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3 Benefits and Drawbacks of Voice Tech for Banks

3 Benefits and Drawbacks of Voice Tech for Banks
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Guest Post

This is a guest post written by Shannon Flynn, managing editor at ReHack.com.

Voice recognition technology is experiencing something of a golden age right now. You can control virtually anything with your voice now, from your lights to your TV to your phone. As these technologies keep improving, their applications in banking grow more promising.

Voice tech encompasses a range of technologies that involve recognizing and responding to users’ voices. The potential for these services in the financial industry is immense. You could use your voice to log into your bank, make withdrawals or ask for financial advice.

The advantages of voice tech for banks are impressive, but there are still some roadblocks ahead. Here’s a closer look at three benefits and three drawbacks of the technology.

Benefits

Roughly 111.8 million Americans use voice assistants at least monthly. That’s more than a third of all internet users in the country. The American public is already comfortable with these technologies, so bringing them to banking is a natural next step.

Banks shouldn’t adopt voice tech just because people would use it. Thankfully, the technology has benefits beyond high adoption rates. Here are three of the most significant.

1. Streamlined Banking

Think of how easy voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant make routine tasks. You can check the weather, read your messages and hear the news without lifting a finger. Banks can bring those same benefits to their user experience by integrating voice technology into their apps.

Users could make a deposit or withdrawal by merely asking their phones to do so. Mobile banking allows people to perform routine actions in less than three minutes on average. Voice tech could shorten that to a few seconds since users wouldn’t have to press any buttons.

2. Increased Accessibility

Mobile apps made banking more accessible than ever, but the industry can still improve. You still need to have full function of your fingers to work these apps, which can be a barrier to some users. Voice controls can allow more people to experience the convenience of banking apps.

VOIP will also gain some next-gen improvements in the next few years due to 5G. For instance, more banks may achieve faster, unified communication with the help of voice-to-text functionality and faster networks. With the VoIP market gaining $35 billion by 2025, we will most likely see additional innovation for these communication systems.

Voice tech gives users more options, which makes banking services more appealing to consumers and businesses alike.

3. Biometric Security

Voice commands aren’t the only application of voice tech in banking. Banks could also use this technology to as another layer of biometric security. Since voice assistants can differentiate between voices, they can use your voice to verify your identity.

Unlike with passwords and PINs, you can’t steal biometrics. This security advantage is why fingerprints and facial recognition have surpassed passwords, and voice recognition adds another layer of security. With all of these options, banks could offer biometric multi-factor authentication.  

Drawbacks

Despite these advantages, there are still some downsides to voice tech in banking. As much as these technologies have improved, they’re still relatively new and far from perfect. As such, there are a few risks that come with their adoption.

These disadvantages will likely fade as voice technologies improve. At the moment, though, they may dissuade some users from using voice services, making them less profitable for banks. Here are three of the most prominent of these drawbacks.

1. Privacy Concerns

Voice technology may increase security, but it also raises questions about privacy among some users. According to a Microsoft report, 41% of voice users are concerned about issues like passive listening. People may not use banks’ voice tech out of fear that someone may be listening.

Even if users don’t interact with voice recognition features, they may turn away because of them. People may worry that banking apps always listen to them, even while they’re not using voice features. If banks can’t assure people that their privacy is safe, these features could repel users.

2. Faulty Voice Recognition

There are still some lingering concerns about how accurate voice recognition technologies are. A 2017 study found it takes just two years for your voice to change enough that these systems won’t recognize it. Recognition errors could lock people out of their bank accounts, causing unneeded complications.

In fact, foreign language barriers don’t just exist between humans. When you’re dealing with finances, any translations errors could be costly. If your system misunderstands your voice commands, it could make unwanted transfers or deposits. Voice recognition has to be almost perfect for banks to use it extensively.

3. Regulatory Complications

Any financial institution has to comply with strict regulations, and voice tech could be an issue here. Right now, there aren’t any standards for how banks can or should use this technology. The legal ambiguity could cause banks to run into some complications while using these services.

Finding out how voice tech fits into existing regulations could be a headache. Working through these gray areas could be more trouble than it’s worth to many institutions.

Voice Tech Is Promising but Imperfect

The efficiency and security of voice technology is enticing for financial institutions. Still, many banks may avoid the technology right now due to its current drawbacks. More firms will embrace it as the technology improves, but that could take a few years.

Voice tech today is far from perfect, but it does have potential. With further advancement, it could revolutionize digital banking.

Shannon Flynn is a technology and culture writer with two plus years of experience writing about consumer trends and tech news.

Photo by Mason Kimbarovsky on Unsplash

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See Me, Hear Me: Revation and the Revolution in Digital Customer Engagement

See Me, Hear Me: Revation and the Revolution in Digital Customer Engagement
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, FinovateWest 2020, Revation

The big changes we are seeing in the realm of customer engagement have to do with inevitable trends becoming immediate demands. Whether the need is reaching customers over the digital channel for the first time or automating and streamlining processes to improve efficiency and maximize productivity, the global health pandemic has been the midwife – if not the mother – of the fast-changing technology landscape we live in today.

“Meeting customers where they are” has been a rallying cry for customer engagement specialists for years. And as the number of channels grows, more companies are offering new solutions that provide easy-to-use, secure, and compliant ways for businesses to more comprehensively engage with their customers and clients.

One company in this space is Revation Systems. A Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm, founded in 2003, Revation recently partnered with fintech and regtech solution provider Computer Services Inc. (CSI), who will offer Revation’s LinkLive Banking platform to community banks. LinkLive Banking provides regional and community banks, as well as credit unions, with key capabilities such as digital messaging, AI-powered chatbots, voice and video communications, and the ability to move seamlessly between physical and digital channels.

“Given the remote work demands of COVID-19, LinkLive Banking empowers our banks to provide a world-class customer experience while taking precautions to protect the health and safety of their employees and customers,” CSI Group President of Enterprise Banking Giovanni Mastronardi said. “Together with Revation Systems, we’re providing the innovative technology necessary to increase customer satisfaction and reduce friction in the customer journey.”

In addition to its messaging, chatbot, voice, and video functionalities, the platform also provides secure desktop sharing and encrypted email. LinkLive Banking leverages AI to power service chatbots with keyword recognition and the ability provide fast, automated responses to common banking queries. The video banking capabilities, announced in August, are the most recent addition to the platform.

“We are extremely excited about utilizing LinkLive’s video banking features as we seek to improve our member experience,” United Educators Credit Union CTO Dennis Griesgraber said. He noted that the new feature integrated not only with the LinkLive contact center the credit union used, but also with the institution’s digital banking platform. John Eyre, Assistant VP of Information Technology at TAPCO Credit Union underscored the technology’s value for enhancing communications among employees, as well. “LinkLive’s video banking feature will not only enhance the interactions between our members and representatives, but will also help improve communication among our own staff internally,” Eyre said.

Active in the healthcare vertical as well as financial services, Revation has more than 400 customers using its LinkLive Banking platform, representing more than 100 million digital banking customers. Adding the video banking component, Revation notes, requires only a few configuration changes to the LinkLive platform, and does not require the customer to download an app or manage a separate communications account to participate in video banking.

Perry Price, Revation CEO, echoed the now-common wisdom that the pandemic has accelerated pre-existing, if not inevitable technology trends. He noted that while adoption of video banking before COVID-19 had been a “long-term goal,” the onset of the crisis had turned those goals into “urgent” priorities.

Featured in CIOReview’s Most Promising FinTech Solution Providers for 2020 this spring, Revation is scheduled to make its Finovate debut next month at FinovateWest Digital. To learn more about our upcoming, all-digital event and how to watch Revation’s technology in action, visit our FinovateWest Digital hub.

Photo by Cristian Dina from Pexels

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Venmo Ships Credit Card Offering

Venmo Ships Credit Card Offering
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Venmo

Venmo is one step closer to being a full-service bank competitor with today’s news. The PayPal-owned company is rolling out a credit card offering that is available to select customers starting this week.

The Visa-branded card, which is issued by Synchrony Bank, offers many features one would expect to pair with a mobile-first account, such as an app-based virtual card for online shopping, tools to track spending and rewards, and the ability to pay off the card balance from within the app. The cards, which pander to a mostly millennial user base, also offer five unique color designs.

One feature specific to Venmo’s new credit card is the use of a QR code printed on the card. Similar to Venmo accounts, users can scan their friends’ unique QR code to send or request money. This QR code technology, along with an embedded RFID chip that enables users to tap to pay, provides an (almost) contactless payments.

Another unique feature is the way the Venmo card handles rewards. Instead of offering a pre-determined rewards category or even allowing users to choose which category they’d like to receive rewards for, Venmo rewards consumers based on the categories in which they actually spend.

To do this, the company separates customers’ spending into categories such as dining, travel, bills, health and beauty, grocery, gas, transportation, and entertainment. Venmo rewards users 3% cash back for purchases made in the category in which they spend the most, 2% cash back for purchases in the second-highest spending category, and 1% cash back on everything else. The rewards cash is automatically transferred to the user’s Venmo account at the end of each period.

The card adds to Venmo’s existing offerings, including a robust P2P payments ecosystem and its Mastercard-branded debit card launched in 2018. Venmo plans to market the new credit card to its 60 million active users, a built-in audience comprised of its target market.

Photo by Trinity Nguyen on Unsplash

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Expensify Does Billpay

Expensify Does Billpay
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Expensify

As of October, Expensify isn’t just for expense management anymore.

This week, the company announced that it has added a new service that will enable Expensify users to leverage the platform to pay their bills, as well. For free.

“A little known fact is that Expensify was never intended to be an expense reporting company: it was always intended to be a platform for all things accounts payable and receivable,” company founder and CEO Dave Barrett wrote.  “Expenses, invoices, bills — they’re all slight variations on the same thing.  But the variations are so slight, there’s really no reason to Frankenstein together a bunch of financial tools to cover all your needs: Expensify is a one-stop shop for everything you need to run your back office.”

All Expensify users need to do in order to take advantage of the new service is to have their vendors send their invoices to:

“yourdomain.com@expensify.cash.”

Expensify will SmartScan the invoices, present them to the payer, and then send payments to the vendors from the payer’s business bank account. Expensify will also ensure that the transaction is accurately and promptly noted in the company’s accounting system, as well.

The goal is to show how Expensify serves as a small business platform rather than just an expense management solution. After all, that’s how Expensify treats it. “We’ve got hundreds of employees split between several international subsidiaries,” Barrett wrote, “thousands of vendors scattered around the world in multiple currencies, a hundred thousand customers spanning dozens of countries — and we run the whole business on Expensify.”

A long time Finovate alum, San Francisco, California-based Expensify has demonstrated its technology and its solutions at both our developers conference, FinDEVr, as well as at our Finovate events. Over the summer, the company unveiled its Concierge Travel solution, a virtual travel assistant that helps travelers build their itineraries and plan their trips – free of charge.

Expensify has raised more than $38 million in funding from investors including OpenView, PJC, Redpoint. The company began the year with the launch of its corporate card, the Expensify Card, that offers a special reward called Karma Points. Cardholders can use these points to make charitable donations to one of five partnering philanthropic organizations. Expensify also will donate 10% of all revenue from the card to charity, During the COVID-19 health crisis, donations are being directed to the Expensify.org/hunger fund.

Photo by Ann H from Pexels

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NEC Acquires Avaloq in $2.2 Billion Deal

NEC Acquires Avaloq in $2.2 Billion Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Acquisition, Avaloq, Mergers & Acquisitions

After 35 years in operation, Swiss-based digital banking solution provider Avaloq has agreed to be acquired by Japan’s NEC Corporation. The deal, in which NEC will buy 100% of the company’s shares from existing shareholders, valued the Swiss firm at more than $2.2 billion (CHF 2.05 billion), is billed at enabling Avaloq to “accelerate” its “growth, global expansion, and value creation strategy.”

“With NEC, Avaloq found a perfect new home to continue our success story of serving our clients with solutions that make their lives simpler in an ever more complex world,” Avaloq CEO Jürg Hunziker said. Company founder and chairman Francisco Fernandez added that acquisition would help the company continue to “invest heavily in R&D,” and highlighted the two firms’ shared emphasis on the “caring about customers and people.”

The transaction is expected to be completed in April 2021. The company will continue to operate as its own entity, based in Zurich.

First introduced to our audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr London, in 2017, Avaloq made its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateEurope with a demonstration of its goal-based, wealth management solution. The cloud-based microservice enables wealth managers to provide risk-optimized investment objectives for their clients, which helps ensure that the client and their investment preferences, concerns, and risk tolerance are at the center of the investment advisory experience.

With more than 150 clients in 30 countries and nearly $5 trillion (4.5 trillion CHF) in client assets managed using its software, Avaloq recently announced partnerships with Belgium’s Banque Degroof Petercam in October and integrated with Enterprise Bot, an conversational AI and automation solution provider, in September. Also that month, FintechNews Switzerland featured Avaloq Group Chief Product Officer Martin Greweldinger, author of a report on the need for wealth managers to “democratize” their offerings to a wider audience in order to survive and grow.

“This democratization requires wealth managers to deliver personalized advice at scale while addressing the specific needs of this new affluent clientele through a balance of industrialization, innovation, and individualization,” Greweldinger noted. Read more about Avaloq’s report.

Photo by Bing HAO on Unsplash

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Has the U.S. Reached a Tipping Point with Open Banking?

Has the U.S. Reached a Tipping Point with Open Banking?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Julie's Column, Thought Leadership

This year has brought on a lot of changes for U.S. businesses and individuals alike– some for the worse, and others for the better.

One change that fits into the latter category– open banking– has heated up in 2020. There are four indications that the U.S. may be at a tipping point when it comes to open banking:

  • More consumers than ever are using digital financial services. Not only has the coronavirus has halted in-person activities, it has also prompted users to focus on their finances.
  • We’ve finally agreed that screen scraping is a bad way to aggregate accounts. Last week, even Wells Fargo announced it has stopped using screen scraping as a data aggregation technique.
  • Consumers have become aware of their data usage. Big tech companies like Facebook were put on trial in the U.S. in 2018 for questionable usage of consumer data. Now, in an election year, and with films like Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, users are more aware than ever of how tech platforms use their data to sway their opinions.
  • There’s more competition than ever in the B2C fintech space. New competitors are laser-focused on perfecting the user experience, and have started making data management as easy as possible for consumers. Many, for example, provide users a dashboard that allows them to manage third party data sharing, toggling certain platforms on and off.

All of these elements have aligned to bring the U.S. to a tipping point in open banking. There is still one thing missing, however, and that is a unified approach for data sharing.

Whereas Europe enjoys standardization through common API specifications thanks to PSD2, the U.S. is lacking direction. Instead of a government-mandated approach, the market is currently being driven by private players such as Plaid, MX, Envestnet|Yodlee, and others.

Despite challenges, 2021 may the year for open banking in the U.S. As the global pandemic continues next year, so will consumers’ online presence, and ultimately their awareness of their digital rights. Earlier this week, the U.K. surpassed 2 million consumers using open banking, more than double the number recorded in January of this year. And even though the U.S. still has a long road ahead to fully realize open banking, take hope– we’re closer than we’ve ever been.

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

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iCapital Closes Acquisition of Alternative Investment Platform Artivest

iCapital Closes Acquisition of Alternative Investment Platform Artivest
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Artivest, Mergers & Acquisitions

Here’s a bit of news that slipped beneath our radar: online investing platform Artivest, which made its Finovate debut six years ago at FinovateSpring, is now a part of the iCapital Network. iCapital announced its intention to acquire the New York-based firm this spring and in August, announced that the transaction has been completed.

The acquisition includes management of Artivest’s 28 proprietary alternative investment funds, as well as the company’s Open Network platform, which provides access to alternative financial products and investment strategies to 1,800 advisors and their investors. The deal will result in iCapital servicing more than $55 billion in client assets. Artivest’s 28 team members are expected to join iCapital.

Chairman and CEO of iCapital Network Lawrence Calcano praised Artivest’s “technical innovations and capabilities in registered funds and direct investments” when the deal was announced. He said that the two companies shared a goal of making alternative investments more broadly available to wealth and asset managers, and added that the integration of Artivest’s technology with iCapital’s platform would create a “powerful combination delivering a ‘best-in-breed’ technology experience.”

Founded in 2012, Artivest offers a curated investment experience that leverages expert insight and exclusive access to reduce the time and complexity involved in discovering, evaluating, and engaging in investment opportunities such as private investment funds. Ahead of its acquisition by iCapital, the company had forged partnerships with EJF Capital, WM Partners, KKR, Wellington Management, and MacKay Municipal Managers all in the second half of 2019.

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BioCatch Secures $20 Million to Drive Innovation in Behavioral Biometrics

BioCatch Secures $20 Million to Drive Innovation in Behavioral Biometrics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Funding

A new investment of $20 million takes the total capital raised by behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch to more than $213 million. Participating in this week’s funding were a quartet of major global banks: Barclays, Citi, HSBC, and National Australia Bank (NAB). The funds add to BioCatch’s Series C round, which brought $145 million to the company’s coffers in April.

In addition to its funding announcement, BioCatch also unveiled a new BioCatch Client Innovation Board. The Board is a collaborative, invitation-only forum where members can discuss and develop new approaches to leveraging what the company called in a statement “the unique attributes of behavior.” BioCatch’s signature innovation in behavioral biometrics is a cognitive behavioral approach that focuses on the way a user interacts with their device, as well as online and mobile applications in order to combat fraud. The company’s Invisible Challenges mechanism operates without the user even being aware of it, enabling BioCatch to provide strong authentication with minimal friction for the user.

As part of the funding, each of this week’s investing banks, as will existing BioCatch investor, American Express Ventures, will have two seats on the Innovation Board.

“We have already seen the power of collaboration in solving difficult problems in other areas of the financial services industry, such as clearing corps, transaction networks, post-trade processing, margin calculation, and collateral management, when banks work together and share knowledge, workflow, and data in the common interest,” Edelstein said. “We are extremely excited that five of the largest and most important global financial institutions are working with BioCatch to jointly address today’s most pressing problems in the areas of online fraud, account authentication and digital identity.” 

Founded in 2011 and based in both New York City and Israel, BioCatch was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list of the fastest-growing fintechs earlier this month. Over the summer, the company announced that it had created anonymous behavioral profiles for more than 150 million individual online banking users, and now analyzes more than one billion digital sessions a month in real-time.

Learn more about BioCatch in our June profile, COVID-19 and the Fight Against Cyberfraud.

Photo by mali maeder from Pexels

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Crypterium Makes Crypto Virtual; ndgit and Entersekt Partner on Open Banking

Crypterium Makes Crypto Virtual; ndgit and Entersekt Partner on Open Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Crypterium, Entersekt, Finovate Global, NDGIT

Crypterium Launches Virtual Card

Earlier this month at FinovateFall Digital, it was heartening to hear a number of fintech founders and CEOs highlight the blockchain and cryptocurrencies among the technologies they are most excited about in 2021. While a number of other enabling technologies such as AI and machine learning are in the spotlight right now and others, such as 5G and the IoT are waiting impatiently in the wings, innovations in digital assets and cryptocurrencies have seemed less common in 2020 compared to years past.

That makes the news of Crypterium’s new virtual card – and Apple Pay compatibility – all the more welcome for those who believe the best days for cryptocurrencies are still to come. The Estonia-based company, founded in 2017 and making its Finovate debut one year later, announced this week the availability of its new Crypterium Virtual Visa Card. The new free option gives users the ability to chose between a physical, plastic card, a virtual card, or both, and enables them to make all their contactless purchases with the convenience of a single virtual card on their mobile device. Cardholders can load their cards daily from €2 to €5,000, and have immediate access to their funds.

The company noted that it plans to enable users to integrate their virtual card with Google Pay as well. A timeline for this update was not specified.

Crypterium helps make cryptocurrencies practical by enabling users to load their digital wallets – and now their virtual cards as well – with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, and use those cryptocurrencies to transact with more than 42 million retailers. The company has 500,000 users worldwide, operates in more than 180 countries, and has processed more than 50 million payments.

Entersekt and ndgit Partner to Boost Open Banking

A partnership between two Munich, Germany-based firms – identity verification innovator Entersekt and open banking platform provider ndgit – will make Entersekt’s authentication and smart messaging solutions available on ndgit’s Marketplace. The marketplace offers a curated environment for financial services companies to access a variety of fintech solutions.

Entersekt partners with banks and other enterprises around the world to fast-track their digital enablement journeys, helping them respond to changing consumer preferences while meeting their compliance obligations with confidence,” Central Europe country manager for Entersekt Uwe Hartel said. “We are proud to join forces with ndgit, which has a very similar outlook. Together, we can drive innovation in open banking, securely.”

More than 30 banks and businesses around the world use ndgit’s API platform to digitize their operations and take advantage of the opportunities in open banking. In 2017, the company implemented the first open banking system for Switzerland, earning the Euro Finance Tech Award that year for best fintech bank partnership. At ndgit’s most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope last year, the company demonstrated how its platform powered a PSD2-enabled digital loan application with minimal data entry and a fully secure risk profile.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Hong Kong-based financial infrastructure company Airwallex secures an additional $40 million in an extended Series D round.
  • PayMongo, a Philippines-based online payment platform, announces a $12 million Series A round led by Stripe.
  • South Korea’s Kakao Pay plans to be the first mobile payment fintech in the country to go pubic.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Will South African banks make paper checks a thing of the past?
  • Vodacom Tanzania opens its M-Pesa API to encourage developers to build new use cases for its mobile payment service.
  • Nigeria’s Jumia teams up with Airtel Kenya to enable consumers to make online transactions using Airtel Money.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Germany fintech Deposit Solutions goes live in the U.S. with its savings portal SaveBetter.com.
  • Romanian card processing firm Romcard / Supercard (formerly Wirecard Romania) is acquired by Portuguese payments company SIBS.
  • Polish ecommerce platform Allegro earns valuation of $11.2 billion in Warsaw’s biggest IPO to date.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • National Bank of Bahrain introduces its Tap & Go contactless payment service at POS terminals and cards.
  • The Fintech Times features Noha Shaker, founder and Secretary-General of the Egyptian Fintech Association as part of its MENA Women in Fintech Series.
  • Are banks stifling fintech innovation in Israel’s financial services industry? Crowdfund Insider reviews concerns from the country’s Competition Authority.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Quartz takes a look at Amazon’s interest in the mobile payments market in India.
  • Pakistan-based fintech and logistics hybrid PostEx secures “six-figure, pre-seed investment” from angel investor Farhan Abbas Sheikh.
  • HatchX, the first fintech accelerator in Sri Lanka, showcases seven startups that are building insurance, payments, and credit solutions.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Facial recognition technology from FacePhi is helping senior citizens in Argentina collect their pensions without fear of fraud.
  • Euromoney looks at the potential impact of Chile’s new financial portability law on the country’s digital banking industry.
  • Argentina’s Ualá, a mobile payments startup backed by George Soros and Steve Cohen, goes live in Mexico.

Photo by Erik Karits from Pexels

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Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked

Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Guest Post, Interview, Women in Fintech

This is a guest post co-written by Dr. Anette Broløs, an independent fintech analyst, and Dr. Erin B. Taylor, author of the book Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform Their Lives.

Have you ever thought how strange it is that financial solutions for women should be marketed in pink? Or what financial services firms are missing by not fully meeting female customers’ needs? After all, studies indicate that financial services are missing out on nearly $800 billion in profits because they do not provide services developed with women in mind.

We set out to answer these questions in a recent report, published by the European Women Payments Network (EWPN) in partnership with Keen Innovation.

What was the impetus of this report?

It is well documented—across countries and cultures—that women undertake most daily household economic activities (transactions and decisions). Women control or influence 80% of financial decisions and 85% of consumer spending.

Women’s income, retirement savings and investments are lower than men’s – but are now rising fast. And though 25% to 30% of entrepreneurs are women, they only access 2% to 5% of venture capital.

We wondered why so few financial services were developed for women – and why this does not seem to be a concern for researchers. We found that there is a nascent industry developing in this area, and there are products on the market for women to invest, insure, save, manage money, access credit, and more.

We discovered more than 60 organizations and their range of new services provided for women or primarily used by women.

We found that these services are anchored in women’s everyday life situations, and are often delivered in a community setting that offers learning possibilities. Organisations like Ellevest or Voleo help women start saving and investing, and companies like I Fund Women support female entrepreneurs. Financial management apps, such as Nav.it, help women see an overview of their finances and feel more comfortable with their economy.

What are you hoping that readers get out of the report?

We hope that readers from all parts of the industry will consider following up on the potential to serve women better. We hope they will design and develop services with and for their customers.

We also hope that this first overview will bring about more studies in financial decision making and people’s ability to talk about their finances. Research shows that people generally, but especially women, are under-equipped to have the conversations they need to help them make informed decisions.

Finally, we want you to help us update the ecosystem. We are planning a new publication that looks further into the market for financial services for women and the characteristics of the companies that offer them. We invite you to tell us about your own efforts to develop financial services for women, and your experiences in trying to close the gender gap.

Dr. Anette Broløs of Broløs Consult is a network leader working with strategic innovation and partnerships. Broløs spent six years as CEO of Copenhagen FinTech Innovation and Research, and has extensive experience as a C-level banking executive. She is co-organizer of the Research section of the European Women Payments Network.

Dr. Erin Taylor of Canela Consulting is the author of the book Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform Their Lives. Taylor has been designing and carrying out empirical research since 2003 in diverse contexts across the globe. She is co-organizer of the Research section of the European Women Payments Network.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

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Is XRP the new ESG? Ripple Takes Carbon Neutral Pledge

Is XRP the new ESG? Ripple Takes Carbon Neutral Pledge
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Ripple

Payments network Ripple announced a move today that will make its climate change activist users happy. The company has pledged to be carbon net-zero by 2030 and to decarbonize public blockchains.

“The blockchain and digital asset industry will play a critical role in building a sustainable future for global finance,” the company said in a blog post. “We, as an industry, need to come together to dramatically reduce our collective environmental impact as broad adoption takes hold.”

Ripple plans to decarbonize public blockchains in partnership with the XRP Ledger Foundation, Energy Web, and Rocky Mountain Institute. To achieve this goal, the group is using Energy Web’s EW Zero, an application to find and source emissions-free renewable energy. EW Zero provides an open-source tool that enables any blockchain, not just Ripple’s XRP Ledger, to decarbonize by purchasing renewable energy in local markets in partnership with Energy Web Foundation.

In addition to this, Ripple announced it is:

  • Measuring its own carbon footprint and reducing it by purchasing clean, renewable energy for its offices and business activities
  • Investing in carbon removal technology with the goal of removing all of its emissions by 2030
  • Driving new research with the University College London (UCL) and the National University of Singapore to evaluate energy consumption across digital assets, credit card networks, and cash; and understand environmental impact of crypto adoption

Cryptocurrencies don’t have the same negative environmental impacts as paper currencies, which contribute to pollution, deforestation, and a large carbon footprint. The mining techniques that cryptocurrencies require, however, consume large amounts of energy. This is especially true with Bitcoin. Ripple reported that XRP is 61,000x more energy efficient than Bitcoin, which last year consumed almost as much energy as the country of Portugal does on average.

Ripple is the first major player in the crypto space to make a move like this but it likely won’t be the last. According to a report by Morningstar, over the past three years Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) index funds have doubled in both number and asset size. Ripple’s new environmentally friendly approach will likely piggyback on the success of ESG investing.

Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash

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Digital Banking Platform Alkami Raises $140 Million

Digital Banking Platform Alkami Raises $140 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Funding

In a round led by D1 Capital Partners, cloud-based digital banking technology platform Alkami has secured $140 million in new funding. The investment takes the company’s total capital to more than $378 million and comes as the firm reaches nearly 10 million digital users under contract.

“We are proud to add world class crossover investors to our strong existing investor base, supporting Alkami’s mission,” company CEO Mike Hansen said. “We inspire and power the digital strategies of financial institutions as they seek to grow confidently and build thriving digital communities.”

Also participating in the venture round were Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, and Stockbridge Investors.

The financing also comes just a few weeks after the company learned it had made CB Insights roster of top 250 fastest-growing fintechs. This year’s cohort was selected out of a pool of 16,000 companies. Also this month, Alkami topped $130 million in annual recurring revenue under contract, as the company onboarded its 165th digital banking platform client.

“Our clients are among the best performing and fastest growing FIs in the country, in part due to the strength and velocity of our platform, solutions, and ecosystem,” Hansen added. “Together we are creating and delivering winning digital solutions to our clients’ customers, members, and businesses.”

Last month, Alkami announced that it had teamed up with fellow Finovate, multiple Best of Show winner Glia, integrating its Digital Customer Service platform as part of Alkami’s suite of online offerings. “With Glia, banks and credit unions can break down the walls of traditional customer support by meeting customers online and guiding them to quick and satisfying resolutions,” Glia co-founder and CEO Daniel Michaeli said. “By partnering with Alkami, we are making digital-first customer service more easily accessible to premier financial institutions and their users.”

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Alkami is among Finovate’s oldest alums, demonstrating its technology as iThryv back in 2009.

Photo by nagaraju gajula from Pexels

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