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It’s Official: American Express to Acquire Kabbage

It’s Official: American Express to Acquire Kabbage
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: American Express, Kabbage, Mergers & Acquisitions

The big card companies continue to make the kind of deals that underscore the importance of fintech to the future of financial services. This week we get confirmation that international payments giant American Express has agreed to acquire SME lender Kabbage.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Speculation on the deal in recent days has put the purchase price between $850 million and $1 billion.

The acquisition will include Kabbage’s team, its suite of financial technology solutions, as well as the company’s data platform and IP built for small businesses. American Express also plans to leverage Kabbage’s technology and talent to offer additional cash flow management and working capital solutions to its small business customers. In the acquisition announcement, American Express highlighted Kabbage’s recently introduced business checking account, which centralizes funds for easier cash flow management.

“This acquisition accelerates our plans to offer U.S. small businesses an easy and efficient way to manage their payments and cash flow digitally in one place, which is more critical than ever in today’s environment,” President of Global Commercial Services at American Express Anna Marrs said.

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, Kabbage has raised $2.5 billion in funding, with the company’s last equity round closing in 2017 after raising $250 million. This year, in addition to the launch of its business checking account, Kabbage distinguished itself as a major conduit for small businesses seeking COVID-19 related relief funding. The company said it has facilitated 300,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans valued at more than $7 billion. Kabbage’s participation in the program was a dramatic return to its role as a resource for small business financing after the company suspended SME lending in April in response to the global health crisis.

“At Kabbage, we have always made the success of America’s small businesses our primary objective,” Kabbage CEO and co-founder Rob Frohwein said in a statement. “We have built a technology and a data platform that provides them with the kind of capabilities and insights often reserved for larger businesses. By joining American Express, we can help more small businesses succeed with a fully digital suite of financial products to help them run and grow their companies.”

As part of the agreement, both Kabbage’s securitized SME loans and its PPP laons will be serviced by an separate entity to be established by Kabbage and American Express, the Financial Times reported.

American Express’ purchase of Kabbage comes less than a month after another big acquisition in the online SME lending space: Enova International’s $90 million deal for OnDeck. For both companies, the acquisitions provide the opportunity to expand meaningfully beyond their core competencies: Enova adding to its consumer lending operations, and AMEX bringing working capital and SME financing to its commercial card business.

The acquisition is expected to close later in 2020.

Photo by Paul IJsendoorn from Pexels

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How Empowering the Underbanked Will Create the Next Big Investment Opportunity

How Empowering the Underbanked Will Create the Next Big Investment Opportunity
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Guest Post

The following is a guest post by Borys Pikalov Head of Analytics and Cofounder at Stobox.

One of the greatest challenges in fintech is reaching the unbanked. Accessing poor communities is operationally complicated and their use of financial services is very limited.

Microfinancing institutions are only a partial solution and traditional loans do not work as an investment vehicle because they are risky for both parties: banks don’t want to give, and poor don’t want to take. To solve this puzzle we may use two creative concepts from financial engineering.

Individual investment contract

Instead of taking a loan, people promise part of their future income in exchange for money. This reduces the risk for farmers in case they cannot pay off the debt. This is already being practiced when corporations provide education grants to poor students in exchange for future employment.

Loan securitization

Instead of taking a single loan from banks, real estate developers issue debt securities and sell them to many institutions. Thus, the loan is divided into many small parts that may be traded on a secondary market, which spreads the risk for parties giving the credit. For conventional real estate loans, the maximum debt-to-value ratio is ~60%, while for securitized loans it is ~90%, which means that 50% higher risk is acceptable.

Personal securities

Combining these two concepts we arrive at personal securities – individual investment contracts issued in the form of securities that can be divided into small parts and traded on a secondary market. There is already an example of a personal securities offering in use: a software developer offered a part of his future income in order to move to Silicon Valley. 

The use of personal securities can solve the risk puzzle of investing in poor communities. However, there are a number of practical problems to be solved in order for personal securities to be an efficient solution. 

First of all, personal securities should be powered by proper technology. Offering many securities to many investors in dozens of different countries requires robust and scalable infrastructure. Blockchain technology is widely considered suitable for these purposes. In the last few years, providers of securities tokenization made serious progress and now enable convenient mass operations with securities. For example, the blockchain was used to reduce the entry threshold in a $22 million venture fund by 2,0000 times– from $1,000,000 to $500.

Another problem is the operational complexity. Using personal securities would require reaching poor communities, doing the legal groundwork of signing investment contracts, choosing investment opportunities, and gathering and distributing income. This requires wide collaboration between existing banking providers, governments, nonprofits, and startups. 

A solution may be to organize everything as an investment fund that would issue securities to investors worldwide and use the proceeds to organize the investment process and do the investment itself. Pooling investment into funds can further reduce the risk for investors. It is better to do pilot projects to test the best structures.

The next big investment opportunity

Giving money to poor communities is the next big investment opportunity. It would not only directly benefit investors but also all businesses that can sell to poor communities. It can vastly improve the financial outcomes of developing countries. Most importantly, it can assist in finally ending extreme poverty and providing people with a dignified life.

Borys Pikalov is Cofounder and Head of Business Analytics at Stobox, an award-winning advisory and technology company in the field of securities tokenization. Pikalov has done 2500+ hours of research in the digital securities industry. Co-author of the book “How to Attract Investments with STO: A Practical Guide”. He is currently advising the government of Ukraine about developing an ecosystem for virtual assets.

Photo by Katrine Bengtsson on Unsplash

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PayActiv Receives $100 Million in Funding for Earned Wage Access Tech

PayActiv Receives $100 Million in Funding for Earned Wage Access Tech
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, PayActiv

Earned wage access startup PayActiv closed $100 million today for its technology that helps companies offer their employees their pay on a daily basis rather than wait for their bi-weekly paycheck.

The Series C round was led by Eldridge and includes existing investors Generation Partners and the Ziegler Link•Age Fund II. The investment brings PayActiv’s total funding to $134 million.

The company will use the funds to expand its client base, which currently consists of 1,400+ businesses and organizations representing more than four million employees. Walmart, Wayfair, and Ibex Global are some of the major employers in PayActiv’s portfolio.

“American families are facing more financial stress than they have in generations,” said PayActiv CEO and Co-Founder Safwan Shah. “The timing gap between work and wages is the main reason workers get hit with punitive late fees, overdraft fees and other penalties. Cumulatively, these fees reduce wages by seven percent every month. The PayActiv platform is the only system where everyone wins: employers lift worker morale with little to no cost and huge dividends; employees get wages when they actually need them most; and cash re-enters the economy faster, making communities financially healthier.”

PayActiv was founded in 2011 and has emerged as a major financial wellness tool for employers. In addition to offering flexibility around how frequently employees receive payment, PayActiv also gives employees multiple options of how they receive payment. Workers can opt for direct cash pickup, a PayActiv prepaid card, an instant Visa or Mastercard debit card load, an ACH payment, or use their wages to pay bills, make purchases on Amazon, or purchase rides on Uber.

The company also offers financial wellness and planning tools that help employees to save, budget, and manage their money. Additionally, PayActiv announced today that it will offer employers a retirement benefit in partnership with Security Benefit, a retirement services provider based in Kansas.

Demand for earned wage access tools are on the rise, especially in today’s post-COVID economy. Sending employees their paychecks on a daily basis can help them avoid overdraft fees and high interest financing options such as payday loans and credit card debt.

“The future of pay is not a two-week cycle,” said Eldridge Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Todd Boehly. “By simply giving people access to their wages as they earn them, PayActiv increases the velocity of money, stimulating the economy and serving employers and employees by driving costs down and efficiencies up.”

Photo by DISRUPTIVO on Unsplash

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Alliance in the Americas: Constellation Software Acquires Infocorp

Alliance in the Americas: Constellation Software Acquires Infocorp
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, InfoCorp

The decision by Canada’s Constellation Software to acquire Uruguayan technology firm – and Finovate alum – Infocorp earlier this year is a reminder of the vibrancy of the fintech ecosystems thriving in the countries to the north and south of the U.S. The acquisition was completed in June via Constellation Software’s U.S.-based subsidiary Aquila.

“We have been looking for a partner to support us as we move to our next level of experience for our clients,” InfoCorp CEO Ana Inex Echavarren said. “We are excited to join Aquila and the Constellation family as they believe in long-term relationships, and the ‘buy and hold forever’ approach supports us in our focus on long term growth with our clients.”

Montevideo-based InfoCorp offers its customers an omnichannel banking platform that leverages the latest advanced technologies – conversational AI, machine learning, voice recognition, and chatbots – to build solutions to better engage and serve financial services customers. With clients such as Banco Santander, Banco de Bogota, Banco Internacional, and Towerbank, the 25+ year old company made its Finovate debut in 2017, demonstrating its marketing and commercial actions orchestrator platform that enables more agile, personalized, marketing campaigns that lead to higher conversion rates and ROI.

“InfoCorp has an inspiring focus on their clients,” Aquila CEO Mike Byrne said. “To produce solutions that connect the banks with their clients is such a deep passion for the team at InfoCorp. We are really looking forward to working with the group.” Operations at InfoCorp will remain the same, post-acquisition, with Echavarren continuing as CEO and the company keeping its client portfolio and offices. InfoCorp has 250+ workers in its development and innovation centers in Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, and Colonia.

In fact, the company announced last month that it is looking to expand into both Mexico and Argentina in the wake of the acquisition, with potential expansion to Europe, Canada, and the U.S., as well. Echavarren told BNamericas that the company is currently growing at a rate of 40% to 50% a year over the past five years and is looking at investments to power Infocorp’s ability to enter bigger markets.

The fintech ecosystem in Uruguay is often overlooked compared to the fintech industries in other Latin American nations such as Mexico and Brazil – both of which Uruguay borders. With a population of approximately three and a half million, the country is the second smallest in South America and gets high marks on a number of metrics including democracy, low perception of corruption, and e-government. Uruguay is regarded as a “high-income country” by the United Nations.

In its look at fintech in Uruguay, Contxto highlighted a baker’s dozen of companies that are not only growing regionally, but moving closer to expansion worldwide. The feature divides the country’s fintech industry into five components: payments, exchange, open banking, investments, and what it calls “fintech enterprise services (FES).” This primarily involves providing fintech solutions to online financial services companies.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • A partnership with Standard Chartered Bank will enable Airtel Africa to build its fintech business and help support financial inclusion.
  • South African digital banking platform provider Ukheshe earns finalist spot in the 2020 Ecobank Fintech Challenge.
  • ThisDayLive features VC investor Ameya Upadhyay on the challenge of startup development in Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Fintech Futures takes a look at financial inclusion in Russia.
  • Poland’s mPay teams up with iDenfy to bring biometric facial recognition and other identity verification technologies to its mobile payments platform.
  • Romania’s PayByFace brings its biometric facial recognition technology to Up Romania cardholders, enabling biometric purchases as participating stores and restaurants.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • CIH Bank of Morocco partners with Finastra for a remote implementation of the company’s Fusion Corporate Channels and Fusion Trade Innovation systems.
  • Cairo, Egypt-based payments-as-a-service fintech Paymob raises $3.5 million in funding.
  • National Bank of Oman enables cardless ATM transactions.

Central and Southern Asia

  • MEDICI featured Indian regtech startup Signzy in its RegTech Top 21 Startups for 2020 roster. Signzy is the only Indian regtech to make the list.
  • Reserve Bank of India announces offline digital payments pilot project.
  • JCB International and PJSCB Orient Finans initiate merchant acquiring operations in Uzbekistan.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican lending platform Creze raises $12 million.
  • Rapyd partners with PayMyTuition to boost the company’s ability to accept bank transfer-based payments from countries in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.
  • WorldRemit teams up with a pair of Mexican neobanks, albo and Klar.

Asia-Pacific

  • Ayoconnect, a billpay network based in Indonesia, raises $5 million in pre-Series B funding.
  • Southeast Asian fintech TrueMoney teams up with cross-border payments firm Thunes to expand its remittance business.
  • Vietnamese digital banking platform Timo announces new partnership with Viet Capital Bank.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Innovating in a World of Exponential Change

Innovating in a World of Exponential Change
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2020, Speaker series

Describing the opportunity to use AI to create tools and solutions that make society better off, Pablos Holman (pictured right) said, “we get the chance to work for the humans yet to come.”

I like the way of looking at a controversial technology in such a positive light. Instead of focusing on the potential of AI to displace us at our jobs or make our lives unfair in some ways, maybe it is better to examine how we can use AI to craft products, technologies, and services that make our world better to live in.

To do this we need to ask ourselves and the community we work in, “All of this technology is in our hands, what do we want to accomplish with it?” It’s important to ask questions like these in the fintech sector, so that the industry can control how we use new technologies such as AI. As Holman puts it, “Speculate about the possibilities, focus on the positives.”

Holman is a hacker, inventor, entrepreneur, and technology futurist who is on a quest to solve the world’s problems through the innovation of technology. He will be the keynote speaker kicking off FinovateFall on September 14, offering his thoughts on innovating in the post-COVID landscape.

He is certainly a speaker you won’t want to miss. Holman has helped build spaceships; the world’s smallest PC; artificial intelligence agent systems; and the Hackerbot, a robot that can steal passwords on a Wi-Fi network. He is a world-renowned expert in the fast moving 3D printing space, and is currently working on printing the food of the future among other things.

Holman will discuss some of the invention projects under way at the Intellectual Ventures Lab, and their efforts to create an Invention Capital market. He will also be showing off some of the super powers that hackers possess.

FinovateFall Digital will run September 14 through 18 and will be broadcast live in Eastern Standard time. There’s still time to register (at a discount!) so take advantage and book your ticket today.

Photo by Sinjin Thomas on Unsplash

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Facebook Launches New Payments Group: Facebook Financial

Facebook Launches New Payments Group: Facebook Financial
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Led by David Marcus, co-creator of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project Libra, Facebook Financial is the social media giant’s latest effort to enhance the company’s payments initiatives.

Facebook has not made an official announcement about Facebook Financial – referred to internally as F2. Reporting at both MarketWatch and Bloomberg suggests that the new unit will also feature Stephane Kasriel as payments vice president. Kasriel comes to the project from Upwork, where he was CEO. Marcus currently runs Novi, a division of Facebook that is developing a digital wallet for Libra, and will continue in that capacity as Novi moves under the F2 umbrella.

“We have a lot of commerce stuff going on across Facebook,” Marcus told Bloomberg earlier this week. “It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments.” Notably, Marcus has significant payments experience, having been PayPal president from 2012-2014.

Facebook Financial will also handle WhatsApp Pay, recently launched in Brazil, and Facebook Pay, the social media platform’s e-commerce payment system. Engadget’s reporting on the conversation surrounding the new division noted that Facebook sees unifying payments on its different platforms as key to boosting value for advertisers and increasing in-app transactions.

The discussion over Facebook Financial comes just a week after the firm announced another e-commerce-friendly initiative: a Commerce Accelerator that will partner with 60 startups from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America to help build out Facebook’s online marketplace.

“In this critical time, Facebook is doubling down on commerce and accelerating its work to enable every business to sell online and help people gain inspiration and discover and buy the products they love. We can’t achieve this alone,” the company announced in a blog post, “so we are looking for startups to build technology with us.”

Zuckerberg himself has praised the role of payments in Facebook’s future. In a recent earnings call, the Facebook CEO noted that “as payments grow across Messenger and WhatsApp, and as we’re able to roll that out in more places, I think that that will only grow as a trend.”

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

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Yapily Ever After: American Express Facilitates Bank Transfers in European Markets

Yapily Ever After: American Express Facilitates Bank Transfers in European Markets
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: American Express, Daily news

Have you ever heard of open-banking-infrastructure-as-a-service? American Express has, and it has tapped U.K.-based Yapily as the provider.

The open banking infrastructure company has signed an agreement with American Express to take the financial service giant’s open banking payment initiation product, Pay with Bank Transfer, to select European markets. Yapily’s API will enable Amex’s end users to complete a payment without being redirected to a different channel or website.

Pay with Bank Transfer is self-explanatory– it leverages open banking to enable users to transact via bank transfer. The payment method uses biometric authentication and instant payment APIs for faster, more simple, and secure payments.

“The partnership is the first real step to bringing open banking payments to everyone across Europe and the U.K.,” said Yapily CEO and founder Stefano Vaccino. “Now, a significant number of international merchants will finally be able to access, and benefit from, an open banking API.”

Yapily was founded in 2017 to help financial service providers leverage the open banking opportunity by connecting them with banks. The company enables its clients to access data in 15 countries across Europe, and at more than 180 financial institutions. Yapily has raised $18.4 million.

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

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Top Ten Fintech Hires of 2020 … So Far

Top Ten Fintech Hires of 2020 … So Far
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dwolla, List series, MasterCard, Signicat

This week’s announcement that Stripe had hired former General Motors Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara as its own new CFO is a reminder that the hunt for top talent in fintech has never been hotter. As tech titians and financial services giants embrace fintech solutions, the pressure to find the most effective leaders, the most insightful technologists, and other key executives is forcing companies to up their game when it comes to attracting the best of the best.

With that in mind, here are another nine companies who in 2020 have done just that: made a major, C-suite addition to their leadership ranks that should help propel their respective companies to the next level.

Nicolas Weng Kan – Yolt CEO – news. Former Google Compare CEO Kan took the helm of ING’s smart money app, Yolt, as well as Yolt Technology Services (YTS), a provider of open banking services in Europe last month. Yolt won Best Personal Finance App at the Wealth & Finance FinTech Awards earlier this month.

Anna Manz – London Stock Exchange CFO – news. The London Stock Exchange has a new Chief Financial Officer as former Johnson Matthey CFO and executive director Anna Manz succeeds David Warren, who had held the position since 2012. Prior to her time at Johnson Matthey, Manz spent more than 16 years in executive roles with Diageo.

Lucy Hagues – Capital One UK CEO – news. Hagues, who spent three years as Chief Marketing Officer at Capital One UK and is an alum of the firm’s graduate program, replaced outgoing CEO Amy Lenander. Hagues is the first program graduate to reach the CEO’s office.

Nkihil Rathi – Financial Conduct Authority CEO – news. Appointed CEO of the FCA at the age of 40, U.K. head of the London Stock Exchange Rathi is the first member of an ethnic minority to lead the regulatory body.

Steven van Rijswijk – ING CEO – news. ING Chief Risk Officer Steven van Rijswijk is the company’s latest CEO. He took over for outgoing Ralph Hamers who is headed toward a CEO post at UBS. Van Rijswijk’s promotion comes after 25 years of service at the bank.

Brady Harris – Dwolla CEO – news. Former President of payment solution provider Payscape, Harris was tapped by Dwolla founder Ben Milne to lead the company this spring. Milne praised Harris for helping lead Payscape’s merger with Payroc, “creating a full-service payment powerhouse that operates in 46 countries.”

Michael Miebach – Mastercard CEO – news. “Putting products first” might be one way to describe Mastercard’s decision to replace its outgoing CEO Ajay Banga – who is transitioning to the role of executive chairman – with the company’s chief product officer Michael Miebach. A 10-year Mastercard veteran, Mieback is credited for being a “key architect” of the company’s “multi-rail strategy.”

Hironori Kamezawa – MUFG CEO – news. The appointment of Kamezawa as Chief Executive Officer of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group was a bit surprising, insofar as the outgoing CEO has only been in place for a year. But observers speculated that Kamezawa’s leadership will likely mean a broader and more aggressive embrace of fintech by the company.

Asger Hattel – Signicat CEO – news. A new year, a new CEO for the Denmark-based digital identity solution provider as former CEO and Head of Nets Merchant Services Asger Hattel took leadership of Signicat in January. Hattel replaces company co-founder Gunnar Nordseth, who will remain as a shareholder and help support business development.

Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels

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Women in Fintech: Dhivya Suryadevara Named New Stripe CFO

Women in Fintech: Dhivya Suryadevara Named New Stripe CFO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Women in Fintech

In the latest example of the New Economy leveraging the best of the Old Economy, online payments innovator Stripe (founded 2010) announced that it has hired Dhivya Suryadevara as its new Chief Financial Officer. Suryadevara will leave her position as CFO for General Motors, a company that was founded in 1908.

“Dhivya is a rare leader who has run an industry-leading leviathan but also gets excited about enabling the brand-new products and the yet-to-be invented products, too,” Stripe co-founder John Collison said in a statement. “She has the expertise and the instincts to help steer Stripe through our growth in the years ahead.”

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Dhivya_Suryadevara_Stripe.png

More than just the corporation’s most recent CFO, Suryadevara was a long-time General Motors veteran. She joined the company’s Treasurer’s Office as a Senior Financial Analyst in 2004, and became the Chief Investment Officer and CEO of GM Asset Management by 2013. Appointed Vice President of Corporate Finance for General Motors in 2017, she was named CFO a year later. Suryadevara was educated at the University of Madras and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

As CFO for General Motors, Suryadevara oversaw financial operations involving more than $100 billion in annual revenue. She was credited for providing leadership in capital allocation decision-making, and for “spearheading numerous strategic transactions for the company.”

“I am very excited to join Stripe at a pivotal time for the company,” Suryadevara said. “Stripe’s mission to increase the GDP of the internet is more important now than ever.” She emphasized her enjoyment of “leading complex, large-scale businesses” adding that she hopes to “accelerate Stripe’s already steep growth trajectory.”

News of the new CFO encouraged some speculation that Stripe may be readying for an initial public offering. Company co-founder John Collison had said this is not the case.

Suryadevara’s hire comes shortly after Stripe made another major appointment: bringing on Mike Clayville as Chief Revenue Officer. Clayville arrives at the company having served as Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales and Business Development at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In other recent Stripe news, the company announced that it was expanding its partnership with Jobber, a home service management provider that will leverage Stripe Capital to help its partner businesses get the financing they need to grow. Last month, Stripe teamed up with Irish online marketplace DoneDeal, enabling sellers on the platform to use Stripe for secure, contactless transactions.

San Francisco, California-based Stripe has raised $1.6 billion in funding, including $600 million announced in April as part of a Series G round that began last fall.

Photo by Kelly Lacy from Pexels

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Get Wise: Business Banking Gains a New Challenger

Get Wise: Business Banking Gains a New Challenger
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Wise

Whatever benefits the challenger bank revolution may bring to retail banking customers, the opportunities these neobanks provide to small businesses may be even more significant. In fact, there is a growing cadre of digital-first challengers who have decided to put innovating on behalf of small business banking at the top of their priorities.

One such company is Wise, a BBVA-backed challenger based in San Mateo, California, that announced the release of its premium checking account in the U.S. this week. The new offering, available for $10 a month, enables businesses to earn up to 1% APY on deposits through a combination of a 0.5% base APY and an additional 0.1% for every $1,000 purchase using a Wise debit card. Accountholders get 25 free ACH deposits and 25 free outgoing bank transfers a month, as well as additional payments services. Among the functionalities to be added are remote check deposit, the ability to send digital checks and international wires, and support for Quickbooks.

The new offering comes in the wake of the company’s first major fundraising: a $5.7 million seed round in April led by Base10 Partners and featuring the participation of several other investors including Abstract Ventures and Backend Capital. The company told TechCrunch earlier this year that it has 1,000 business customers, with average workforces ranging from 2 to 10 employees, and “between $500,000 and $5 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue).”

Finovate audiences met Wise last year when the company made its Finovate debut at our September conference in New York. At the event, Wise co-founders Arjun Thyagarajan (CEO) and Suresh Venkatraman (CTO) demonstrated the company’s “small business banking-in-a-box” solution, and previewed additional products and services for small businesses including payments and invoicing.

From left: Wise co-founders Arjun Thyagarajan (CEO) and Suresh Venkatraman (CTO) at FinovateFall 2019.

Thyagarajan founded Wise after a stint managing product for Mojio, a platform for connected cars. Before that he was a classic serial entrepreneur, launching a personal organizer (LivingOrganized), and a pair of password management platforms (TeamsID and Gpass). But a sense that he wasn’t “doing what I really wanted to do” led him to leave the “hot startup” in search of what he called “problems that needed solving.”

“My explorations led me to FinTech and I was pleasantly surprised with the rapid advancements in technology transforming the financial industry, especially in banking and payments,” Thyagarajan wrote on the company blog last summer, looking back on his decision to launch Wise. “It got me thinking: what if we could build a banking product that can deliver on the promise of putting the customer first … And solving real world problems.”

Thyagarajan’s reflections are similar to those his co-founder Venkatraman, who in a companion post observed that Wise’s own experience as a small business trying to secure quality banking services was vindication of the company’s mission.

“The day started innocently enough as we walked into a local bank with all our paperwork in hand,” he wrote. “That was the beginning of a chase around Silicon Valley to find a bank that would take our money and open up an account. Banks would reject us for all sorts of reasons or just ignore us.”

These days, with an new offering, a big investment and a major banking partner in BBVA in hand, it looks like the fintech world might be ready to wise up.

Photo by Jean van der Meulen from Pexels

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Standard Chartered Ties Up with Microsoft

Standard Chartered Ties Up with Microsoft
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Standard Chartered Bank

Adding to the big-bank-to-big-tech partnerships announced in recent weeks, Standard Chartered secured a three-year partnership with Microsoft today.

The bank will leverage Microsoft to take a multicloud approach that will port its significant applications to the cloud. Specifically, Standard Chartered is planning to make its core banking and trading systems and digital ventures such as virtual banking and banking as-a-service cloud-based by 2025.

“Cloud is a cornerstone of Standard Chartered’s strategy to meet the present and future banking needs of our clients,” said Group Chief Information Officer of Standard Chartered, Michael Gorriz. “Using cloud services improves our ability to be agile and innovative, while increasing our operational efficiency and resilience. As disruption in the financial industry continues, we can focus on client benefits by deploying our solutions quicker and allowing for faster integration of new business models and partners.” Gorriz added that today’s partnership is a “major milestone” in Standard Chartered’s journey to become cloud-first.

Standard Chartered will pilot the launch by moving its trade finance systems to Microsoft Azure. The move is expected to facilitate cross-border trade at the bank.

The partnership extends to Microsoft’s workplace tools. Standard Chartered’s 84,000 employees will be working on Office 365 and communicating via Microsoft Teams.

This news comes during a time of widespread digital transformation across the banking sector. Banks and fintechs are seeking to move their operations to the cloud to update their infrastructure and create a better customer experience. There are two factors driving this change: the global health crisis that has moved many in-person interactions to online channels and the rise of competition from challenger banks.

“Cloud computing is an enabler for financial institutions to modernize their infrastructure and systems, to gain the agility they need to respond to competitive pressures, regulatory environments and customer demand,” said Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. “We are committed to helping Standard Chartered Bank in its ongoing digital transformation journey as it strives to address evolving customer needs and build the next generation of banking experiences.”

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

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Onward Open Banking! Blackhawk Network Partners with Moneyhub

Onward Open Banking! Blackhawk Network Partners with Moneyhub
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Blackhawk Network, Daily news, Moneyhub

Branded payments provider Blackhawk Network has teamed up with open finance data and intelligence platform Moneyhub to ensure compliance with open banking standards. Via the partnership, Blackhawk Network will be able to validate third-party providers, connect to them through live applications, and enable them, with user consent, to access user data and initiate payments.

“Using Moneyhub’s compliance solution means that we can adopt the industry best-practice approach to PSD2 in authorizing our unique prepaid card offering,” Stacey Richards, who handles Product Management for Blackhawk Network, explained. “We share the fundamental desire to deliver a transformative experience for the end-user with Moneyhub, and we look forward to working with the team to deliver on our ambitious vision for the future.”

Blackhawk Network helps businesses leverage branded payments to reach more customers, build engagement and loyalty, and increase revenue. A Finovate alum since 2012, the company has more than 3,000 workers around the world, and serves 26 countries with its branded payment solutions. Blackhawk features 1,000+ brands in categories ranging from dining and entertainment to retail and home improvement. The Pleasanton, California-based company went public in 2013, and was acquired by Silver Lake and P2 Capital Partners in 2018 in a deal valued at $3.5 billion.

More recently, Blackhawk acquired Edge Loyalty Systems, an Australian sales promotions and loyalty firm, for $23 million (A$32.2 million). This spring, the company purchased SVM Cards for an undisclosed sum.

Moneyhub’s partnership with Blackhawk is the company’s third collaboration this year. In June, Moneyhub teamed up with Lumio, a money management app. The following month, the company partnered with investment performance analytics firm, ARQ.

“Our Open Banking expertise means that we are able to deliver a comprehensive compliance solution to Blackhawk Network, ensuring that it remains a leader in the market and delivers excellence to current and future clients,” Moneyhub CTO Dave Tonge said. “Our growing product offering and the multi-use nature of our proposition means that we are able to work alongside Blackhawk Network and help support their growth and aspirations.”

Founded in 2011 and based in Bristol, U.K., Moneyhub made its Finovate debut at our European conference in 2015. Nationwide Building Society is the company’s primary investor, having led a corporate round for Moneyhub in the fall of 2018.

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