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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Reviewing critical challenges and opportunities in the fintech industry across 2020. With a specialized focus on the latest in lendingtech, bankingtech and customer experience.
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Embedded banking-as-a-service platform Wisesecured $12 million in funding this week. The investment is its second one this year – Wise announced a $5.7 million seed round in April – and was led by e.ventures with participation from Grishin Robotics. The company, which made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall, said in a statement that the capital will be used to help fuel growth and accelerate partnership-building in a number of verticals. Wise now has raised a total of $18 million in equity financing.
“We built banking so our partners don’t have to,” Wise CEO and co-founder Arjun Thyagarajan said. “By embedding banking, Wise unlocks deep product offerings and better customer experiences for our partners. e.ventures built a thesis on exactly this, and we agree 100%.”
Wise offers an embedded banking experience that gives small businesses a seamless way to bank, as well as make and accept payments. Companies partner with Wise and leverage its all-in-one business banking solution to offer accounts to their own clients such as e-commerce platforms and marketplaces. In addition to providing a fully-hosted and fully-serviced banking experience, Wise helps companies bridge the gap between what they have traditionally received from banking services and what e.ventures partner Brendan Wales called “an Apple-like experience” brought to the world of business banking.
“Business banking has been broken for far too long. Poor user interfaces, payments delays, unnecessary fees, a lack of integrations, the list goes on and on,” Wales said. Now, cloud-based B2B companies can offer banking services in a matter of days with no coding involved and have the entire operation managed and maintained by Wise.
Wise demonstrated its small business-banking-in-a-box solution at FinovateFall 2019. A Techstars NYC company based in San Mateo, California, Wise was founded in 2018. Check out our profile of the company from earlier this year.
Fraudsters are taking advantage of the increased number of transactions taking place online in today’s pandemic environment. Thanks to this shift, along with other recent payment trends like BNPL, the digital payments environment looks a lot different than it did just a year ago.
To get a better idea of the specific changes that have taken place, as well as those that have yet to come, we spoke with Vesta CIO Tan Truong. In our conversation, Truong offers his insight on recent payment industry trends, provides advice for merchants, and offers tips on how banks can help their small business clients fight payments fraud.
What recent changes have you seen in the payments space, and what changes do you foresee in the sector next year?
Tan Truong: The pandemic has really supercharged the acceleration of e-commerce growth – by some analyst accounts, the industry has jumped about five years ahead of its already steep growth trajectory. Total online spending in May, at the height of the pandemic, was up 77% year-over-year. But even many brick-and-mortar sales are no longer traditional in-store purchases, thanks to the rising popularity of curbside pickup options that allow consumers to make a purchase online and have merchandise dropped right into their car by a sales associate within minutes.
Unsurprisingly, fraud has also skyrocketed as consumers and retailers both look to prioritize health and safety by embracing contactless transactions. Some researchers are projecting that retailers will lose about $130 billion in revenue due to CNP fraud between now and 2023.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is the newest trend in payments. What type of risk management is required in this new frontier?
Truong: Buy Now Pay Later has seen incredible traction in markets like Australia and Latin America, but it has only recently started to take off here in the U.S., particularly among Gen Z shoppers.
One big area of risk here is around disreputable or fraudulent vendors taking advantage of the companies that offer BNPL services. If they haven’t properly identified whether it’s a legitimate or illegitimate merchant, they could easily fall victim to a scheme where a fake merchant submits falsified orders using stolen consumer PII, then collects payments for products it allegedly sold but did not ship. Since BNPL vendors assume the risk on these transactions, they would be left holding the bag.
In terms of risk for merchants, regardless of the payment method it is crucial that merchants follow established best practices to remain one step ahead of bad actors. There are several key areas they should be focused on to eliminate fraud and increase approvals:
Prioritize Anomaly Detection: Look for obvious irregularities in ordering habits which may suggest that a buyer is exploitative. These may include orders placed late at night during hours when customers are unlikely to be active, and orders for a high quantity of a specific product or at the upper end of the price scale.
Conduct a Digital Footprint Assessment: The four pillars of the digital footprint – device, IP, phone, and email – can provide crucial signals to understand the origins of a payment. For example, the lack of geolocation information or a mismatch between distances from the billing address to the IP geolocation can be a key indicator of fraud. Likewise, email addresses which are either linked to no-name providers or uncommon email hosting firms can be a bad sign, as can those that do not actually feature the name of the buyer. Email addresses that are just a string of letters and numbers are often a sign of randomization, a tactic often used by fraudsters to make identity detection difficult. Also keep a close eye on a customer’s phone number, since having multiple numbers associated with a single device can be a red flag.
Implement Data-Driven Machine Learning Strategies: Use fraud prevention tools that can build upon features and profiles targeting a range of factors – like user behaviors, session information, order history, and key attributes like products purchased, order amounts, times those orders were placed and shipping address. This is a much stronger approach than employing a rules-driven reactive strategy.
What are some things most merchants don’t think about when it comes to payments fraud?
Truong: Too many merchants are so hyper-focused on the idea of preventing fraud altogether that they hurt themselves in the long run. Nearly every merchant knows what their fraud rate is, but relatively few know their approval rate or understand the relationship between the two. A very low fraud rate isn’t necessarily a good thing. Depending on how the merchant got there, it may indicate that they are rejecting a large number of transactions. Most merchants don’t know how much revenue they are turning away through their fear of fraud. A shift in perspective is needed.
Fraud is a serious problem, and merchants really have no control over its growth; they can only control their reaction to it. If they are preventing fraud by rejecting any transaction where they’re not 100% certain of its legitimacy, there’s a very high chance they are suppressing revenue and turning away many genuine customers. False declines are a lot more damaging than many merchants realize. According to a recent report from Sapio Research, 33% of U.S. consumers said they would never again shop with a particular merchant if that merchant had falsely declined their payment.
Throttling questionable transactions is short-term thinking: it puts undue pressure on profit margins, reduces sales revenues and the number of good transactions accepted, and negatively affects customer loyalty and brand reputation.
How can banks help their small business clients in fighting payments fraud?
Truong: E- and m-commerce were supposed to be the great equalizer for small and midsized merchants, but they have been hardest hit by fraud as they are unable to match the spending power of larger companies who spend about $4 fighting fraud for every $1 of fraud committed. As a result, many smaller merchants combat fraud primarily by not approving any questionable transactions – an approach that inevitably has them leaving revenue on the table.
Banks can help their small business clients by incentivizing them to find and implement anti-fraud technologies that will go beyond limiting their fraud risk and help them prioritize maximizing revenues.
Vesta recently teamed up with data network provider Plaid. Tell us how this partnership can reduce nonsufficient funds.
Truong: Plaid provides a secure connection between consumers’ banks and the fintech apps they want to use, so the integration was a really important step for us. It allowed us to launch a Guaranteed ACH product that enables automated clearing house payments while reducing fraud and fees incurred from non-sufficient funds. Since Plaid is connected to more than 11,000 banks in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, the real-time visibility they provide allows us to get an accurate sense of a customer’s account status, minimizing a merchant’s risk around fraud or just bad budgeting on the behalf of a consumer.
Merchants have been very reluctant to accept ACH payments due to the time it takes to settle charges and increased risk of fraud involved. At the same time, ACH payments cost significantly less to facilitate than credit or debit card purchases – a gap that is especially eye-opening for large purchases. For example, a $5,000 transaction could cost the originator anywhere from $0.25 to $5 when made with ACH, or $90 if made with a credit card.
So the partnership with Plaid enabled our Guaranteed ACH offering, which in turn addresses two of the major barriers to broad adoption of ACH payments – speed and trust. It also opens up opportunities for millions of Americans with bank accounts but no payment cards to be able to shop online.
U.K.-based payments technology providerIcon Solutions is getting a boost today from U.S. banking giant JP Morgan in the form of a strategic investment.
The amount of the investment, along with specific terms of the deal, remain undisclosed.
“We’re excited to support Icon with this strategic investment as they look to continually build a simplified, collaborative payments ecosystem, driving emerging payments rails and innovation,” said Sara Castelhano, EMEA Head of Payments, Digital, and Solutions at JP Morgan Wholesale Payments.
As part of today’s deal, Icon has added Castelhano, to its Board of Advisors.
Icon will use the funds to expand development of its Instant Payments Framework technology, a collaborative, open source payments platform that helps clients process instant payments.
To facilitate these instant payments for U.S. clients, Icon has teamed up with The Clearing House to offer an accelerated route to accessing The Clearing House’s (TCH) real-time payments system. The company has also partnered with Featurespace to facilitate integration and block fraud attacks at scale and in real time.
“We will directly benefit from the support, scale and insight of a global banking leader and one of the most visionary technology companies in the world, while retaining our flexibility and independence,” the company said in a blog post. “We can now accelerate our strategic roadmap, invest more in our technology and team, and expand our geographic reach.”
The investment comes at a pivotal time in the U.S. payments scene. The U.S. Federal Reserve is lagging behind the rest of the globe in launching a real-time payments and settlement service, anticipating a delay until 2024. As the current speed of payments fails to meet consumer expectations, which have evolved to demand the delivery of everything from messages to groceries in real time, private players are coming to the market with their own solutions.
One week after being named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Identity Access Management and Fraud Detection, SpyCloud is back in the cybersecurity headlines. The company has forged a partnership with DotForce, a leading value-added distributor for information security solutions in Southern Europe, to help businesses and government agencies in the region fight account takeover (ATO) attacks.
“SpyCloud has the most complete set of breach data assets in the world, making them the best partner to join our fight against account takeovers,” DotForce CEO Zane Ryan said. “These attacks can hit any organization at any time, and they are extremely expensive and time-consuming to resolve. With SpyCloud as our partner, we will be able to help organizations minimize the damage caused by ATO.”
Via the partnership, DotForce will enable its channel partners and managed security service providers (MSSP) to bring SpyCloud’s ATO prevention solutions to their customers. A Finovate Best of Show winner in its FinovateFall debut in 2017, SpyCloud specializes in detection and remediation of compromised accounts, helps identify and monitor supply chain exposure, and accelerates the fraud investigation process. The firm leverages human intelligence, data cleansing, and password cracking techniques to find exposed credentials faster, and has recovered more than 109 billion breach assets since inception.
“Account takeovers happen everywhere – criminals go where the money and data are, regardless of country,” Director of Sales, EMEA at SpyCloud Neill Cooper said. “We’re honored to partner with DotForce to help businesses in Southern Europe get proactive about protecting themselves.” In its statement, SpyCloud added that the cyberattacks and security breaches that are made possible by cybercriminals accessing stolen credentials cost businesses more than $17 billion a year and can continue for years.
SpyCloud’s partnership news comes just months after the company announced a $30 million Series C round that took its total funding to $58.5 million. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, SpyCloud counts Centana Growth Partners, Altos Ventures, March Capital Partners, Silverton Partners, and M12, Microsoft’s venture capital entity, among its investors.
Short-form video sharing and social network app TikTok and commerce platform Shopify announced a partnership today that will offer Shopify merchants exposure to TikTok’s highly engaged users.
The integration will allow merchants to create and connect their TikTok business account and launch shoppable video ads directly within Shopify. The merchant simply selects the product they’d like to feature in the video and combine their existing imagery or video with a selection of pre-made templates designed for commerce.
“We are delighted to partner with Shopify and provide a channel for their merchants to reach new audiences and drive sales on TikTok,” said Blake Chandlee, Vice President of Global Business Solutions at TikTok. “As social commerce proliferates, retailers are recognizing that TikTok’s creative and highly engaged community sets it apart from other platforms.”
Shopify is using its ShopifyChannels to help merchants promote their products using TikTok. Shopify Channels are sales and marketing channels that help merchants to connect with their customers via integrations with social media, entertainment, search platforms, and major marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart.
“TikTok is one of the world’s fastest growing entertainment platforms with over 100 million highly engaged users in the U.S. alone,” said Satish Kanwar, Vice President of Product at Shopify. “The TikTok channel means Shopify merchants—even those without a strong TikTok following of their own yet—can connect with these new audiences using content that feels authentic and genuine to the TikTok experience.”
As part of the partnership, Shopify and TikTok have teamed up to allow users to spotlight their favorite Black-owned businesses using the hashtag #ShopBlack. The campaign, which runs from November 10 to 15, will highlight products from more than 40 Shopify merchants.
Shopify’s TikTok channel is now available in the U.S. The company plans to launch it in additional markets throughout North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia in early 2021.
As Finovate continues to make the case that “The Future of Finance is Digital”, we also strive to find new ways to make it easier for fintech’s most promising entrepreneurs – and the VCs, banks, and fellow fintechs that love them – to network and make meaningful connections at our in-person and all-digital events.
This November at our upcoming all-digital fintech conference, FinovateWest Digital, November 23 through 25, we will feature our latest networking innovation: hosted breakout sessions that give you up close and personal access to the leaders and founders of our demoing companies.
Led by our analysts and staff, FinovateWest Digital’s Demo Breakout Sessions will be held on all three days of the conference, with two sessions on Monday and Tuesday, and one session on Wednesday. These sessions will feature our demoing companies, in conversation with our analysts, who will be on hand to facilitate a lively Q&A with our attendees. The breakout sessions will begin immediately after the demo sessions, and offer unprecedented access to the men and women behind our demoing companies.
Who are the customers whose preferences are driving innovation in customer experience? What are the pain points fintechs are solving for their partners? What is it like to launch a fintech startup in the current environment of COVID-19 and digital transformation?
Go behind the scenes with our demoing companies. Visit our registration page today to save your spot and join us at our all-digital fintech event, FinovateWest, November 23 through 25.
Identity verification and authentication provider Onfido has provided a guiding light when it comes to digital identity in 2020 and the company’s Q3 sales results can back it up.
Onfido’s global sales increased 82% over the course of the third quarter. The company also doubled the number of sales from its 103 new clients. Overall, Onfido saw a 237% increase in U.S. sales during the third quarter and attributes the growth to new customers switching from other providers.
Aiding Onfido’s success is its decision to partner with Identity Access Management (IAM) companies to spur demand for enterprise-level customers. Some of the company’s marketing plays in this area include hosting an e-voting roundtable with Okta, integrating into Auth0’s Marketplace, and listing on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Additional key partnerships for Onfido this year include:
Alior Bank partnered with Onfido to power digital onboarding.
Hub City Media partnered with Onfido to resell and distribute Onfido’s identity verification and authentication services.
Deliveroo expanded its partnership with Onfido to accelerate its onboarding process for drivers.
Curve partnered with Onfido to enhance its Digital Identity and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.
SwissBorg partnered with Onfido to provide a compliant customer onboarding experience.
Delfin Health partnered with Onfido on its app that predicts, monitors, and tests the health and safety of workforces.
MyCash partnered with Onfido to power digital onboarding.
Bondora partnered with Onfido to streamline its onboarding and KYC processes.
Voima Gold partnered with Onfido to allow customers to securely buy, sell, and store physical gold.
EstateGuru partnered with Onfido to automate KYC and AML compliance processes.
Onfido leverages the power of machine learning and AI to help companies cross-verify users’ identity documents with a live biometric of their face. The company can verify more than 4,600 document types from 195 countries.
“Our mission is to create a more open world, where identity is the key to access. This starts with widening access, creating opportunities for everyone to connect with the services they need and making sure that it’s as inclusive as it can be,” said Husayn Kassai, CEO and Co-founder of Onfido. “We made significant strides over the last quarter to make our product offering not only more conducive to enterprise-level organizations, but also fairer when it comes to verifying people from different ethnicities. We believe these changes will only accelerate our growth further.”
Onfido most recently showcased its technology at FinovateFall 2018, where it debutedFacial Check with Video. The tool, available via an SDK, prompts users to film themselves repeating numbers and performing randomized movements to ensure liveness and enhance identity verification.
In a round led by Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, payment and data security technology company Bluefin has raised $25 million in new financing. With total capital now standing at more than $30 million, the company said the funding would “fuel” its product line, help drive growth internationally as well as within the U.S., and support “opportunistic acquisitions.”
In its statement, Bluefin put this week’s investment, and the growth opportunities for the company, in the context of changes taking place as a result of the global health crisis. Noting that the pandemic has increased reliance on mobile point of sale devices, Bluefin warns that this means the number of potential attack entry points for hackers and cybercriminals has also increased. With an estimated 27.7 million mobile POS devices in use by 2021, Bluefin argues that additional security to defend private data will be required for all businesses, regardless of their sales hardware preference.
“Bluefin is dedicated to remaining at the forefront of technology and solution development in the fight against breaches and cyberattacks,” Bluefin CEO John M. Perry said. “Our partnership with Macquarie will enable Bluefin to not only introduce more solutions to protect e-commerce, online and point-of-sale transactions, but also to make these solutions available globally through our extensive partner network and Bluefin’s products. We look forward to leveraging Macquarie’s deep financial and global expertise in this next phase of company growth.”
A specialist in securing Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), as well as financial card data, Bluefin leverages PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization to safeguard information upon entry, in transit, and in storage. Bluefin’s technology enables secure payment acceptance for card present, e-commerce, and mobile transactions, and is available via its network of 130+ integrated partners or directly through the company.
“Bluefin has developed industry-leading data and payment protection technologies, which are crucial in the global climate of rising data breaches and cyberattacks against organizations of all sizes,” Macquarie Capital Principal Finance Managing Director Anand Subramanian said. “We are very pleased to partner with this innovative company to expand their cybersecurity product suite and fuel continued growth in the U.S. and internationally.”
An alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, Bluefin announced a partnership with CPA Site Solutions in September, enabling the accounting website provider to offer enhanced online billpay. In August, the company teamed up with electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) solutions provider Invoice Cloud.
Brokerage infrastructure API provider DriveWealthbrought in $56.7 million in Series C funding today. The investment is more than double the Series B round of $21 million the company received in 2018. Today’s investment brings the company’s total to $100.8 million.
The round saw participation from existing investors Point72 Ventures– which led the round– as well as Raptor Group, SBI Holdings, and Route 66 Ventures. New investors Mouro Capital and Fidelity International Strategic Ventures also participated.
DriveWealth will use the funds to strengthen its technology, make strategic acquisitions, and grow the organization to scale its business.
The New York-based company offers a suite of APIs that allows its partners to embed investment experiences of U.S. securities within their own apps. Among DriveWealth’s products are tools for advisors, fractional share investing, and purchase round-up investment capabilities.
“DriveWealth saw its partners open more accounts in 2Q than E*Trade, Schwab and TD Ameritrade combined, and 3Q saw a 33% increase over 2Q,” said DriveWealth Founder and CEO Bob Cortright. “This type of activity speaks to the power of making it simple for consumers to start investing immediately. The new funding from our great investors will only help us improve our technology capabilities to democratize investing.”
Since it was founded in 2012, DriveWealth has already scaled its business to serve a range of geographies and now reaches investors in 153 countries. The company has formed partnerships with firms on six continents, including Asia, where it collaborated with Singapore-based Bambu on the launch of a white-label roboadvisory platform for U.S. wealth managers; and Africa, where the company teamed up with Sigma Securities and Trove Technologies to launch a digital U.S. equities trading product for retail investors in Nigeria.
Among DriveWealth’s clients are Hatch, Revolut, Stake, and Moneylion. The company recently partnered with Access Softek to help community banks and credit unions offer their members access to investing tools.
What is the impact of financial technology on what some might suggest is the most important “vertical” of all? With churches and other religious institutions joining other organizations in their embrace of technology, we wanted to take a look at how trends toward digitization – especially given the onset of the global health crisis – are impacting the way that faith institutions support and engage with their communities and congregations.
To learn more, we connected with Aaron Senneff, Chief Technology Officer with Pushpay. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, Pushpay offers engagement and mobile commerce solutions, including payment solutions, to faith, non-profit, and educational organizations.
Finovate: With more than 10,500 customers and a total processing volume of $5 billion, Pushpay operates in a fascinating space within fintech: providing donor management and engagement solutions for faith communities. Can you tell us a little about the idea behind launching the company and the problem Pushpay solves for its customers?
Aaron Senneff: Pushpay was formed on the idea that church giving should be easier. When the company was founded, e-commerce through mobile devices and app was accelerating. You could order and pay for your coffee through the phone.
At the same time, churches were accepting donations via cash, check, and passing offering plates as they had done for years. Our founders saw an opportunity to use technology to help make giving easier for church members and make it much easier for church staff to track, manage, and encourage generosity through digital tools.
Today, Pushpay’s digital systems have built on the early success of digital giving, and expanded into donor development, custom mobile applications for churches and church management systems – a full complement of tools that aid churches. As our original founder was known to say, “Everything we do is driven by our purpose to bring people together by strengthening community, connection, and belonging.”
Finovate: How widely are services such as Pushpay used by churches and other religious institutions in the U.S.? Is this a rapidly growing opportunity for you?
Senneff: Many large, progressive churches use technology to their advantage today. It’s not uncommon for a church to use a wide variety of digital tools now, from streaming technology, to email marketing or CRM tools, to sophisticated custom websites. Many of those churches have added digital giving to their arsenal of tools, especially in the last five years. Particularly, large U.S. protestant churches – the so-called “mega-churches” – have significantly embraced the concept of digital giving.
The adoption of digital giving follows the adoption curve you might expect from other technologies. There are early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards – churches span across all of these categories. While we’ve seen a lot of adoption in churches to date, we still see a number of churches and faith-based organizations using antiquated tools and processes to manage their giving. In addition, among our current customer base, the suite of tools is ever maturing, growing, and becoming more capable. There’s a great deal of opportunity to utilize those new capabilities, even for churches who adopted digital giving tools early.
Finovate: Who are Pushpay’s primary customers? Is this something that churches of varying congregation sizes can use – or is it mostly for larger institutions? Is there much geographic variation in terms of who uses Pushpay’s solutions?
Senneff: Pushpay serves churches of all types in the U.S. We have customers that rage from 20,000 in weekly attendance to less than 100, and every type of church in between. We have found that larger, progressive churches – the kinds of churches that might operate multiple campuses, have staff dedicated to digital technology, that have processes, systems and structures in place that support their complex and growing organizations – are often the first to adopt new technology and digital tools like Pushpay. However, we see very active interest in our tools across the spectrum of churches.
We’ve also seen an acceleration of adoption across the market as a result of COVID, as churches across the U.S. closed their doors, but still needed a way to engage their membership. The digital tools we provide can give churches a means to continue to communicate and engage with their membership, even while physical participation is on pause.
Finovate: You recently launched ChurchStaq, an end-to-end engagement solutions platform that includes a church management system. I think our readers would be especially interested to hear about the giving and donor management functionalities of the platform. Can you talk a little about this?
Senneff: ChurchStaq is a full suite of tools that enables churches to engage with their people on all levels. It includes a Church Management System – a back office system not unlike a CRM but customized for church staff – a customized mobile app that a church can deploy to their community, and a digital giving platform. These three core capabilities are combined into one product offer that work together to help churches know, grow and keep their people.
The strength of this platform isn’t the standalone donor management system or app or ChMS, but the combination of them all. A really good example of this is our suite of donor development tools. In addition to facilitating online giving, donor management system has some sophisticated reporting that allows church staff to easily identify changes in giving patterns among their community. A church might, for example, have a family that is experiencing financial distress as a result of a job loss and that is surfacing in their giving stopping or becoming more erratic.
The donor management system can easily identify those people who may be in need of care. From that point, the ChMS system can take those individuals and put them in automated workflows for the church that kick off a process of care that is designed by the church. Whether it’s assigning a staff member to call them and check in, sending them an encouraging email, or texting them with some resources, etc. They can also use the church app to push out content or push notifications to specific groups of people. The tools really work powerfully together to help churches big and small care for their people individually.
Finovate: How has COVID-19 impacted your customers? Have you seen the same eagerness to embrace new technologies as we’ve seen in among other institutions and organizations? Has Pushpay played a role in helping its customers manage the crisis?
Senneff: COVID has had a mammoth impact on U.S. churches. Many churches across the nation have been closed to physical attendance since early March. Even as they begin to re-open, we see hybrid models that combine in person and online attendance, and many church-goers and families continue to participate on-line. Digital tools like Pushpay’s have been vital for some churches. It’s allowed those who may have historically relied on physical engagements to connect with people – like written Connection Cards, booths in the lobby, new attendees meeting or classes – to replace those physical engagements with digital ones, such as invitations to give, to join groups, to interact with staff or see the churches calendar of events from a mobile app.
Many churches who were already investing in online tools actually saw attendance via viewership rise during COVID over their historic physical attendance, and the digital tools that Pushpay provides can help churches better engage with those individuals.
Finovate: What can we expect from Pushpay over the balance of 2020 and into next year?
Senneff: We continue to invest significantly in our entire product family: our digital giving platform, our church management systems, and our custom mobile apps. We’ll continue to move each of these products’ features and capabilities forward individually, but we have a significant emphasis this year and beyond on providing a seamless, full-suite solution where churches can gain a sharp 360-degree view of their people, which they can rely on to help know, grow, and keep their people.
Ant Group has set the price for its shares of its dual IPO today, and it is shaping up to be the largest public offering to-date, coming in at $34.5 billion.
The IPO will be spread equally through 1.67 billion new shares issued on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which is expected to raise $17.24 billion (HK$133.65 billion), and 1.67 billion new shares issued on Shanghai’s Star Market, which is expected to raise $17.23 billion (¥115 billion).
Ant will debut on November 5 on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng. The company has not disclosed a date for its planned offering on Shanghai’s Star Market.
Ant’s new valuation is anticipated to top $313 billion, up from an estimated value of $218 billion earlier this year. According to Statista, this valuation, when compared to U.S. megabanks, sits only below JP Morgan Chase, which has a market capitalization of $434 billion.
The anticipated $34.5 billion raise is a record amount, breaking the previous highest IPO set when oil company Saudi Aramco went public at $29.4 billion earlier this year. Ant’s parent company Alibaba holds the record for the second-highest IPO when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and raised $24 billion.
Alibaba plans to maintain its 33% share in Ant Group by having its subsidiary Zhejiang Tmall Technology purchase 730 million shares in the company.
As we reported earlier this year, Ant’s double-listing is intentionally avoiding U.S. markets. This is not only because of geopolitical tensions, but also to take advantage of new innovations in both Hong Kong and Shanghai markets, which offer weighted voting rights and offer more market-driven pricing than other domestic exchanges.
Ant was founded in 2014 and has more than 1.3 billion active annual users. Simon Hu is CEO.
