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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Sweden-based open banking platform Tinkannounced 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.
Courtesy of a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, API protection platform company Salt Securityhas 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.
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:
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.
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.”
Jon Stein has long been a prominent figure in the U.S. fintech sector. Betterment, the wealthtech company he launched in 2008, has grown to help 500,000 users manage a total of $25 billion in assets.
Not only did Stein build a successful fintech company, he also helped kick off the entire wealthtech subsector within fintech. Today, the New York-based company’s founder announced he is handing over the company — and the legacy– to Sarah Kirshbaum Levy.
The move comes after Stein spent time during quarantine reflecting. He ultimately came to the realization that, as he said, “the best way to achieve our mission might be to invite a successor to lead Betterment in the next phase of growth.”
Kirshbaum Levy comes to Betterment after serving as Chief Operating Officer at Viacom Media Networks, the parent company of brands such as Nickelodeon, BET, and Comedy Central. She started working under Stein as a consultant, building out the company’s 2021 plans. Today, as Kirshbaum Levy takes the reins as CEO, she will not only guide Betterment toward a future of growth but also prepare the company to go public.
Stein will continue to hold a seat on Betterment’s board and will support Kirshbaum Levy by offering help with recruiting, investor relations, telling the company’s story, and upholding the company culture and values.
“Due to good fortune and intense effort in a most challenging year, the company has never been in a stronger position. Each line of business is reaching new heights in 2020. We’re beating targets, well-capitalized, with wind at our backs. It’s a good time to hand over the reins,” Stein concluded.
Subscription management platform provider Zuora is partnering with payments infrastructure player Stripe this week.
Through the partnership, Zuora has integrated Stripe into its subscription offerings to enable its 1,000 clients to enhance their payment capabilities. Zuora customers can now access Stripe’s payment tools from the Zuora platform.
“Winning subscription companies want to use the best technologies to build a competitive advantage,” said Zuora Chief Product Officer Chris Battles. “We’re thrilled to work with Stripe in an ecosystem of new world partners that helps to optimize and automate processes throughout our customers’ journey in the Subscription Economy.”
Some of the advanced capabilities include:
Integrated payment processing capabilities into the Zuora platform, including fraud detection, AI-enhanced payment retries, and payment processing capabilities.
Increased payments flexibility so subscribers can pay when, where, and how they choose across a range of subscription options.
A modern ecosystem that can scale to meet clients’ global growth.
Zuora has more than 1,000 clients, including Box, Ford, Penske Media Corporation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Xplornet, and Zoom. The company’s platform helps firms manage recurring subscription business models and serves as a hub to automate the entire subscription order-to-revenue process across billing and revenue recognition. Zuora was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in California.
Valued at $36 billion, Stripe helps businesses of all sizes with finance and treasury management functions.
“Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet, and this partnership with Zuora extends that goal by giving Zuora users access to the full capabilities of Stripe payments,” said Stripe’s Chief Business Officer Billy Alvarado. “With the internet powering a rapidly growing portion of the global economy, it’s never been more important to provide subscription businesses with the economic infrastructure they need.”
Is open banking key to enabling banks and other financial institutions to keep up with ever-evolving customer needs and expectations? With trend drivers as unpredictable as technological innovation on one hand and a once-in-a-generation pandemic on the other, what strategies and tactics can financial institutions embrace in order to best serve their customers now and in the future?
We caught up with Clayton Weir, co-founder of business banking solution provider FI.SPAN, to answer these questions and more. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and founded in 2016, FI.SPAN turns banking services into branded banking experiences that are embedded within the ERP and accounting systems of the bank’s business customers.
A recent report indicated that almost 90% of innovation managers fear that integration challenges themselves are an obstacle to digital transformation. Are they right?
Clayton Weir: Yes, I believe they have a valid argument for considering this an obstacle to digital transformation. Forrester and Avoka published a great study on how many large IT projects at enterprise banking and financial services firms get delayed, overrun, and even more disappointingly fail to deliver all of the business value promised.
When you look at the biggest drivers of a failed software project, a disproportionate amount of blame tends to fall on some failure to properly scope the mission in terms of vision, customer needs, and potential constraints.
In addition to the inability to properly staff the program with the right skill mix, I believe those risks become heightened in a domain area like embedded/ERP banking. A team has to understand the nuances of client ERP systems, bank legacy systems, treasury banking, accounting workflows, banking workflows and deliver a program that can exist and add value within all of those different constraints. Not only will most banks and contracted build partners be unlikely to have some of those perspectives sitting on the bench, it also will be hard to deploy the right mix of people to the initiative concurrently.
Technology has moved too far too fast for the banks to build those capabilities themselves. Buying companies that can bring those services to market is not impossible, but well outside the purview of most commercial banks. The best way to go for B2B banks to manage the impact of rapidly evolving customer expectations is to partner with agile, innovative fintech services that not simply meet expectations, but exceed them.
Why do you believe that open banking is the missing link in helping banks make digital transformations?
Weir: Over the next few years, it’s likely that governments will force financial institutions to become more transparent with their data and share information of the client’s choosing with their peers because of open banking. By having a freer flow of information between these parties, both banks and fintechs could develop new apps and services to better serve the needs of their customers. Open banking will make it easier for customers to access fintech products or even open accounts with other financial institutions, but they’ll transact with others through their main bank’s platforms. Rather than getting frustrated with their bank’s limitations, customers will be grateful for how much easier it is to work with their institution.
What do you see when you look at the prospects for open banking in the U.S.? What will drive it forward?
Weir: Many businesses are feeling neglected by banks, when we look into some of the niches that are cropping up; fintechs can come in and support this happening, starting to find ways to serve small niches across the board.
Open banking is a big part of this conversation, and there is market-based momentum around open banking. Open banking is showing up as a direct response to the market opportunity. Meaning, the demand from consumers to use third party apps is increasing. If your bank doesn’t work with those apps, it’s a massive disadvantage for you. If a customer can’t use a certain app because you don’t offer it, they’re going to find a different bank that can offer them a better experience.
Effectively, there is going to be more and more momentum in the marketplace, so as the European and Australian open banking regimes mature, the scope will go above and and beyond what the U.S. has done. As multinational banks, fintechs and developers start to develop other offerings around open banking infrastructure in those other markets, it’s going to dial up the customer expectations in North America. Even if open banking is slow to adopt in the U.S. and Canada, the best things that come out of open banking will undoubtedly surface North America. Multinational banks are going to bring the best of their open banking infrastructure to their North American banks and use it in competitive and interesting ways.
What is the environment for open banking in Canada – where FI.SPAN is based?
Weir: Canada is lagging somewhat behind some other countries, such as Europe and Australia, where governments have mandated open banking and the sharing of customer information. However, adoption in these locales has been slow, while technical issues have made open banking difficult to implement. At some point, the Canadian government will follow suit and mandate open banking, but the sooner banks come on board – and some may get ahead of legislation and create better user experiences now – the better. Everyone should want to see open banking succeed, as it will make it easier for a bank’s business clients to operate, which then further increases economic innovation and competitiveness.
If Canada’s banks are going to become global financial innovators, they need to be more open-minded when it comes to working with fintechs and embrace key trends which include open banking, authentication and digital identification, payments modernization, and embedding financial services within other applications.
Why does the global health crisis – and its economic fallout – represent a special opportunity to embrace open banking? Has COVID-19 made it harder in some ways to advance open banking?
Weir: Quite the opposite, we see it as having brought about digitization and innovation at a quicker pace than pre-pandemic. I think what has essentially happened was that businesses suddenly needed to eliminate manual and paper-based processes, they looked to their banks for help implementing digital solutions quickly. This has pushed banks to start rethinking their innovation goals, and they’ve started asking what efforts will have an immediate impact on the client experience. The fact that embedded banking has suddenly become ubiquitous means that FI.SPAN is now positioned to bring about a huge shift in how businesses consume banking products.
How does FI.SPAN fit into this effort with regard to open banking? How is your company making a difference?
Weir: We make it easy for banks to extend their service offering to their business clients by embedding commercial banking applications within the organization’s ERP or accounting software. The most innovative banks are partnering with fintechs to deliver better payment services they believe will make their customers happier, their relationships stronger, and drive revenue.
Yesterday we shared news that EVERFI and Sallie Mae were teaming up to promote financial literacy for high school kids in California. Today we share news on another youth finance-related front. gohenry, which specializes in providing financial education for youth and their families, has secured $40 million in financing. The round was led by Edison Partners, and featured participation from Gaia Capital Partners, Citi Ventures, and Muse Capital.
The funding takes the company’s total capital to more than $56 million.
“For too long, kids have been locked out of the digital economy and parents lacked the tools to help their children gain confidence with money and finances,” gohenry CEO Alex Zivoder said. “gohenry was the first to respond to these needs in 2012 when we launched a groundbreaking financial education app and debit card that truly empowered children. In 2020, we’ve achieved three key milestones: becoming profitable which many B2C fintechs seek, raising $40 million during COVID, and partnering with world leading funds. All three will help us fuel our U.S. expansion.”
gohenry specializes in helping kids aged six to eighteen develop sound money and financial habits. Launched in the U.K. as a financial literacy app and debit card in 2012, the company has grown its offerings to include its Teen and Eco cards – both of which feature built-in parental controls. The company’s solutions enable youth to learn how to manage allowances and other earnings and give parents the opportunity to guide their children as they learn the basics of digital finance. The company noted that young customers on its platform earned “nearly $150 million in allowances” and “contributed more than $140 million back into the global economy.”
As part of the agreement, Edison Partners managing director Chris Sugden will join gohenry’s board of directors.
“gohenry is catering to millions of parents who are looking to raise smart, financially literate children but are currently underserved by existing solutions,” Sugden said. “We’re thrilled to partner with Alex and the gohenry management team on this next milestone in their growth journey and look forward to realizing their ambitions to improve the financial fitness of kids across the globe.”
The new curriculum, Sallie Mae’s Knowledge for College program, will be made available to high school juniors and seniors in California either in a classroom or virtually. The program is focused on helping provide students – and their families – with the information they need to know in order to finance their higher education goals. The partnership between EVERFI and Sallie Mae comes as research indicates that eight in ten families find affording college “challenging,” less than half of families have a plan to pay for college, and just over half (51%) of students have researched financial aid opportunities.
The two companies also noted that California is unique in that it does not require high school students to take coursework in personal finance before graduating.
“Students and families continue to value higher education, but there’s still a certain level of anxiety and angst about how to pay for it,” Ray Martinez, co-founder and president of EVERFI, said. “(This) is why it is crucial that we provide these students with necessary tools to become confident in their ability to make smart financial decisions well into adulthood. Ensuring students and their families fully understand not only the process by which to apply for student financial aid, but also the responsibilities it carries is of the utmost importance and will help set them up for financial success.”
Knowledge for College includes five interactive modules to help students develop strategies for financing their post-secondary education and, beyond that, building good financial habits for life. Saving and budgeting are among the topics included in the curriculum, as are more advanced topics such as student loans and consumer financing.
“Financial literacy provides students with a strong foundation of knowledge and confidence in making informed decisions about the future,” Sallie Mae SVP Jen O’Donald said. “That future includes planning and paying for higher education, which is one of the first major financial decisions for many students and families. We want families to make these decisions with eyes wide open and that means providing critical education and information early in the process through programs like Knowledge for College.”
Washington, D.C.-based EVERFI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring. Founded in 2008, the company has been busy making friends this fall: teaming up with Athletes First this month and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last month to help develop educational programs to boost African American history and fight anti-semitism, respectively. On the fintech front, EVERFI announced in November that it was working with Zelle to launch a free digital financial literacy course for high schools, and, in October, partnered with Citizens Financial Group to enhance the company’s existing College Bound Citizens education outreach initiative with a “robust digital component.”
We featured EVERFI in our look at the importance of financial literacy earlier this year. The company has raised more than $250 million in funding from investors including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and the Rise Fund, among others.
Some might use the term “dumpster fire” to describe 2020. And while it certainly has been a difficult year full of change, loss, separation, and frustration, there have been some silver linings.
One of those bright spots is the acceleration of digital transformation that has taken place across the tech industry. The trends we predicted last December seem like small goals compared to what many organizations were able to accomplish this year.
We’re now faced with another year of uncertainty, not knowing what 2021 will bring. And while it is probably more prudent to make industry predictions in three-month increments, here’s a broader view that assesses some of the larger trends we expect to see take shape over the next 12 months.
Embedded Banking
Embedded banking, and more specifically embedded payments, began taking off this year. To be clear, embedded payments has been around for awhile now. The concept began as a way for customers to pay for a purchase without having to leave the merchant’s site or app.
However, companies are beginning to perfect the customer experience to such an extent that the customer doesn’t experience friction related to the payment. In these cases the payment process is so deeply integrated into an app that the customer doesn’t have to put extra effort into making the payment.
The classic example of embedded payments is Uber. A customer takes a cab ride and arrives at their destination without having to fumble around with their payment card. With Uber, when a customer arrives at their destination, they know that they have paid for the ride but they don’t have to make any extra effort to finalize it or even need to think about it at all.
When software providers can achieve an experience where the customer doesn’t have to think about the payment (but, of course, makes the payment anyway), they will not only have created a better customer experience but also will be able to close more sales.
Open banking in the U.S.
Open banking has already taken off in Europe and is making progress in Australia and Canada, as well. The U.S., however, has been slower to enact regulation.
Helping to drive progress toward an open banking future in 2021 and beyond, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that requests information from the public on how consumers’ access to their financial records should be regulated.
Essentially, the ANPR serves as a first step in creating formal regulation in the U.S. around open banking. This– along with other factors such as an increase in digital use among consumers, a general recognition that screen-scraping techniques are harmful, and an increase in third party fintech apps– have primed the pump for open banking to take shape next year.
Automation
We’ve reached a point with AI where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help businesses effectively scale their operations. On the business side, we can expect to see increased automation in lending decisioning, communication and workflow tools, customer service, billing, invoicing, accounting, and investing. In fact, almost any business operation that lacks the ability to process information fast enough is a good candidate for automation.
End consumers can expect to see more benefits from automation, as well. More and more fintechs are working to optimize savings and investment opportunities for their clients. Take, for example, Wealthfront’s self-driving money concept. The roboadvisor wants to make money management effortless for customers by optimizing the use of each of their paychecks to pay bills, top up their emergency fund, and efficiently allocate the remainder into investments.
Banking-as-a-Service
This trend seems a bit meta, as many of the clients for banking-as-a-service tools are they themselves banks. It may prove difficult to explain to a fintech outsider why a bank would want to launch a challenger bank (the answer: to compete with banks!).
Despite this, however, banking-as-a-service sits at the core of fintech. Banks and fintechs focus on their core competency and integrate solutions from third parties into their own.
There are two major drivers that are transforming this historically vanilla concept into one of next year’s hottest fintech trends. The first is the push toward open banking. As explained above, there is more data being created in the digital realm than ever and, because of this, consumers want to share their data across platforms. This interoperability is altering customer demand and incentivizing fintechs to integrate additional functionality into their existing services.
The second driver is the sudden increase in the number of challenger banks. Late last year and into 2020, we have seen not only a record number of challenger banks launch, but also a record amount of VC funding allocated to challenger banks. While most consumers are maintaining their relationships with their traditional bank, they are also opening accounts at challenger banks such as Chime and N26.
These digital-first banks often have attractive features such as credit building tools, early paydays, and fee-free overdrafts. To compete, some banks are launching challenger banks of their own. Enterprise technology company Moven and digital banking services provider Q2 recently partnered to create a “bank-in-a-box” concept that aims to help banks improve their digital offerings and retain their digitally savvy customers.
Honorable Mention
Aside from this list, there are two items that deserve honorable mention. The first is buy now, pay later technology. The trend is currently on fire but will likely fizzle out after consolidation takes place. The second trend, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), is on the opposite side of the spectrum. As China initiates the launch of its country’s own CBDC there has been a lot of hype about the concept. However, we are likely still three to five years out from the U.S. making any significant progress toward a CBDC so all talk about the subject will be just that– talk.
It’s been a grand week for Finland’s ReceiptHero. The company announced a few days ago that it was teaming up with SEB Kort to have its digital receipt functionality integrated into SEB Kort’s corporate card, Eurocard. Then, we learned that ReceiptHero had inked a deal with fellow Finovate alum ETRONIKA that will enable the launch of the first e-receipt solution in the Baltic region. The new offering will allow ETRONIKA’s business customers to use their KASU retail network management system and ReceiptHero’s technology to issue digital receipts to their customers.
“ETRONIKA has built a truly modern retail chain management and POS product and we are thrilled to be partnering on a wider partnership that allows us the initial steps of building out the Baltic ecosystem.” ReceiptHero CEO Joel Ojala said.
Today comes more news from the Finland-based fintech. Courtesy of an investment from VC Lifeline Ventures, Superhero Capital, and Vidici Ventures of Sweden, ReceiptHero has picked up $2.43 million (€2 million) in seed funding.
“We’re making some real strides now with merchants and potential bank partners,” Ojala said. “We’ve hit an inflection point where banks understand the potential of digital receipts and value for their customers. For merchants they feel safe with ReceiptHero protecting their customer data and payment information.”
Growing interest in ReceiptHero’s technology, which transmits digital receipts from merchants directly to customer banking or account apps, comes as Finland’s government has decreed that digital receipts will be mandatory by 2025. Finland launched a digital receipt pilot project in 2019 that saw more than 50,000 state workers shopping exclusively with merchants using ReceiptHero’s platform.
ReceiptHero made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin. Headquartered in Helsinki, the company is also partnered with Nordea, integrating its technology with the bank’s Nordea Wallet offering at the beginning of last year. Other recent ReceiptHero partners include SKJ Systems, Diebold Nixdorf, and global IT system integrator CGI.
