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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Analytics and monitoring solutions company Anodot has launched CostGPT to help businesses monitor cloud costs.
Anodot’s CostGPT leverages AI to enable business managers to learn about and manage their cloud costs data conversationally via chat.
Headquartered in Virginia, Anodot made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateEurope in London.
Advanced analytics and monitoring solutions provider Anodot has unveiled its latest solution, CostGPT. The new AI-powered offering enables cloud users to access accurate and personalized analysis of their cloud costs. With CostGPT, users will be able to better address everything from complex pricing models to cloud resource allocation with a simple query.
In addition to being able to ask the platform questions about cloud costs via chat, CostGPT provides optimization recommendations to help users better understand their cloud spending. The technology helps businesses avoid unnecessary costs, optimize resource utilization, and leverages real-time, intuitive data visualizations to make analysis, planning, and decision-making easier.
“This feature enables users to interact with their cloud cost data conversationally, making it more accessible and effortless than ever before,” Anodot Head of Product Limor Tepper said. “It’s all about ensuring that our users have the answers they need at their fingertips. And it doesn’t stop at text responses; it supplies the answers with graphical results that are easy to understand at a glance.”
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, Anodot made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022. At the event, the company demoed its Payments Monitoring Tool. The technology leverages AI to monitor and correlate payments activity and business performance. This enables Anodot to spot potential issues and provide users with actionable alerts and forecasts in real-time. Businesses use Anodot to monitor a wide range of operations from front end applications to APIs to payments. Anodot says it has helped companies cut the time-to-detection of revenue-critical issues by up to 80%.
Anodot has raised $64.5 million in funding from investors including Alicorn Venture Capital and Redline Capital. Also last month, Anodot announced a “long-term strategic partnership” with DevOps and FinOps services Automat-IT. The partnership is designed to help consumers maximize their deployments on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Over the summer, Anodot released its annual State of Cloud Cost survey. The report highlighted trends such as the rise of third-party solutions and the challenge of cloud cost transparency.
QuickBooks launched QuickBooks Bill Pay to bring accounts payable automation and processes to small business clients.
The new product is integrated into the QuickBooks platform and aims to help users manage bill payments to vendors and contractors.
The announcement comes after the company ended a long-standing relationship with Bill.com.
Intuit’s QuickBooks unveiled QuickBooks Bill Pay today to bring accounts payable (AP) automation to its business users.
Aimed at small-to-mid-sized businesses, the new bill pay tool will help Quickbooks’ clients track and automate their bill payments within its platform. The new tool also includes a suite of financial and accounting tools such as digitized record-keeping, vendor management, and advanced controls with customizable permissions for teams.
By integrating a bill payment tool into its existing platform, the company makes it easier for business users to manage bill payments to vendors and contractors. Additionally, by bringing AP processes into a single solution, businesses will have better cash flow and money movement visibility and may mitigate missed and late payments.
“Across the QuickBooks platform, we’re revolutionizing money movement to improve the number-one problem small businesses face – cash flow – which impacts their success rates,” said Intuit Senior Vice President of the QuickBooks Money Platform David Talach.
With Bill Pay, businesses can:
Set permissions and rules to customize the bill approval process for different team members
Import vendor invoices and to automatically create a bill
Keep digital records of bills and payments in one place
Send electronic payments or paper checks without issuing and mailing them
View and file 1099s for vendors
“QuickBooks Bill Pay is a key addition to our ecosystem as we aim to deliver a singular, end-to-end financial solution for small businesses to manage their money. Integrating Bill Pay with our other money offerings enables our customers to leverage game-changing automation capabilities and have the visibility and clarity they need when it comes to their finances,” added Talach.
QuickBooks has a three-tiered pricing plan for the Bill Pay tool, ranging from free to $45 per month. The base level includes five free ACH payments per month while the upper tiers include more ACH payments per month, custom bill approval workflows, unlimited 1099s for vendors, and predefined team permissions.
Founded in 1983, QuickBooks is one of the oldest fintech solutions for small businesses. The company has undergone recent friction when it comes to integrated bill pay, having leveraged a partnership with Bill.com for several years, and later ending that relationship in favor of a partnership with Melio.
QuickBooks is owned by Intuit, a public company that trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker INTU and has a current market capitalization of $151 billion.
Investment app Stash announced a $40 million investment on Friday. The investment was led by T. Rowe Price Investment Management.
The New York-based company also announced that former New York Stock Exchange CFO Amy Butte was joining the company as its first-ever independent audit chair.
Stash made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateFall.
Finishing the week with a bang is investment app Stash, which announced a new $40 million investment and first-ever independent audit chair on Friday.
The investment comes courtesy of T. Rowe Rice Investment Management, as well as a combination of strategic and existing investors including Goodwater Capital and Union Square Ventures. The first-ever independent audit chair comes courtesy of former NYSE Chief Financial Officer Amy Butte.
“The addition of Amy, who is amongst the most accomplished leaders in the financial services space, plus a new round of financing from marquee investors, are clear indicators of the strength of Stash’s business,” Stash CEO Liza Landsman said. “It also signals our widely ambitious future.”
A recognized leader in financial services, Butte has taken companies public as a director, advisor, and CFO, including the IPO of the New York Stock Exchange. Butte currently sits on the boards of Bain Capital Specialty Finance and DigitalOcean, and served on the boards of BNP Paribas and Fidelity Strategic Advisers Funds for seven and six years, respectively. In a statement, Butte underscored Stash’s unique approach to helping individuals get started on the road to investing.
“(Stash) is not a tool – it is a business,” Butte said. “It is not simply replicating a traditional workflow online. Rather, it is encouraging and teaching an underrepresented (traditionally ignored) customer segment about the value of investing through a subscription model. It is leveraging technology to make finance both accessible and also understandable.”
A Finovate alum since 2017, Stash offers an investing app that helps users build long-term wealth. With automated investment plans starting as low as $3 a month, Stash helps users build diversified investment Smart Portfolios – that offer exposure to stocks, ETFs, and even cryptocurrencies. Stash also offers personalized investment advice, automated recurring investing, and dividend reinvestments. Stash’s “Stock-Back” debit card solution enables users to earn up to 3% back in stock from regular purchases like gas and groceries.
In the past year alone, Stash has topped $100 million in annual revenue and now includes two million active subscribers on its platform. These subscribers have set aside nearly $3 billion due to regular, automated deposits averaging just $33.
Stash’s fundraising news comes just a few months after the company introduced new Chief Technology Officer Chien-Liang Chou, as well as launched its Internal Developer Portal (IDP), Elevate. Headquartered in New York, Stash was founded in 2015.
Till Financial has selected Astra to bring instant money transfers to its users.
Till Financial offers a fee-free debit card and savings platform for kids.
The two will roll out more features “in the coming months.”
Family-focused financial platform Till Financial is keeping up with the times when it comes to faster payments. The Massachusetts-based company has tapped money movement platform Astra for instant money movement.
The partnership will offer Till users secure and instant fund transfers, meaning they won’t need to wait the traditional three-days for funds to clear. Astra will also remove much of the friction involved in funding the youth accounts.
“We are thrilled to join forces with Astra to bring Till to the next level,” said Till Co-founder Taylor Burton. “This partnership will enable us to deliver on our promise of serving the unique needs of our families through financial literacy and empowering kids to be smarter spenders by offering them the tools they need for instant, secure, and user-friendly fund transfers.”
Till was founded in 2018 to promote financial literacy among kids. The company offers kids a bank account, a debit card, and a goal-based savings account. The parent can set the kid’s allowance, control the card, and receive insight into kids’ spending and savings habits. Unlike other youth-based digital banking tools which generally charge around $5 per month, Till does not charge any fees.
“Our technology complements Till’s vision for free family banking perfectly, and we are empowering families to have greater control and flexibility over their financial activities,” said Astra CEO Gil Akos. “This partnership underscores Astra’s commitment to driving fintech innovation that directly benefits consumers.”
Till and Astra plan to roll out more features “in the coming months.”
London-based fintech and digital wallet HyperJarannounced a partnership with digital gift card network, Tillo. The announcement makes HyperJar the first spending app to integrate instant Cashback Gift Cards. The cards enable customers to earn instant cashback of up to 15% from more than 50 top brands including Ikea and Amazon.
In a statement, HyperJar’s Nicola Longfield underscored that not only was HyperJar the first app to integrate the cashback gift cards with a spending account, but also HyperJar was the first to offer “merchant cashback.” This option enables users to choose a higher cashback rate that is specific to a given merchant.
HyperJar’s partnership news comes one month after the company secured $24 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Susquehanna Private Equity Investments. More than 500,000 individuals, including more than 100,000 child cardholders, use HyperJar’s digital wallets.
A handful of U.K.-based fintechs secured funding this week. Instant payments company Lopay announced a seed investment of $7.3 million (£6 million). Participating in the round were BackedVC, Portage, The Venture Collective, and angel investors. With 20,000 SMEs signed up since launch, the company offers a app that allows small businesses to accept card payments. The app also enables instant access to cleared funds as soon as transactions are completed. Founded in 2022, Lopay plans to use the capital to expand its operations.
Fellow U.K.-based fintech Kennek was another company that locked in seed funding this week. The firm raised $12.5 million in new capital in a round led by HV Capital. Dutch Founders Fund, AlbionVC, FFVC, Plug & Play Ventures, and Syndicate One also participated. The investment follows a $4.5 million pre-seed round closed in February.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in London, Kennek offers an operating system for lending via a platform that supports the entire lending lifecycle from loan origination to servicing. The company will use the funds to further develop its core technology and add employees.
But the big winner of the week for U.K. fintechs in terms of funding was Untangled Finance. The firm, which operates a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) marketplace, secured $13.5 million in strategic funding in a round led by Fasanara Capital. Founded in 2020, Untangled Finance plans to use the capital for product development and to fuel growth.
The London-based company offers a tokenization platform that facilitates placing traditional financial assets on a blockchain. These real-world financial assets can range from bonds to real estate. Untangled Finance is part of a growing field within the digital asset industry that specializes in asset tokenization, a field that could grow as large as $5 trillion within the next five years, according to a recent report. Note that, along with its investment, Fasanara Capital opened two private tokenized credit pools on Untangled Finance’s platform.
Speaking of DeFi, for those who believe that regulation is the path to greater acceptance of cryptocurrencies, this week’s announcement from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) could be considered good news.
Within 24 hours of its new cryptoassets regulatory regime going live, the FCA has issued 146 alerts to non-compliant companies that were promoting cryptoassets to U.K. customers in violation of the new policy, which was announced earlier this year.
In a statement, the FCA urged consumers to check its publicly available “Warning List” before investing or trading in cryptocurrencies. “We take a risk-based approach, so not alll firms of potential concern will be added straightaway,” the FCA explained. At the same time, regulators hope their Warning List will nevertheless help would-be crypto investors “understand where firms’ promotions may be breaking the law and to consider the promotion with the full information available.”
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Asia-Pacific
Coinbasesecured a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Packworks, a Philippines-based fintech, inked a deal to help SMEs secure microfinancing.
Forbes looked at the current challenges facing Chinese fintechs.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian startup Haba InsurTech raised $75,000 in pre-seed funding.
The life insurance industry is anything but static. Technology has changed what is possible, consumer expectations have evolved, and financial habits have changed. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that people don’t like thinking about their own mortality.
Wysh is tackling these challenges with its embedded insurance product, a high-yield savings account that currently pays 4% APY and includes an additional life insurance payout of up to $10,000. I spoke with Wysh Founder Alex Matjanec at FinovateFall last month on his Best of Show-winning demo at the show, how Wysh works for customers in today’s interest rate environment, and how he views the future of the insurance industry. Check out our conversation below.
Fraud analytics and risk management company Lenvi has partnered with secured finance technology provider Lendscape.
The integrated platform will help lenders identify fraud faster, and provide better, more seamless experiences for customers.
Headquartered in Leeds, U.K., Lenvi made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope.
Here’s some news that slipped under the radar in recent days and weeks. Lenvi, a Leeds-based fintech that made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year, has announced a partnership with secured finance technology provider Lendscape. Together, the two companies are offering enhanced digital risk management for lenders. The integrated platform will help lenders identify fraud faster, and provide better, more seamless experiences for customers.
“This collaboration, and the integration of our revolutionary mix of workflow technology and next-level credit risk analytics with Lendscape’s powerful lending technology, represents a major step forward in advancing the commercial finance industry’s capabilities,” Lenvi Chief Executive Officer Richard Carter said.
Lenvi brings an advanced, real-time credit risk analytics solution to the partnership. Combined with Lendscape’s lending technology, the joint offering will help lenders establish creditworthiness faster and more accurately. The collaboration will also support smarter lending decisions throughout the entire loan lifecycle – from application to servicing.
“This partnership allows us to give providers a more holistic view of creditworthiness, empowering them to work smarter, optimize their lending operations, or ultimately unlock more working capital for their SME customers,” Lendscape CEO Kevin Day said.
Lendscape provides 120+ banks and lenders with an end-to-end platform that enables them to offer a wide range of financing products. Both institutional and SME lenders can benefit from the ability to build and deliver innovative financing solutions by using Lendscape’s technology. Lendscape was founded as general IT services provider Hill Price Davison in 1972. The company changed its name to HPD Software in 2000, and rebranded as Lendscape two years later. In July of this year, Lendscape announced that it had secured a “significant investment” from private equity firm Bowmark Capital.
In its Finovate debut in March, Lenvi demonstrated its new loan management platform, PF1. The solution supports a wide range of lending types – from mortgages to unsecured loans. PF1 combines a broad and extendable API-first party support, along with comprehensive lending functionality. This allows for feature toggling along with a fully automated online deployments. At the same time, a React user interface and APIs give users the ability to take advantage of a highly configurable workflow engine while remaining compliant and secure.
Founded in 1988, Lenvi works with more than 150+ lenders, providing lendtech solutions in loan software and risk analytics. The company has managed more than $122 billion (£100 billion) in credit assets on behalf of clients, and processes a new loan application every five seconds on its platform.
Fiserv has partnered with Plaid to offer its bank clients API-based connectivity to third-party applications on Plaid’s network.
The agreement leverages Fiserv’s AllData Connect to allow credential-free data sharing.
Fiserv has signed a similar consumer-permissioned data sharing agreements with Akoya, MX, and Finicity.
Digital banking and payments solutions company Fiserv has partnered with financial infrastructure fintech Plaid this week. The two have formed a data-sharing agreement that will offer Fiserv’s 3,000 bank and credit union clients API-based connectivity to the 8,000+ applications on Plaid’s network.
The data-sharing agreement, which will leverage Fiserv’s AllData Connect, will ultimately benefit the end consumer. The deal will help consumers who bank with Fiserv clients share their financial information with third-party financial apps and services such as Venmo, Chime, SoFi, and Betterment.
“Our partnership with Plaid allows banks and credit unions to empower consumers to access their financial information beyond the financial institution, while maintaining their trusted role at the center of people’s financial lives,” said Fiserv President of Digital Payments Matt Wilcox. “By facilitating access to a broad range of capabilities and experiences through third-party apps and services we are charting a course towards an open finance ecosystem that prioritizes data privacy, consumer access, and choice.”
Data sharing via API connectivity instead of an alternative such as screen-scraping offers end users a more seamless way to integrate their financial data into third-party platforms. The API connection also provides consumers more security than screen-scraping, a process that requires them to share their bank login credentials with a third party, which may not have the same level of security as a bank. The data sharing will be secure, transparent, and compliant with the anticipated regulatory guidance outlined by Dodd Frank 1033.
FDX Managing Director Don Cardinal called the relationship between Fiserv and Plaid “a leap forward for direct data sharing and great news for the ecosystem.”
Fiserv’s AllData Connect launched in 2020 and is part of the company’s AllData Aggregation product suite, a set of tools that enables credential-free data sharing. AllData Connect validates the consumer with their respective financial institution and issues a token employed by third parties to access and update that consumer’s data via the AllData Connect platform.
Fiserv signed a similar consumer-permissioned data agreement with Akoya in August and has also partnered with MX and Finicity for data sharing.
Fiserv was founded in 1984 and offers solutions that are used in nearly six million merchant locations and almost 10,000 financial institution clients. The company powers 12,000 financial transactions each second. Fiserv is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker FI and has a market capitalization of $68.8 billion.
Plaid helps 12,000+ financial institutions offer their customers access to its network of 8,000+ third party financial services via a suite of APIs that connects consumers, financial institutions, and developers. The company also offers identity verification, balance checks, risk assessment scoring, transaction analytics, and more. Plaid was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Orum launched Verify, a new product to determine the validity of a bank account before initiating payments.
Verify is built on top of FedNow and is able to authenticate 100% of all consumer and business bank accounts held in the U.S.
Verify leverages the FedNow payment rail to provide businesses with account information in real time.
Real-time payments innovator Orum has launched a new product called Verify to determine whether a bank account is open and valid before initiating payments. Verify is built on top of FedNow and is able to authenticate 100% of all consumer and business bank accounts held in the U.S.– all within 15 seconds.
Orum’s Verify seeks to help businesses reduce fraud resulting from invalid credentials and mitigate the friction that consumers with valid bank accounts face when making a transaction. Regardless of the reason for the transaction failures, they are costly. A survey conducted in 2020 showed that 60% of business respondents reported losing customers as a result of failed payments and that failed payments lost the global economy more than $118 billion in fees, labor, and lost business in 2020.
“Lost time verifying accounts equals lost revenue and ultimately lost customers,” said Orum Founder and CEO Stephany Kirkpatrick. “This is especially true for business bank accounts, which are notoriously difficult to verify. Businesses need confidence they are debiting or crediting a real account to ensure the payment lands safely in the bank account, but most solutions today are slow or don’t include coverage for all B2B use cases. Verify – built on top of FedNow – has changed this equation, making it now possible to verify any type of bank account instantly.”
Today’s launch hinges on FedNow. Orum leverages the payment rail to provide real-time account information to businesses. The company uses a webhook to automatically send the data back to the business in real-time. This eliminates the need for the customer to get involved by confirming microdeposits or entering their bank login credentials.
Orum was founded in 2019 to serve as a single solution for accessing RTP, FedNow, Same Day ACH, ACH, and Wires. The company’s payment API orchestrates instant payouts, using AI to predict the availability of funds within an account and pre-authorize transactions.
Founded by Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum has raised over $82 million from investors including Accel, Canapi, Bain Capital Ventures, Inspired Capital, American Express Ventures, and others.
Fraud and risk platform DataVisor launched its new AI Co-Pilot solution to enhance real-time fraud defense.
AI Co-Pilot includes AI-automated rule tuning, feature generation and automated debugging, and improved explainability among its features.
DataVisor made its Finovate debut last month at FinovateFall in New York.
Less than a month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall, fraud and risk platform DataVisor has launchedAI Co-Pilot. The new offering is a generative AI-facilitated fraud solution designed to catch fraud 20x faster than traditional methods.
AI Co-Pilot helps financial institutions detect fraud in real-time while at the same time reducing the number of false positives. This enables financial institutions to provide effective fraud defense without compromising the user experience with excessive friction.
DataVisor co-founder and CEO Yinglian Xie noted that innovation in the payment space required innovation in the fraud prevention space, as well. With bank transfer and payment fraud losses in the U.S. topping $1.58 billion last year, concerns over fraud risks can serve as an impediment to many financial institutions – especially smaller FIs and credit unions – when it comes to embracing instant payments and other new services that their customers and members want.
“Built on groundbreaking Generative AI technology, DataVisor’s AI Co-Pilot gives financial institutions better intelligence and automation for more effective fraud detection and prevention,” Xie said. “This innovative solution is more accurate, reacts to fraud trends much faster, and improves user experiences and customer support.”
Among the new capabilities delivered by DataVisor’s AI Co-Pilot are AI-automated rule tuning to accelerate the fraud response and improve accuracy, feature generation and automated debugging, and improved explainability to ensure transparency.
“(AI Co-Pilot) considerably reduces the need for analyst resources,” Xie added. “This advancement signifies a pivotal step toward enhanced security and efficiency across the industry.”
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, DataVisor demoed its fraud and risk platform at FinovateFall last month. At the event, DataVisor’s Ryan Nichols and Kevin McWey showed how the technology’s rules engine, device intelligence, decision engine, and case management combine to enhance fraud detection and minimize losses.
DataVisor has raised more than $94 million in funding. The company includes CMFG Ventures and NewView Capital among its investors. Last month, DataVisor introduced new Chief Revenue Officer Kevin McWey. In July, the company announced that it had partnered with cyber and fraud threat intelligence specialist Q6 Cyber.
This week’s edition of 5 Tales from the Crypto features a pair of stories from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, concerns over crypto-crime and innovations in tokenization from JP Morgan Chase, and a look at a new product, a new partnership, and a new payments license.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that e-wallet service provider and payment gateway, SticPay will partner with Binance’s payment solution, BinancePay. BinancePay is a contactless, borderless, secure, cryptocurrency payment technology. SticPay will leverage the solution to enhance and streamline its users’ access to a range of leading cryptocurrencies.
SticPay has more than one million users and 5,000 corporate customers in 200+ countries. Courtesy of the new partnership, SticPay users will be able to fund their accounts directly via BinancePay. This will enable them to buy, sell, and send more than 70 leading cryptocurrencies faster and cheaper, which SticPay CEO Sean Park called the company’s mission. “Our users will be able to handle more cryptocurrencies, more efficiently than ever before,” Park said.
The BinancePay news comes just a few weeks after Binance announced that it would sell its Russian business to CommEx. The off-boarding process is expected to take up to a year. Binance said in a statement that the assets of Russian accountholders are safe.
Binance Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman noted that the company remained positive on the long-term growth of the cryptocurrency industry worldwide. Nevertheless, he added, “operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance’s compliance strategy.”
The parting of ways between Binance and Russia is total. The company noted that it will have no ongoing revenue split from the sale of its Russia business to CommEx. Binance also did not maintain any option to buy back shares in the business as part of the sale.
Sometimes the gods of cryptocurrency giveth and sometimes they taketh away. In recent weeks, JP Morgan has represented both tendencies with regards to its openness to crypto and digital assets.
A few weeks ago, we learned that JP Morgan Chase UK will ban its customers from making crypto transactions, beginning on October 16. The bank blamed a high number of fraud and scam incidents for its decision. Specifically, according to a bank spokesperson, Chase customers will be unable to buy crypto assets using a Chase debit card. They will also be unable to transfer money to a cryptocurrency account from a Chase account.
Chase is hardly the only financial institution to place limits on its customer’s ability to transact in cryptocurrencies. NatWest limited the amount of money customers can send to crypto exchanges back in March, citing concerns over “crypto criminals.” Santander Bank has also moved to prevent its customers in the U.K. from sending real-time payments to crypto exchanges.
At the same time, JP Morgan Chase has become increasingly interested in blockchain technology and the opportunities in tokenization. This week, JP Morgan unveiled its Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN). The new platform leverages blockchain technology to enable investors to use digital assets as collateral and, further, to transfer collateral ownership without having to transfer assets in the underlying ledgers.
The first public transaction using TCN involved JPMorgan and BlackRock. JP Morgan leveraged its Onyx Digital Assets tokenization platform to convert shares of a money market fund into digital tokens. Those tokens were then transferred to Barclays bank via TCN to be used as a security for an OTC derivatives exchange between JPMorgan and BlackRock.
“The tokenization of money market fund shares as collateral in clearing and margining transactions would dramatically reduce the operational friction in meeting margin calls when segments of the market face acute margin pressures,” BlackRock deputy global COO of cash management Tom McGrath said.
The hope for TCN is that the technology will reduce the number of settlement fails and provide near-instant real-time changes in ownership. TCN is live and a number of clients and transactions are reportedly on deck.
Cryptocurrency exchange Birake Exchange has turned toIDVerse to provide identity verification. The platform specializes in Masternode coins and will leverage its new relationship with IDVerse (formerly known as OCR Labs) to provide KYC and secure digital identity verification (IDV) during the onboarding process.
In a statement, the Romania-based Birake Exchange team underscored its belief in the future of cryptocurrencies and the importance of decentralization. “To mitigate fraud risks while fostering public confidence, judicious customer due diligence through identity verification has become a priority for us,” the team said.
Founded in 2018, the Birake Exchange refers to itself as a “white label crypto exchange” because it offers trading technology that enables its customers to build and brand their own crypto exchanges. The Birake Network has its own blockchain, which is powered by the Birake Coin (BIR).
As OCR Labs, IDVerse demoed its technology at FinovateAsia 2017, winning Best of Show. The company rebranded as IDVerse earlier this year.
Blockchain company Quant has introduced a new solution designed to make blockchain-based transactions more secure for financial institutions. The new offering, Overledger Authorise, helps FIs manage and integrate digital asset private keys with their own current enterprise key management systems. The technology covers the incompatibility gap between existing systems and blockchain private keys by managing the signing of blockchain transactions and key generation.
Quant founder and CEO Gilbert Verdian noted that the success of blockchain technology in banking will depend on innovations in other technologies. “We cannot unlock (blockchain technology’s) true potential without robust and future-proof solutions for cryptographic key management and transaction authorization,” Verdian said.
Overledger Authorise has been stress-tested successfully in Project Rosalind. Project Rosalind is a central bank digital currency project conducted by the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements.
Headquartered in London, Quant was founded in 2015.
Ripple’s Singapore-based subsidiary, Ripple Markets APAC, secured its Major Payments Institution (MPI) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The MAS gave Ripple Markets in-principal approval earlier this year. The license paves the way for Ripple Markets APAC to issue digital payment tokens (DPTs).
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called Singapore “pivotal” to the company’s global business. Ripple established Singapore as its Asia Pacific headquarters in 2017. Garlinghouse referred to Singapore as “one of the leading fintech and digital asset hubs striking the balance between innovation, consumer protection and responsible growth.”
A Finovate alum since debuting as OpenCoin in 2013, Ripple has grown into a major enterprise blockchain solution provider for the financial services industry. Earlier this year, Ripple won a court ruling that its native cryptocurrency, XRP, was a digital token and “not in and of itself a ‘contract,’. As such, the court rules that Ripple was not guilty of selling unregistered securities – as accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020.
In the constantly evolving landscape of open banking, lenders are presented with a remarkable opportunity to redefine their underwriting processes. By harnessing the power of cash-flow data, lenders can elevate their precision in assessing customer risk and confidently explore untapped markets.
As open banking data becomes more accessible worldwide, a central question emerges: How can lenders effectively utilize this data?
Join us for a groundbreaking discussion led by industry experts in open banking, where we will delve into the current state of the open banking landscape in credit underwriting (B2C and B2B).
Discuss strategies on how to effectively:
Tag and categorize cash flow data
Extract valuable signals tailored to your use case
Combine data from multiple open banking sources
Optimize your underwriting infrastructure to better leverage cash flow data
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to gain invaluable insights into the future of underwriting and discover how open banking can empower your lending strategies.
Moderated by Julie Muhn, Senior Research Analyst, Finovate
On the panel:
Maik Taro Wehmeyer, CEO, Taktile
Abhinav Swara, VP and Head of Credit Risk, Bluevine
