a market that consists of approximately 109 million renters who pay an estimated $500 billion in rent every year. The company said that it will use the additional funding to help scale its loyalty program, giving more renters the opportunity to get something more than shelter from what is typically an individual’s “largest expense every single month,” according to Jain.

Photo by PhotoMIX Company from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

A Passionate Mindset and Superior Execution: A Conversation with BM Technologies’ Luvleen Sidhu

A Passionate Mindset and Superior Execution: A Conversation with BM Technologies’ Luvleen Sidhu
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2021, Speaker series, Women in Fintech

Is there a better person to lead a conversation about bold leadership in fintech than Luvleen Sidhu? Chair, founder, and CEO of BM Technologies, Sidhu was the youngest female founder and CEO to take a company public when her firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange at the beginning of the year.

“I am proud to see BM Technologies take this historic step and enter the public markets,” Sidhu said in January. “We are delighted to be one of the first neo banking fintechs to go public. We are also EBITDA positive today, which serves to set us apart from other neo banking fintechs in the market.”

Formerly known as BankMobile, BM Technologies currently has more than two million account holders, and provides disbursement services at 700+ college campuses in the U.S., reaching one out of every three students in the country. The BaaS innovator was among the fintechs to earn recognition at the recently announced Finovate Awards, taking home top honors in the Best Fintech Partnership category for its collaboration with T-Mobile.

Beyond the Arc’s Steven Ramirez hosted a fireside chat with Luvleen Sidhu as part of the FinovateFall conference in New York last week. Below are a few excerpts from their conversation.

On what it takes to be a bold leader today

For me, being a bold leader really comes down to a few key things that, in my opinion, a bold leader would demonstrate. So that is being able to have a compelling and unique and unifying vision and purpose. (It is) being able to get people to buy into that, to be energized by that, committed to that. (It is also) being able to have superior execution, because you can have a great idea and be in the clouds, but unless you are working on improving, iterating, and being agile and adaptive to the times, you’re not going to succeed.

On the inspiration behind her company’s “bold bet” in 2016

We launched in 2015 as a direct-to-consumer strategy – like the Chimes, the Varos, the N26s of the world are doing now. We found out pretty early on that our pillar of being able to have a profitable, sustainable model as fast as possible wasn’t happening. The CAC was really high. We weren’t getting the sort of engagement and direct deposit customers which are critical in banking to actually get. So we took a bold bet in 2016 where we took a B2B2C approach and started implementing banking as a service, which is our strategy today.

On practicing bold leadership on an individual level

I think it’s contagious. When you’re bringing that innovative sort of passionate mindset and energy to work, then you engender that with everyone that you work with. It creates this ripple effect and you get others to buy in and work with you and you create a lot of tremendous momentum from that. I think it’s (important to) remain keen to continuous learning. This space is moving so fast. We can’t rest on our laurels for more than six months (before) you’ve got to innovate again. And so it’s people that make sure that they’re looking at what their customers are saying – and responding to that – but also looking at the competitive environment, how is it changing, how is it evolving … (That’s) how you remain competitive in the space.

Check out the rest of Luvleen Sidhu’s Fireside Chat: Why We Need Bold Leadership More Than Ever Before from FinovateFall 2021.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook