Email

Fiserv Acquires Ondot

Fiserv Acquires Ondot
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fiserv, Mergers & Acquisitions

Fiserv made a key acquisition this week, snapping up digital card services platform Ondot Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the agreement is set to be finalized in the first quarter of next year.

Fiserv is picking up Ondot to enhance its suite of tools that help banks offer digital-first, personalized offerings to their consumers.

“By combining Ondot and Fiserv capabilities at scale, we plan to provide our clients with a unified digital experience, spanning card-based payments, digital banking platforms, core banking, and merchant solutions, enabling them to deliver best-in-class solutions that continue to reduce friction for their customers,” said Fiserv President and CEO Frank Bisignano.

More specifically, Fiserv will use Ondot to help bank clients accelerate digital customer acquisition, drive digital commerce, increase card activation and usage, reduce service costs, and engage contextually.

The deal enhances Fiserv’s standing in the card payment space specifically. The Wisconsin-based company will now be able to help banks offer cardholders instant card issuance and usage, visibility into purchases through enriched transaction information, and actionable insights to help them make more informed spending decisions.

Fiserv’s bank clients will benefit from Ondot’s data enrichment that organizes and identifies transaction and merchant data to minimize chargebacks.

For Ondot, joining forces with Fiserv will offer the company a more global reach and will help it scale up faster. As Ondot President and CEO Vaduvur Bharghavan explained, “Joining with Fiserv will provide Ondot the opportunity to innovate and impact the industry on a global scale. We look forward to expanding the scope of our offerings as we integrate with Fiserv’s vast array of capabilities to continue providing high-quality digital solutions to consumers, merchants, acquirers, networks and card issuers.”

California-based Ondot was founded in 2011 and has raised $51 million. The company processes more than 1 billion transactions per month and provides digital capabilities for over 30 million cards. The company made news earlier this year when it partnered with CU Solutions Group, which agreed to become a reseller of Ondot’s CardApp.

Photo by Alejandro Martin on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

How Plaid Expanded its Network

How Plaid Expanded its Network
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Banno, Jack Henry, Plaid

Earlier this year banking technology company Plaid launched Plaid Exchange, a new tool to facilitate open banking.

The new open finance platform offers banks a way to provide open banking connectivity to their clients while keeping their end customers’ data safe and giving them control of their data.

Plaid Exchange helps banks establish token-based API connectivity with the 2,600 third party apps in Plaid’s network. This single connection simplifies integration for banks, helping their clients connect with more third party providers securely. Plaid Exchange can help banks bring an API solution to market in 12 weeks. 

A couple of weeks back, Plaid formed a key partnership to help it reach more banks to access the Plaid network. The company is working with Jack Henry & Associates to enable Plaid Exchange for banks on the Banno Digital Platform.

The deal helps Plaid reach more than 350 institutions currently using Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Platform. These financial institutions can benefit by offering their accountholders access to Plaid-powered fintech apps. Plaid has designed the integration process to be simple and Banno clients will be able to access the technology for free.

The deal with Jack Henry comes as an extension of the Plaid Exchange Partner Program, which is aimed to get banking platform providers, API management platforms, and software development companies on board to offer Plaid Exchange to their bank clients.

The network effects of the Plaid Exchange Partner Program will be a boon to the San Francisco-based company. That’s because the more banks Plaid partners with, the more attractive Plaid is to fintechs.

Plaid works with thousands of third-party fintech apps such as Transferwise, Betterment, and Venmo to connect with their users’ financial institutions. The company made headlines at the beginning of 2020 after it announced it had been acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion and made the news again after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a suit to block the acquisition last month.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

NetGuardians Raises $19 Million

NetGuardians Raises $19 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, NetGuardians

Enterprise risk and banking fraud protection NetGuardians landed $19 million (chf 17 million) in funding this week.

The round, which is more than double each of the company’s previous rounds, brings the company’s total funding to $34.5 million (chf 30.6 million). Investors include NetGuardians client the Pictet Group, as well as private investment group ACE & Company.

NetGuardians will use the investment to help it meet rising demand for its fraud-mitigation software. Specifically, the company will strengthen its position in existing markets and further develop its SaaS subscription model.

“Since our first round of funding, we have been able to grow and strengthen our fraud-mitigation platform worldwide, serving institutions in more than 30 countries,” said NetGuardians Chief Strategy Officer Raffael Maio. “This latest round of funding will help us to reach more clients and explore new markets with our Collective AI technology provided as software-as-a-service.”

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Switzerland, NetGuardians employs 90 people in its offices across Singapore, Kenya, and Poland.

Photo by icon0.com from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

HooYu’s Investigate Platform Acquired in $5 Million Deal

HooYu’s Investigate Platform Acquired in $5 Million Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, HooYu

HooYu announced on Monday that GB Group (GBG), an identification verification specialist based in the U.K., has agreed to acquire its Investigate subsidiary in an all-share deal valued at approximately $5.34 million (£4 million).

“The acquisition of HooYu Investigate by an outstanding company like GBG is a testament to the technological achievement of the HooYu development team,” HooYu CEO Keith Marsden said. “We are now very excited to focus all our energy on taking the award-winning HooYu Identity platform forward.”

HooYu launched HooYu Investigate in 2017. The platform automates the fraud investigation process, leveraging data visualization to enhance the ability of users in compliance, anti-fraud, and law enforcement to identify and prevent cybercrime. GBG will add the technology to its portfolio of anti-fraud solutions, and both Investigate client contracts and the platform’s developers will join GBG as part of the transaction. HooYu will continue to run its digital customer onboarding and KYC solution, HooYu Identify, which includes NatWest and Vanquis Bank among its customers.

GBG CEO Chris Clark praised HooYu Investigate as an “exceptional product” that will complement GBG’s current business. He also looked forward to a future in which both the GBG and HooYu development teams are working together to build new solutions. “By joining forces with HooYu Investigate, GBG will create a scalable platform for growth, providing customers with a critical service to fight ever more sophisticated financial crime and reduce organizational risk in the U.K.” Clark said.

Founded in 2015 – and making its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateEurope – HooYu offers businesses configurable tools to make the customer boarding process easy for customers while ensuring maximum KYC compliance. With just a selfie taken by a smartphone or webcam, HooYu applies both traditional verification methods such as database checks with ID document validation, digital footprint analysis, and facial biometrics to provide an identity confidence score that reveals how many of the customer’s identity attributes (name, address, birthdate, etc.) can be confirmed. This gives businesses the insight they need not just for customer onboarding and KYC, but for age verification, customer due diligence remediation, and fraud prevention, as well.

Photo by Maurício Mascaro from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

The Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review eMagazine

The Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review eMagazine
By Charlie Burgess Posted on
Categories: Finovate eMagazine, Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review

As 2020 comes to a close, the Finovate team and our faculty of expert contributors take a look at some of the trends that defined the year, and will continue to make a splash in 2021.  

With a specialized focus on the latest in bankingtech and customer experiences, we bring together four, on-demand webinars featuring industry insights and practical steps to move your business forward in the new year. Webinar topics include:

  • Leveraging technology as a business strategy in financial services 
  • Delivering customer knowledge augmentation and activation
  • Innovating in contact centers 
  • Moving beyond customer expectations in the digital age

Download the eMagazine to access all the content from the week, plus the latest articles and insights from our Finovate analysts. You’ll also have access to an exclusive discount code for FinovateEurope Digital 2021.

Download now >>

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

New Year, New Content

New Year, New Content
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2021, FinovateEurope 2021, FinovateFall 2021, FinovateSpring 2021

We just closed out the final Finovate event of 2020, but that doesn’t mean we are taking things easy. In fact, the work is just beginning! Our team is heads-down, focusing on curating speakers and content for our events in 2021.

We have a full lineup (and then some) for next year. Here’s what we have slated and how you can participate. Mark your calendars!

FinovateEurope Digital

FinovateSpring Digital

FinovateAsia Digital

FinovateFall (Face-to-Face!)

We’ll also have a range of new digital offerings that we’ll be unveiling soon. These products are unique to Finovate and will provide more options for time-conscious consumers.

We’ll be announcing these initiatives next month so stay tuned!

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Acquisitions, E-commerce and the Latest in Australian Fintech

Acquisitions, E-commerce and the Latest in Australian Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global

Some of the hottest headlines in international fintech in recent days involved industry innovators from the Land Down Under. Late in the week, financial consultancy firm Synechron announced that it had agreed to acquire Australian payments provider Attra. Headquartered in Melbourne, Attra is notable for being one of pure play payments solution providers in Australia, with reach throughout the region as well as into North America, Europe, and MENA. Attra will retain its brand identity post-acquisition.

Meanwhile, National Australia Bank (NAB) unveiled a new smart receipt solution developed in collaboration with Australian fintech Slyp. The offering, Slyp Smart Receipts, are available via the NAB mobile app, and enable NAB customers to automatically get itemized smart receipts from participating retailers.

“Receipts are a burden for customers, create unnecessary cost for businesses and have a negative impact to our environment,” Slyp CEO and co-founder Paul Weingarth said. “The introduction of smart receipts allows businesses to offer a seamless and frictionless customer experience far beyond what we know it as today.”

On the e-commerce front, the buy now pay later revolution rolls on. Zip, a BNPL company based in Australia, inked a deal with Facebook this week that will enable small businesses to use its installment payment service to pay for Facebook ads.

Zip’s partnership with Facebook is its second big, e-commerce collaboration in recent months. In August, the company teamed up with eBay, bringing its buy now pay later offering to the online marketplace.

Looking to learn more about fintech in Australia? Check out KPMG Australia’s report on the country’s fintech industry from last fall. And for a more recent snapshot, take a look at FintechNews Singapore’s “9 Hottest Aussie Fintech Startups” from earlier this year.

We’ve covered a healthy amount of international fintech news on the blog this week. Here’s a quick digest of what you might have missed.

Tink Lands $103 Million in Funding, Boosts Valuation to $824 Million – The new round for the Swedish fintech was co-led by new investor Eurazeo Growth and existing investor Dawn Capital.

Xoom Adds Money Transfer Capabilities to 12 African Countries – The expansion focuses on facilitating remittances to underbanked consumers in 12 African nations. 

How to Manage and Exceed Evolving Customer Expectations – Our interview with the co-founder of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based FI.SPAN.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Risk decisioning leader Provenir announces data integration partnership with Philippines-based alternative credit scoring company FinScore.
  • South Korean payments firm CHAI scores $60 million in Series B funding.
  • Mastercard and Pine Labs to bring their integrated buy now pay later solution to five markets in Southeast Asia early in 2021.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • The Banker looks at how Nigeria’s fintech industry is thriving in the face of economic challenges.
  • TechFinancial reviews the growth of fintech in South Africa through the lens of the country’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority.
  • Convergence Partners, a South African technology investment management company, announces $5 million investment in sub-Saharan mobile money services company Channel VAS.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond partners with Bankhaus von Der Heydt to issue a Euro stablecoin on the Stellar network.
  • Hungary’s Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) inks cooperation agreement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to boost collaboration in fintech innovation between Hungary and Singapore.
  • Berlin-based plug and play, European securities API provider Upvest raises additional €five million to boost its Series A to €12 million.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egyptian fintech Zeal Rewards secures “six-figure” seed investment from an unnamed angel investor.
  • Israeli entrepreneur Uri Levine predicts that the next unicorn from the MENA region will come from the UAE.
  • SME10x looks at how the buy now pay later movement is transforming ecommerce in the Middle East.

Central and Southern Asia

  • IBS Intelligence features five top digital lenders in India.
  • Bangalore-based i-exceed reports gains in digital onboarding adoption rates in corporate banking.
  • SafePay, a company that enables B2C payments, secures funding from new Pakistan-based VC firm backed by Gobi Ventures.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Bitso, a cryptocurrency platform based in Mexico, raises $62 million in Series B.
  • Cross border B2B paytech provider TransferMate announces licensing approvals in Brazil and Chile.
  • Mexican challenger bank albo secures $45 million in funding.

Photo by Ethan Brooke from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Tink Lands $103 Million in Funding, Boosts Valuation to $824 Million

Tink Lands $103 Million in Funding, Boosts Valuation to $824 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Tink

Sweden-based open banking platform Tink announced it has closed an extension on the venture round it landed in January. The additional $103 million (€85 million) brings Tink’s total funding to almost $310 million.

According to CNBC, the investment boosts Tink’s valuation to $824 million.

The new round was co-led by new investor Eurazeo Growth and existing
investor Dawn Capital. Other existing investors PayPal Ventures, HMI Capital, Heartcore, ABN AMRO Ventures, Poste Italiane, and Opera Tech Ventures also contributed.

Tink will use the new round to fuel its expansion and further develop its payment initiation technology. Company CEO and Co-founder Daniel Kjellén noted that Tink has seen an impressive amount of growth this year. “We significantly built out our bank connections across Europe, increasing coverage from 2,500 to 3,400 banks, and now serve more than 300 world-leading financial institutions,” he said. “We also doubled the fintech users on our platform to 8,000 and increased employees from 250 to 365, in 13 offices across Europe.”

This growth comes after Tink’s recent three key acquisitions, including Swedish credit decisioning firm Instantor, Spanish account aggregation provider Eurobits, and the aggregation platform of U.K. open banking pioneer, OpenWrks.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Stockholm, Tink has more than 350 employees and is currently serving its clients out of 13 local offices across Europe. The startup operates in Sweden, U.K., France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands. Tink most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019 where it showcased its API platform.

Photo by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

API Security Innovator Salt Security Locks in $30 Million

API Security Innovator Salt Security Locks in $30 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Courtesy of a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, API protection platform company Salt Security has doubled its total equity capital. The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, picked up $30 million in new funding this week. Existing investors Tenaya Capital, S Capital VC, and Y Combinator also participated in the investment.

“APIs have become a fundamental unit of software,” Sequoia Partner Carl Eschenbach explained. “Salt Security enables organizations to discover APIs, prevent real-time attacks, and facilitate remediation, so customers can continue to operate and innovate in an increasingly digitized world.”

Salt Security’s Series B comes only a few months after the company completed a $20 million Series A round in June. The firm said that the new capital will help the company invest in product development, sales and marketing, and customer acquisition in 2021. As part of the deal, Eschenbach, as well as representatives from Tenaya Capital and S Capital, will join Salt Security’s board of directors.

“Raising both Series A and B, growing our customer base 200%, and building unmatched technical capabilities – all during this tumultuous year – gives us a formidable lead in the market we created and defined,” Salt Security co-founder and CEO Roey Eliyahu said. “Having someone of Carl’s caliber and experience guiding us will simply accelerate our success in the API security market.”

Salt Security notes that its API Protection Platform is the only patented API security solution designed for each stage of the API lifecycle. The technology learns the behavior of company APIs at a granular level, and uses machine learning and AI to automatically identify and block API attacks. The technology can be deployed in minutes with no configuration or customization required.

Salt’s platform was named a 2020 Cool Vendor in API Strategy by Gartner and a SINET 16 Innovator Winner for 2020. This fall, the company has announced partnerships with Carrefour, a French multi-national retail corporation, and U.S.-based, global colocation data center company Equinix.

Founded in 2016, Salt Security is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California; and in Israel. Forbes featured company co-founder Eliyahu in its 30 Under 30 roster earlier this month.

Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Enlightenment from a Conversation with a Futurist

Enlightenment from a Conversation with a Futurist
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateWest 2020, Speaker series

Most of us probably don’t spend our entire workday thinking about what the future holds. Fortunately, there are a handful of people who specialize as futurists, studying what’s next for humanity.

I had the opportunity to pick the brain of one such person, Nancy Giordano, last week after watching her keynote presentation at FinovateWest.

In our conversation, Giordano explains the four awakenings shaping our future, describes the productivity revolution, and examines the meaning of leadership vs. what she calls leadering. She also takes a look at COVID’s impact on the future and offers up practical next-steps for both companies and individuals.

Check out our conversation below to hear her thoughts:

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Bill.com Buddies Up with Wells Fargo for Bill Manager

Bill.com Buddies Up with Wells Fargo for Bill Manager
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com

Bill.com and Wells Fargo have announced a new solution to help small and medium-sized businesses automate and simplify their accounts payable and receivables processes. The new joint offering – Bill Manager – integrates Bill.com’s cloud-based financial operations software with Commercial Electronic Office, Wells Fargo’s digital banking service, and gives SMEs a simple, transparent way to pay bills and get paid.

Bill Manager enables customers to capture paper bills and invoices electronically and have them digitally routed through a straightforward review and approval workflow. The technology allows businesses to track invoices in real-time, review and approve invoices from any device, store documents online, and automatically sync transactions with their accounting system to support fast data entry and easy account reconciliation. Customers can also use Bill.com’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant to make invoice capture and data entry process automatic, accelerating the bill creation process further. Bill Manager can also be used to request payments by building and sending electronic invoices and payment reminders.

“We are thrilled to bring our long-standing relationship with Wells Fargo to fruition through Bill Manager to accelerate small and midsize businesses’ shift to the cloud,” Bill.com SVP of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development Josh Goines said. “With Bill Manager, SMBs can go live with digitally automating their accounts payable processes in a matter of hours, helping them to put their back office in their back pocket.”

Bill Manager is powered by Bill.com Connect, the company’s business payments platform. Introduced four years ago, Bill.com Connect provides banks with a single platform for business payments that scales as their business customers do. The platform offers bill pay and invoicing functionality, increases client engagement, and gives customers access to a business payment network with more than 1.4 million members.

“Collaborating with a leading fintech like Bill.com solves a critical customer need – managing and paying bills in a consistent way,” Wells Fargo SVP and head of Treasury Management Product Innovation and Partnerships Chris Noe said. “Our customers access this technology directly through the digital banking experience they use every day, supported by their familiar Wells Fargo treasury management consultant and customer service team. Meeting our customers where they already spend their time is a priority as we innovate new solutions to help make managing finances convenient and simple.”

A Finovate alum since 2010, Bill.com was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Going public in 2019, the company has a market capitalization of over $10 billion. René Lacerte is founder and CEO.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Fighting Financial Crime in the COVID-19 Era

Fighting Financial Crime in the COVID-19 Era
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Feedzai, List series, Report series

What are the biggest fraud challenges to emerge during the COVID-19 era? According to a new report from Feedzai, card cloning tops the list of major indicators for fraud in both financial services and e-commerce.

With card cloning, criminals copy stolen credit or debit card information and transfer it to a new card. Also known as “skimming,” card cloning is a big business on the dark web, where fraudsters – “carders” – buy and sell stolen payment card data.

But card cloning is not the only danger highlighted in the report. High speed ordering with bot attacks that move quickly and can last for hours is another fraud threat in financial services, as is what Feedzai refers to as “High risk merchant category code (MCC).” Businesses that earn this designation from their bank are typically those with above average chargebacks, as well as a higher risk of fraud potential.

Within ecommerce, the report found that in addition to card cloning, both account takeover (ATO) and suspicious email are among the top three indicators for fraud. With an ATO attack, the criminal uses bots to access an unsuspecting individual’s bank or e-commerce account. This enables a bad actor to access that account and make fraudulent and unauthorized transactions from it. Suspicious email is a broader category that includes common but effective tactics like phishing, and as well as fake emails and email domains.

“It wasn’t just consumers who met the call to digitally transform,” Feedzai’s Quarterly Financial Crime Report reads. “Fraudsters, ever technologically savvy and opportunistic, made the most of the shift.”

Feedzai’s report on financial crime puts current trends in the context of a society that is embracing digital channels at a rapid pace. It notes significant increases in the dollar amounts and value, as well as the number of ecommerce transactions processed between May and September of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Unfortunately, the report also noted a dramatic increase in network fraud this year. “The realignment of holiday shopping trends was also an early gift for fraudsters,” the report reads.

What can financial institutions do to help fight financial crime?

Monitor Card Behavior: Multiple transactions in a short period of time, unusually high dollar amounts per transaction, and a sizable number of merchant codes within a relatively short period time are all potentially indicative of payment card fraud. Leveraging machine learning and AI-powered algorithms to accurately identify these patterns is an optimal way for businesses to keep up pace with the speed and complexity of this kind of fraud.

Track Suspicious Email Domains: High-risk domains, invalid emails, and unconfirmed email addresses are all potential sources of fraudulent activity. Companies can use both software and the services of security specialists who maintain up-to-date information on domains and email addresses that may be used by fraudsters.

Know Your Customer: Knowing what “normal” looks like is the first step to identifying abnormal behavior. By developing an accurate customer profile that takes into account such factors as a customer’s typical log-in times, devices, and time spent on different platforms, businesses can more readily spot behavior that is exceptional, and take further steps to determine whether or not that fraudulent activity is taking place. Feedzai refers to these as “hypergranular risk profiles.”

“COVID has created a big disruption in the banking, payments, and e-commerce sectors with multiple impacts all over the world,” Feedzai Senior Director of Global Data Science Jaime Ferreira said. “Feedzai is in a good position to add clarity to this debate and help financial institutions to understand these complex shifts and how to better protect their customers.”

Feedzai’s Quarterly Financial Crime Report for Q4 2020 leverages Feedzai’s data from more than four billion global transactions from March 20 through September of this year. The report also features information from consumer research surveys of “nearly 2,200 account-holding U.S. consumers.”

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook