This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope in London on February 27. Register today using this link and save 20%.
ATMO Technologies
ATMO Technologies allows corporations to fast track their net zero progress by achieving reductions within the supply chain. Financial institutions can extend their loan book and track their ESG progress with ATMO.
Features
Extends lending portfolios
Measures ESG progress
Brings organizations closer to their net zero targets
Who’s it for?
Banks, retailers, brands, and SME suppliers.
EasyLodge
EasyLodge offers a mortgage application and instant credit decisioning software.
Features
Utilizes automation to complete finance applications
Delivers 20 second credit decisioning and instant finance contracting
Uses a machine-learning-enabled credit engine for instant credit decisioning
Who’s it for?
Lenders of any type and size.
Realmonitor
Realmonitor offers banks a mobile platform for acquiring large volumes of engaged mortgage and personal loan customers.
Features
Provides a stream of engaged mortgage and personal loan clients
Features a scalable solution to match the bank’s operational capacity
Offers an ideal entry point for a comprehensive housing ecosystem strategy
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, and mortgage institutions.
Visualizy
The Visualizy embedded banking and payment solution aims to solve the chaos in banking by helping companies eliminate manual processes and enhance security in their payment and financial operations.
Features
Enables companies to integrate with several banks and FIs in a modern way
Automates payment operations and cash management
Complies with ISO-20022 – all through one secure integration
Who’s it for?
Banks, payment providers, credit unions, EMIs, and financial institutions.
WELREX
WELREX’s game-changing digital investment management platform empowers Independent Relationship Managers (IRMs) to exceed clients’ expectations and enables high net worth individuals to make the most of their wealth.
Features
Delivers tailored investment solutions to IRMs and their ultra high net worth and high net worth clients
Offers a proprietary user experience on top of an established SaaS platform
Maximizes results reflecting clients’ best interests
Who’s it for?
Wealth managers, IRMs, and ultra high net worth and high net worth individuals.
This week in Tales from the Crypto we look at some traditional and alternative ways that investors are backing their favorite cryptocurrency companies, examine a new report explaining why the U.S. lags behind its peers when it comes to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and learn about U.S. Department of Justice charges – and a guilty plea- in a $1.9 billion dollar crypto pyramid scheme.
Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum scores new funding
Has crypto winter yielded to the year’s first crypto unicorn? Swiss crypto banking group Sygnumhas raised $40 million in strategic funding in a round led by Azimut Holdings. The round gives the firm a valuation of $900 million, not quite enough for a unicorn horn, but more than enough to raise not just eyebrows but new expectations at what might be in store for cryptocurrency businesses and the funds that invest in them.
The company will use the capital to fuel its expansion into new markets in both Europe and Asia. The investment will also accelerate development of Sygnum solutions such as its bank-to-bank platform, currently supporting crypto offerings from more than 15 banks and FIs around the world.
“Our core thesis has always been that Future has Heritage, and our strategy to build trust via regulation and good governance has guided us throughout all market cycles,” Sygnum co-founder and Group CEO Mathias Imbach said. He underscored the challenge of “closing a successful funding round” in the current financial environment, which fellow co-founder and CEO of the company’s Singapore office Gerald Goh called “a testament to Sygnum’s strong and unique position as a leading regulated financial institution in the global digital asset industry.”
Report: U.S. progress on CBDCs lagging other nations
But according to a new report, the future of any U.S.-created CBDC has plenty of issues – even without the antipathy of the once (and maybe future) U.S. president. According to a report from think tank Atlantic Council, the U.S. is falling behind other countries that are exploring or developing CBDCs. The Council claimed that the U.S. Federal Reserve has deployed “less than 20” people to work on research and development on CBDCs. By contrast, the Council said that the People’s Bank of China has more than 300 people working on their CBDC project. The effort in the U.K. was also praised compared to the U.S., with the Council favorably noting that the Bank of England had deployed a joint task force including both the Treasury and Parliament.
The Atlantic Council says that there is an innovation gap between the U.S. and other developed nations when it comes to CBDCs. The Council also criticized the relatively slow rollout of the U.S. interbank settlement system compared to similar systems in Europe that were deployed sooner. And while the Council accepts that there’s no reason to “disrupt the currency that underpins the global economy,” it still believes that the U.S. dollar needs to “innovate.”
PayPal invests $5 million stablecoin in Mesh
The Fed may not have much faith in crypto. But PayPal is putting $5 million worth of its own crypto to work in support of embedded crypto payments startup Mesh. PayPal announced that it has invested $5 million worth of its own U.S. dollar denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), in the company, which facilitates digital asset transfers and account aggregation.
This investment, announced this week, marks the first time PYUSD has been used as the funding instrument for an investment by PayPal Ventures. “The shift toward digital currencies requires a stable instrument that is both digitally native and easily connected to fiat currency like the U.S. dollar,” PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said last year when PYUSD was introduced. “Our commitment to responsible innovation and compliance, and our track record delivering new experiences to our customers, provides the foundation necessary to contribute to the growth of digital payments through PayPal USD.”
Founded in 2020, Mesh enables companies to integrate crypto payments and transfers directly into their existing platforms. The firm has more than 300 integrations with exchanges, digital wallets, and brokerages. This week’s funding follows a $22 million Series A funding round Mesh closed in September. Bam Azizi is co-founder and CEO.
DOJ announces charges, guilty plea in cryptocurrency fraud scheme
On the “Law & Order: Crypto Edition” front, the U.S. Department of Justice has levied criminal charges against two individuals – and accepted the guilty plea of a third – for their involvement in a cryptocurrency fraud scheme called HyperFund. The SEC charged two of the three individuals civilly for their role in what they allege to be a $1.89 billion cryptocurrency pyramid scheme.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, Erek L. Barron, called the amount of fraud “staggering.” Barron added “whether it’s cryptocurrency fraud, or any other financial frauds, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
The scheme ran from June 2020 through November 2022, alleges the Department of Justice. The scheme’s conspirators are alleged to have told investors that they would earn daily returns of between 0.5% and 1% until their initial investment doubled or tripled thanks in part to revenues from crypto mining operations. The DOJ alleges that HyperFund began blocking investors from withdrawing their money in July of 2021 and the scheme collapsed the following year.
According to the SEC, one of the conspirators who agreed to settle civil charges of violating securities laws against fraud, had received more than $3.7 million from the HyperFund platform and its investors. This individual is also the one who has already pled guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. The maximum sentence for all three conspirators is five years in prison if convicted.
Odds and Ends
Former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne joinedCoinbase’s advisory council.
Cryptocurrency platform Kraken introduced new Chief Operating and Product Officer Gilles BianRosa.
Reuters reported that FTX has abandoned the idea of relaunching its exchange and will instead pursue a liquidation with a goal of repaying customers in full.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on the present and future of cryptocurrencies in a blog post this week.
Blackhawk Network is acquiring incentive delivery technology company Tango Card.
Founded in 2009, Tango Card has experienced 800% growth since 2018.
Terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this year, were undisclosed.
It takes two to tango. That’s what prepaid card and payments products provider Blackhawk Network (BHN) may have realized this week. The California-based company has acquired incentive delivery technology company Tango Card for an undisclosed amount.
Once the deal closes, BHN clients, along with Tango’s existing customers, will benefit from Tango’s B2B incentives platform and customer support. Tango was founded in 2009 to help enterprises reward their employees with a prepaid card, charity donation, direct deposit, or via a selection of more than 1,000 gift cards. The company, which first demoed at FinovateFall 2016, experienced significant growth in the past six years, having grown 9x, equivalent to 800%.
“Joining BHN at this time provides a once-in-a-company opportunity to continue innovating in this space, better support our customers’ evolving global needs and create awesome experiences for recipients,” said Tango Founder and CEO David Leeds.
BHN, which is best known for its gift cards and egifts, also offers rewards and incentives tools for enterprises to gift employees, customers, and suppliers. Additionally, the company has a digital payment system for corporate payouts, relief support, and more.
“We have been a longtime partner to Tango and were also an early investor. We are thrilled with the opportunity to combine the best of BHN with the best of Tango to provide leading, global, scalable solutions and innovation to the rewards and incentives industry,” said BHN President and CEO Talbott Roche.
The deal, which marks BHN’s 14th acquisition since it was founded in 2001, is expected to close later this year.
Digital banking technology company Plumery forged a technology partnership with identity verification platform Sumsub.
Via the partnership, Plumery has integrated Sumsub’s verification technology into its banking engagement platform.
Headquartered in London, Sumsub made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin.
Mobile and digital banking technology company Plumery will integrate verification technology from Sumsub into its banking engagement platform. The integration comes courtesy of a newly announced technology partnership between the two companies. Of Sumsub’s various capabilities, Plumery first will launch Sumsub’s Know Your Customer (KYC) suite.
“Using our APIs, Plumery has been able to create a completely seamless end-to-end onboarding journey for its users,” Sumsub co-founder and CEO Andrew Sever said. “Through this partnership, we can now combine their innovation-focused digital experience … with the highest levels of compliance and fraud protection, provided by our platform.”
Plumery’s banking engagement platform, Headless, enables banks, fintechs, and financial institutions of various types to build apps on top of its APIs. Headless can be deployed without requiring companies to make changes to the user interface (UI) of their apps or to their core banking technology. The partnership with Sumsub will add KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions to verify new customers by leveraging data such as email addresses, tax residency, and proof of address (PoA). The solution will also screen identity documents and make sure new users pass liveness tests as part of the verification process.
The goal of the combined offering is to give both traditional and challenger banks the ability to provide customizable onboarding flows for their customers while remaining fully compliant. In a statement, the companies noted that the integration can save businesses up to 80% on implementation costs and time. The integration also saves companies more than 50% of onboarding costs for each customer.
“Digital and mobile onboarding has become an essential part of any digital banking experience in the last five years,” Plumery CEO Ben Goldin said. “Now, together with Sumsub, our joint customers can integrate this capability faster and more cheaply than ever before, to launch new propositions and whole banks in record time.”
Founded in 2015, Sumsub – which stands for “Sum & Substance” – has raised more than $37 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The company made its Finovate debut four years ago at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin. At the conference Sumsub demoed its all-in-one technical and legal platform that manages all of a company’s KYC/KYB/AML requirements. The solution enables firms to covert more customers, accelerate the verification process, lower costs, and reduce fraud.
Sumsub began the year with an announcement that it had joined the MENA FinTech Association (MFTA). The company’s new membership in the six-year old organization will help it boost business growth in the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as raise awareness about the challenges of identity fraud in the region.
Venue will help Ramp improve its Procurement product with purchase orders that automatically sync up to accounting platforms, collaboration tools, and new approval workflows.
Venue was founded in 2022. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Business finance automation platform Rampannounced it has acquired procurement startup Venue and that it has made improvements to its Procurement product automations. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Ramp expects the acquisition will help it expand beyond corporate cards as it tackles inefficiencies across more of the financial tech stack.
Venue was founded in 2022 to help businesses simplify how they review, approve, and manage the cost of vendor relationships. The company’s tool helps employees request what they need, while offering finance teams visibility into all vendor requests spending. A year after launch, Venue was supporting clients with 500 to 1,000 employees and had raised $1.2 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Exponent Founders Capital, and Basecase Capital.
“With Venue, we built a frictionless purchasing experience for employees and empowered businesses to buy what they needed while staying in-policy,” said Venue CEO and Co-founder TK Kong. “We’re excited to bring our expertise to Ramp and together help enable more efficiency, productivity, and seamless decision-making for our customers.”
Along with today’s acquisition, Ramp is launching improvements to its Procurement product with support from the Venue team. The combined team will offer businesses more control over and insight into employee spend, speed up review cycles, and help organizations save costs on IT and software spending. Now available for businesses using Ramp Plus, the new features include:
Integrates the contract review process into Ramp’s approval workflow.
Dynamic intake forms that capture every purchase request in one place.
Purchase orders that sync to accounting platforms and offer auto-code matched invoices.
Collaboration tools that allow all parties to comment and tag team members within requests.
An activity feed to track procurement processes and keep record of approvals and changes made to requests and purchase orders.
Seat Intelligence to track who is using the software and ensure businesses are getting their money’s worth from their SaaS contracts.
Ramp’s accounts payable product currently processes over $10 billion in accounts payable volume each year. The company, which is best known for its corporate card and expense management tools, counts more than 15,000 business clients.
Jack Henry has launched its cloud-native business banking solution, Banno Business.
The new solution will help community and regional banks bring modern banking solutions to small and medium-sized businesses.
A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry was founded in 1976.
Jack Henryunveiled its cloud-native business banking solution, Banno Business, last week. The new offering enables community and regional financial institutions to bring the innovations of modern banking to SMEs.
“Banno Business centralizes the business banking capabilities and partnerships we’ve created over the years into a single platform,” Jack Henry Managing Director of Digital Solutions Julie Morlan said. “We’ve built our platform to be highly configurable and scalable, enabling banks and credit unions to compete across the business spectrum. With Banno Business, financial institutions can expand and monetize their market share – a $370 billion revenue opportunity – while making a continued impact in their communities.”
Banno Business combines business solutions – such as cash management and commercial lending – with embedded payment capabilities, cash flow tools, reporting, and other features to help business owners better manage their finances. SMEs can also link external accounts to their financial institution via an integration with Finicity (a Mastercard company). Banno Business empowers regional and community financial institutions to leverage their relationships with and knowledge of their local businesses and business owners.
Institutions like High Plains Bank of Colorado are using Banno Business to attract more small and medium-sized businesses as customers, while at the same time helping local businesses improve their finances. The bank’s Chief Experience Officer Brian Otteman praised the ease with which business owners can “manage permissions for their employees, simplify their money movement, and understand their cashflow.” Freedom First Credit Union, a community-based financial institution headquartered in Virginia, is leveraging Banno Business to ingratiate itself to the local business community. “Having a full business solution with the digital user experience that our members know and trust makes for an easy transition to new markets,” Freedom First CU President and CEO Paul Phillips said. “Banno Business positions us to mature existing member relationships and grow net new business; it’s a win for our deposit acquisition strategy and diversifies our portfolio.”
Headquartered in Monett, Missouri, and founded in 1976, Jack Henry made its Finovate debut at Finovate 2010 in New York. The company returned to the Finovate stage four years later at FinovateEurope in London. A leading fintech and solution provider for financial institutions, Jack Henry empowers banks and credit unions to attract commercial accountholders, grow revenues, improve efficiency, and bolster the financial health and banking experience of their customers and members. Jack Henry has approximately 7,500 clients, and more than 10.5 million registered users of its Banno retail platform, which supports the company’s Banno Business offering.
Jack Henry is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker JKHY. The firm has a market capitalization of $12 billion. Last week, Jack Henry announced that CEO and Board Chair David Foss will transition to a new role as Executive Board Chair at the end of June. The company will name current President and Chief Operating Officer Greg Adelson as CEO and President on the first of July.
Trucking industry software platform Trucker Pathannounced this week it has tapped online lending marketplace Lendio to embed small business lending tools within its mobile app.
Lendio, will offer Trucker Path’s community of one million users a range of financing services, including asset or revenue-based financing, debt financing, lines of credit, and equipment financing.
“Lendio brings much needed capital to trucking businesses, who have traditionally been underserved by banks,” said Trucker Path CMO Chris Oliver. “Their loan products, which are tailored for transportation businesses, can be used to buy, upgrade or repair equipment, invest in technology to gain a competitive advantage, and expand operations or add staff.”
Lendio has already funded over $330 million for trucking businesses, and will now offer a range of its financing services to the Trucker Path community of users.
Trucking businesses can access Lendio’s financing tool within the Trucker Path mobile app. Users can apply for financing from Lendio’s network of lenders in as little as 15 minutes via a process that will not impact the applicant’s credit score. Lendio makes the capital available as quickly as 24 hours. Lendio offers applicants access to a dedicated expert who can discuss their needs and help them decide on the most suitable financing option for their particular situation.
“With Lendio’s Embedded Lending, Trucker Path users will now have faster access to financing from a variety of lenders that best meet their business’ needs,” said Lendio CEO and Co-Founder Brock Blake. “We know access to capital can be a big roadblock for many small businesses, and our marketplace has helped hundreds of thousands of businesses with this – including many in trucking and transportation – over the past decade. This partnership aligns perfectly with our mission to create a world where small businesses survive and thrive, and we’re so excited to work with Trucker Path.”
Since its 2011 launch, Utah-based Lendio has functioned as a matchmaker between small businesses and lenders. Businesses seeking funding can submit a single application to Lendio, tapping into its network of over 75 lenders. The platform then pairs each business with a suitable lender from the company’s in-house network.
The company positions itself as a mission-driven organization, and lives up to its word. When the coronavirus hit in 2020, the U.S. Small Business Administration passed the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and Lendio became a critical resource for merchants across the nation. The company saw that many small businesses were experiencing mass confusion around different types of relief programs, and quickly created a COVID-19 Relief Hub on its website to educate business owners, help them apply for funding, and match them with one of its lender partners. Additionally, for every new marketplace loan Lendio facilitates, Lendio Gives—an employee-contribution and employer-matching fund, in partnership with KIVA–provides a microloan to low-income entrepreneurs around the world, continuously re-investing the fund.
Lendio, backed by the likes of Runa Capital and Comcast Ventures, has secured over $108 million in funding. Most recently, the company took in $31 million in a 2020 round led by Mercato Partners. Lendio has made three acquisitions, most recently purchasing online lending platform QuarterSpot in 2021 for an undisclosed amount.
ShareID is an Authentication-as-a-Service solution tied to government-issued IDs, equivalent to border control with a simple smile and in real-time, without storing any PII or biometric data.
Features
Delivers 99.9% precision rate on document authenticity due to partnership with the French Military Police
Executes 92% conversion rate on the first attempt
Includes liveness and anti-spoofing algorithms
Who’s it for?
Banks, neobanks, fintechs, payment providers, crypto providers, and insurance providers.
Sikoia
Sikoia’s Affordability Insights automatically derives sophisticated analyses from bank statements, open banking and payslips alike, unlocking richer financial insights.
Features
Plug-and-play with multiple types of customer bank data
Consistently recognizes income and expenses in real time
Includes a unique library of data models and templates to recognize anomalies
Who’s it for?
Banks, intermediaries, building societies, and consumer lending platforms.
TradingValley
TradingValley is a robo-investing solution provider in Taiwan, focused on providing AI-powered investing algorithms.
Features
Offers robo-investing technology for both B2C and B2B companies
AI fund manager helps investors screen investing opportunities
Tailor-made for different investing practices within different institutions
Who’s it for?
Financial institutions, individual investors, and family office or small asset management firms.
Torpago and Marqeta will power Sunwest Bank’s Sunwest Visionary Card.
The new commercial credit card and expense management solution will leverage Marqeta’s modern card issuing API, as well as Torpago’s white-labeled card program solution, Powered By.
The added card program is expected to help Sunwest generate new income streams, attract deposits, and improve operating efficiency.
Two partners in the corporate card space, Marqeta and Torpago, recently announced they will power Sunwest Bank’sSunwest Visionary Card, the bank’s commercial credit card and expense management solution.
Sunwest’s bank-branded credit card program will leverage Marqeta’s modern card issuing API, as well as Torpago’s Powered By, a white-labeled card program solution that aims to help banks enhance their existing card and expense management offerings.
Torpago said that Sunwest considers the card program modernization effort as a “growth engine.” The San Francisco-based company expects that offering corporate card products under the Sunwest brand will help the bank both deepen existing customer relationships and attract new business.
“By equipping Sunwest with a powerful technology platform, we expect Sunwest to generate new income streams, attract deposits and improve operating efficiency.” said Torpago CEO and Founder Brent Jackson. “Working with Sunwest and Marqeta has been fantastic and we are thrilled to be the engine behind the Visionary Card.”
Torpago was founded in 2019 and offers a range of bank-branded, low-code/no-code technologies, including loan origination and underwriting, card issuing and fulfillment, fraud monitoring, web and mobile apps, expense management tools, third-party integrations, and account servicing. The company also provides services for compliance, cardholder support, and collections.
Torpago’s card issuing, spend controls, and card fulfillment available via Marqeta’s APIs. Oakland, California-based Marqeta helps organizations issue credit and debit cards, prepaid cards, virtual cards, as well as digital wallets. Developers can use Marqeta’s APIs to issue cards, fund accounts, manage payments, and more.
“Marqeta is proud to partner with Torpago to give Sunwest the tools it needs to build a truly differentiated solution from the ground up, enabling Sunwest to customize its card program and deliver a highly personalized and smooth experience for their cardholders,” said Marqeta Chief Revenue Officer Todd Pollak.
For its part of the deal, Sunwest is responsible for acquiring customers for its Visionary Card and will be leveraging its own balance sheet. The bank was founded in 1969 and currently has more than $2.7 billion in assets. Headquartered in Sandy, Utah, Sunwest and has offices in California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, and Florida.
PayPal CEO Alex Chriss released a video yesterday unveiling the company’s six new planned launches for the year.
PayPal’s new launches include a faster checkout experience, Fastlane, Smart Receipts, advanced offers, CashPass, and updated Venmo business profiles.
PayPal will release all of these in the U.S. this year and plans to roll them out across the globe in the future.
Yesterday, PayPal released an Apple-like launch video in which the company’s new CEO Alex Chriss unveiled six of the company’s newest initiatives. In the 17-minute video, which has already received 2.1 million views on YouTube, the payments company unveils the six new innovations it plans to bring to market this year.
Here’s a look at what PayPal expects to release this year:
Faster checkout
To help reduce cart abandonment at checkout, PayPal said it will accelerate the checkout process to get customers to choose PayPal and leverage passkeys to enable customers to log in with their face or fingerprint with one tap. The company says that the implementation of biometrics will not only reduce latency by as much as 50%, but it will also enable customers to check out twice as fast.
Fastlane
Fastlane by PayPal is the company’s new, one-click guest checkout tool that PayPal merchant clients can implement into their online checkout flow. When customers are ready to checkout, they are offered the option to save their information with Fastlane to check out in a single tap. With Fastlane, shoppers do not need to remember their username or password, nor do they have to update personal information or share their credit card credentials with each merchant.
PayPal partner BigCommerce has been piloting Fastlane with its merchant customers, and has reported that Fastlane can recognize 70% of guest checkout users.
Smart Receipts
Smart Receipts will leverage AI to help merchants show consumers personalized product suggestions along with a cashback reward offer on the receipt. When a consumer opens their email receipt– which 45% of PayPal customers do– they will see a new product recommendation at the bottom. The offers help merchants open the door to repeat purchases from customers they have already worked hard to acquire.
Advanced offers
Advanced offers shows consumers more relevant ads by showing them products based on the SKU data of their actual purchases, not just their browsing history. The advanced offers capability will also allow merchants to customize the offers. And PayPal will only change merchants based on performance, not just impressions or clicks.
On the consumer side, PayPal’s use of purchasing data means that they will see more relevant offers based on product details such as type and color. The company has also implemented privacy controls that allow users to opt out of data sharing.
CashPass
Launching this March, CashPass will offer consumers personalized cash back offers from top brands. To redeem an offer, users tap on the offer, shop at the business, and check out using PayPal. Shoppers can stack the savings with other rewards, such as the PayPal Cashback Mastercard.
PayPal’s CashPass launch partners include Best Buy, eBay, McDonald’s, Priceline, Ticketmaster, Uber, and Walmart.
Updated Venmo business profiles
Venmo first introduced business profiles in 2021 in an attempt to capture more revenue from small businesses using their personal Venmo account to accept payment. This year, Venmo will enhance business by allowing them to add subscribe buttons, offer promotions to consumers, and show profile rankings.
All of these updates will begin rolling out in the U.S. this year, though PayPal only offered more specific timing on CashPass, which it said will launch this March. The company also made note that it plans to launch all of these features in more geographies at some point.
Founded in 1998, PayPal handles nearly 25 billion transactions a year for nearly 400 million consumer accounts and 35 million merchants in more than 200 markets around the world. Despite the number of announcements, the market is reacting poorly to PayPal’s release this week. At the time of publishing, the company’s stock is down 0.12%.
Klarna launched Klarna Plus, a subscription tool that offers users premium benefits and access to exclusive offers.
For $7.99, users receive extra rewards points, a waived service fee for purchases made at retailers that are not in the fintech’s network, and exclusive discounts at retailers.
Klarna counts 150 million active users who make two million transactions every day using its platform.
The subscription economy has been gaining steam since Netflix was founded in 1997. With news this week that buy now, pay later (BNPL) player Klarna is jumping on board, it is apparent the subscription trend is not dying out any time soon.
Yesterday, the fintech unveiledKlarna Plus, the company’s subscription service for its U.S. users. For $7.99 per month, users receive premium benefits that offer Klarna shoppers access to a variety of offers and deals.
“Today marks an exciting milestone for Klarna with the introduction of our first-ever premium subscription service, Klarna Plus,” said Klarna Chief Marketing Officer David Sandstrom. “Our research indicates that dedicated Klarna users are looking for an enhanced shopping experience through a subscription model. Klarna Plus addresses this demand, allowing us to deepen our engagement with 37 million loyal U.S. consumers, while also further diversifying a portfolio of payment and shopping solutions.”
What do users receive for $7.99?
Rewards points Users accrue two rewards points for every $1 spent on purchases with Klarna Rewards Club. This is double the 1 point for every $1 spent that rewards club members traditionally receive.
Waived service fees The service fees that users incur at retailers outside of Klarna’s network are waived when they pay using their Klarna One Time Card.
Exclusive deals Users gain access to special discounts at retailers including Nike COACH, Macy’s, Instacart, and GOAT.
Sign-up offer Users receive $8 off their first Klarna Plus purchase.
Like all subscriptions, this one is only worth the price tag if the user actually uses the service. Here’s a breakdown of each incentive:
Rewards points The rewards points are valued at $0.02, and they can only be exchanged for gift cards at a limited number of brands, including Starbucks, Sephora, Foot Locker, and Uber. Receiving an extra point per dollar under Klarna Plus would require spending around $400 each month to make up for the $7.99 monthly fee.
Waived service fee As far as having the service fee waived, Klarna users face a $1 to $2 transaction fee when they make purchases outside of Klarna’s retailer network. This means users would need to transact at these outside retailers anywhere from four to seven times each month to make the monthly fee worth the cost.
Exclusive deals It is difficult to place a dollar number on the value of exclusive deals, since people have varying relationships with high-profile brands such as Nike and COACH. That said, this benefit may be the most effective in attracting users. Loyalty program members will receive monthly deals valued at $6 at five selected stores for a maximum benefit of $30 per month.
Sign-up offer For users who are not brand-forward, the more thrifty shoppers may be drawn in by Klarna’s $8 coupon. It is essentially allowing them to trial their first month for free.
Klarna has built up its shopping marketplace to compete with that of Amazon. The company works with more than half a million retail partners who list goods across a range of categories, including health, clothing, toys, beauty, photography, and more. Klarna counts 150 million shoppers– 40 million of which are U.S. based– who make two million transactions using its platform each day.
Klarna was founded in 2005 and has been transforming itself from strictly a BNPL company into a shopping ecosystem with goods from more than 500,000 retailers across the globe. Last year, the Sweden-based company extended its partnership with Adyen, announcing that it will leverage Adyen’s acquiring capabilities to power card payments for its end users.
This week on the Finovate Podcast, Finovate VP and podcast host Greg Palmer sat down with fintech strategist, host of the Cyber Insiders Podcast, and owner of PR firm KCD PR, Kevin Dinino.
Dinino is founder and President of KCD PR, one of the top ranked public relations and marketing firms with an emphasis on financial services, fintech, technology, and transportation. He manages the day-to-day business operations for the firm, and leads business development while providing strategic counsel to clients on high profile issues.
Dinino is also host of Cyber Insiders, an iHeartRadio podcast series that features industry leaders involved in the cybersecurity industry.
In his Finovate Podcast interview, Dinino talks with host Greg Palmer about the “wonders and blunders” from 2023. Dinino also shares his ideas about what to expect from the world of fintech and financial services in 2024.
Last year was really quite an eventful year in terms of fintech and banking. Look at the Super Bowl last year to kick of 2023. We had TV commercials with the amazing Larry David in it for FTX and, in the ad, the irony of the campaign was that it was called Don’t Miss Out. And his character was like, ‘Eh, maybe I don’t want to do that’.
So it’s hard not to lump in what happened with crypto in general last year. Various scandals, FTX, and everything that happened with SBF probably being among the bigger ones, for sure. There was plenty on the ‘blunder’ side with that.
Check out Episode 201 of the Finovate Podcast and the rest of the conversation featuring Greg Palmer and Kevin Dinino of KCD PR.
