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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Jaid is a powerful artificial intelligence SaaS platform that drives intelligent automation of diverse business communications, increasing the speed of resolution to client inquiries.
Features
Increases speed of resolution by up to 95%
Reduces employee attrition rates by up to 50%
Transforms critical data from diverse communications into meaningful actionable business insights
Why it’s great
Jaid delivers solutions, not AI tools, empowering teams to focus on higher-value tasks and what matters most.
Presenters
Dan Kramer, CEO Kramer has 30 years+ experience in driving strategy and execution in financial services, including previous roles at BNYMellon Asset Services, JP Morgan, and Calastone. LinkedIn
Ken Dummitt, CRO Dummitt has 30 years+ experience in global enterprise B2B software sales with a proven record in driving revenue and expansion at high-growth technology companies. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
interface.ai’s Sphere is a generative AI-powered multimodal ChatGPT-like AI assistant for financial institutions. It provides both customers and employees with unparalleled banking experiences.
Features
Universal channel to enhance customer and employee experiences
Personalized and proactive guidance to achieve financial wellness
Increased revenue via upsell & cross-sell
Why it’s great
ChatGPT-like universal channel that replaces online mobile banking with an AI assistant providing intelligent guidance, innovative plugins, and personalized AI assistance.
Presenters
Srinivas Njay, Founder & CEO Srinivas, Founder & CEO at interface.ai, has 10+ years of experience in AI research and led a digital strategy from scratch for a financial institution to scale it to several billion in assets. LinkedIn
Bruce Gillooly, Sr. Sales Engineer Gillooly has 30 years of problem-solving experience in banking. He has led teams and understands the pain points organizations face from both a member-facing & employee-facing standpoint. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Bits of Stock enables community financial institutions and credit unions to reward in fractional shares of stock. Their purpose is to empower their customers to engage and build loyalty with younger generations.
Features
Engage the next generation of account holders
Establish the easiest path to financial wellness
Embed directly into current digital banking experiences
Why it’s great
Bits of Stock wants users to imagine if they had the opportunity to start earning stocks as a reward in the brands they loved when they turned 16 . . .
Presenters
Arash Asady, CEO & Co-Founder Asady is a relentless and gritty entrepreneur who holds no punches. He’s a USMC Veteran, recovering Wall Street derivatives trader, and boxing aficionado. LinkedIn
Steve Bishop, EVP & COO (OMB Bank) Bishop joined OMB in September 2020, overseeing its physical and digital operations. Preceding OMB, Bishop had two separate stints at Jack Henry & Associates, most recently as Director of Client Services. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
MacroMicro offers premier macroeconomic investment platform services with over 350,000 registered users globally.
Features
Data-driven services with data aggregated
AI-driven services to help navigate and analyze
User-driven services with community and user-generated content
Why it’s great
Investors and decision-makers easily can make informed decisions through interactive and clear automatically updated charts on MacroMicro’s platform.
Presenters
Rachel Chen, CEO & Founder Chen has 10+ years of experience in financial market analysis. She’s the Founder and CEO of MacroMicro, the first macro investing platform in Asia. Chen holds a Master of Economics degree from the University of British Columbia in Canada. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Zero Bank Design Factory is the system development company building Minna Bank’s core system and the first developer in Japan to build a core banking system on the cloud.
Features
Digital Native: Fully digital workflow & process
BaaS Native: FAPI grade open-API platform
API Native: Plug-and-play
Why it’s great
Zero Bank offers a new generation of fully automated cloud-based digital banking systems.
Presenters
Kenichi Nagayoshi, CEO & COO, Zero Bank Design Factory and CEO, Minna Bank Nagayoshi has over 10 years’ experience in the corporate planning division for banking corporate strategy at Fukuoka Bank and has worked for mergers with other banks from the initial stage.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
eSelf.AI’s virtual agents qualify leads, converse with them in real time, and create an innovative and efficient user journey.
Features
Improve marketing ROI by qualifying leads better than a regular form
Create positive user experience with a human-like experience
Customize per use case
Why it’s great
eSelf’s solution is based on advanced generative AI models, enabling creativity and variety in content while making sure nothing inappropriate or incorrect is mentioned.
Presenters
Alan Bekker, Co-Founder & CEO Bekker is the Co-Founder of voca.ai (acq. by SNAP, Best of Show winner at FinovateEurope 2019) and former head of AI at SNAP. He’s an HBS Alumni, Forbes 30 under 30, and has a PhD in AI. LinkedIn
Eylon Shoshan, Co-Founder & CTO Shoshan is an experienced AI entrepreneur specializing in NLP, holding an M.Sc. degree from the Technion. He’s a former Captain in IDF Cyber Security unit and 2020 Israeli Defense Award recipient. LinkedIn
The only thing more exciting than being chosen to demo your latest innovation at a Finovate conference is winning the accolades our attendees and taking home a Best of Show award. With FinovateFallright around the corner, we wanted to take a look at the companies that won Best of Show at last year’s event and give you the latest on what they’ve been up to in the year since.
Remember that early bird savings for FinovateFall – September 11 through 13 – end this weekend! Visit our FinovateFall registration hub and save your spot today!
FICO and LigaData have partnered on a decision-as-a-service tool.
The two will make the new capabilities available to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
The decision-as-a-service solutions suite includes mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.
Data and analytics firm FICO and big data analytics company LigaData have come together in a move to bring decision-as-a-service capabilities to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
The two California-based companies will offer solutions that leverage data to help telcos increase revenues, decrease costs, and expand their offerings. Tools included in the decision-as-a-service solutions suite are mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.
“Together we plan to also help communications service providers grant loans in emerging markets, making it easier for consumers while increasing the digitization of the economy,” said FICO Vice President of Global Partners & Alliances Alexandre Graff.
FICO and LigaData envision that the tool will help telcos add new revenue streams and ultimately expand financial inclusion in emerging markets. “Our partnership with FICO will give communications service providers new tools to expand and compete in a data-driven marketplace,” explained LigaData CEO Bassel Ojjeh. “In addition, we will be bringing to market new solutions that can help communications service providers serve the large number of unbanked and underbanked communities in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.”
LigaData’s name follows the naming convention of major soccer teams such as Bundesliga, La Liga, and Liga MX and is a reference to the company’s league of data experts. LigaData offers two main products, Data Fabric, which helps telcos leverage data better understand their customers by breaking down silos, and Flare, which serves as a decisioning engine that breaks down the data to provide operational and subscriber insights. These solutions are used by over 30 mobile network operators, supporting over 350 million subscribers around the world.
Founded in 1956 and headquartered in California, FICO offers decisioning tools used by more than 650 clients, including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and eight of the top 10 EMEA banks. The company was recently named Best Technology Provider for Data Analytics at the 2022 Credit Awards, and was identified as a leader in The Forrester Wave: AI Decisioning Platforms, Q2 2023 report.
Cybercrime analytics platform SpyCloud raised $110 million in Series D funding last week.
The funding will help the company accelerate innovation in key use cases, as well as grow its database of recaptured data.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2017.
Cybercrime analytics platform company SpyCloud has secured a $110 million growth round commitment of primary and secondary capital. The round, a Series D, was led by Riverwood Capital and featured participation from Silverton Partners. New valuation information was not provided. The investment takes the company’s total equity funding to more than $168 million, according to Crunchbase.
SpyCloud offers technology that enables the discovery and recapture of data from the Dark Web in order to better protect businesses from identity-based cyberattacks. Cybercriminals use these stolen employee credentials and consumer session data to attack businesses, individuals, and networks. SpyCloud’s approach to fighting cybercrime differs from traditional threat intelligence strategies by offering a credential monitoring and alert service that directly and proactively finds and recovers stolen assets from threat actors and other sources.
To date, SpyCloud has recaptured more than 450 billion assets, more than 31 billion passwords, and more than 33 billion email addresses. The company’s most recent platform enhancement, unveiled in January, provides what it calls “Post-Infection Remediation.” This protocol gives companies a framework to reset application credentials and invalidate session cookies in the wake of a cyberattack or breach.
In a statement, SpyCloud listed a number of ways the new capital will help fuel the company’s growth. The funding, for example, will enable SpyCloud to accelerate innovation across a number of use cases, including consumer risk and enterprise protection. The company will also be able to grow its database of recaptured malware assets, further develop its analytic capabilities, and add to its list of integrations. The platform is currently integrated with Active Director, Okta, and Tines.
“For the last seven years, we have proven that reacting quickly to identity and authentication exposures is the crucial factor in stopping the cycle of cybercrime,” SpyCloud CEO and co-founder Ted Ross said. “As authentication methods improve, businesses need to adjust their defenses to keep up with criminals’ new behavior. SpyCloud allows you to do just that – and we will continue to illuminate and resolve the most critical risks facing security teams today, stopping attacks they haven’t been able to see coming.”
SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2017. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2016. More than 500 corporations – including half of the Fortune 10 – leverage SpyCloud’s technology to combat ransomware, account takeover, session hijacking, online fraud, and other cybercrimes.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) unveiled its Fintech Promotion Roadmap today. The goal of the document is to provide a strategic outlook for the coming year to promote fintech adoption and innovation across Hong Kong’s diverse financial services ecosystem.
The top takeaways? The Roadmap highlights three business verticals: wealthtech, insurtech, and greentech – as primary. The planning document also underscores both artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a pair of enabling, if not revolutionary, technologies that will play a major role in future innovation in financial services.
Critically, the Roadmap shows the eagerness of the HKMA to take a proactive, hands-on approach to fintech adoption and innovation in Hong Kong. To this end, the HKMA has announced a range of initiatives it plans to adopt over the next 12 months. These efforts include a fintech knowledge hub; sponsored events, roundtable discussions, and dialogues to foster collaboration; as well as seminars and training sessions to provide cross-sectoral information exchange and the opportunity for continuous learning. The HKMA will also facilitate educational content creation, including use-case videos and research reports, to help broaden understanding of the opportunities of fintech adoption.
HKMA Deputy Chief Executive Arthur Yuen called the Roadmap “a beacon for the entire financial services industry.” He added, “We’re looking beyond banking, casting a wide net to encompass sectors like insurance, wealth management, and capital market activities. Through synergies with our financial regulators and continuous engagement with stakeholders, our vision is a resilient, inclusive fintech ecosystem for Hong Kong.”
Yuen said that the underpinning philosophy of the Roadmap is “collaboration”.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the region’s central banking institution. Founded in 1993, the HKMA is the product of the merger between two agencies – the Office of the Exchange Fund and the Office of the Commissioner of Banking. A key enabler of innovation in fintech and financial services in the region, the HKMA developed and launched a Faster Payments System in 2018 and began offering virtual banking licenses in 2019. Eddie Yue Wai-man was appointed Chief Executive in that year; he is the third CEO in the HKMA’s 30-year history.
In more good news for the region, Hong Kong has a new fintech unicorn. Micro Connect, a fintech that facilitates institutional investments in Chinese micro- and small businesses, raised $458 million in funding earlier this month. The Series C round gives the startup $578 million in total capital raised, and a brand new valuation of $1.7 billion.
Micro Connect’s statement did not list the investors involved in the funding. However, according to Forbes Asia, Baillie Gifford – a Scottish investment company – as well as returning investors Sequoia China, Lenovo Capital, Vectr Fintech, and Dara Holdings, were among those who participated.
Micro Connect will use the capital to enhance the market structure of its Micro Connect Financial Asset Exchange (MCEX) platform. MCEX leverages blockchain technology to enable small businesses to access financing in return for an agreed-upon percentage of the business’s daily revenue over a specified period of time. The scheme helps growing businesses secure the capital they need without having to take on additional debt. MCEX is scheduled to go live in August.
Micro Connect has facilitated investment in more than 2,400 stores and 169 brands across China. Charles Li (Chairman) and Gary Zhang (CEO) founded the company in 2021.
Finovate has brought its international fintech conference to Hong Kong three times: in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Here are some of the local companies that demoed their technology live on stage at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong.
AApay Technology
Chekk
Peakford Electronics
Proximiti
Velotrade
That said, Finovate has been hosting fintech conferences for audiences in the region since 2012. Here are a few more Hong Kong-based Finovate alums that demoed at our FinovateAsia events in Singapore and online.
Advanced Merchant Payments
Matchi.Biz
Mobexo
Modtris
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Mastercard and Checkout.com teamed up to bring instant wallet top-ups to UAE-based Careem Pay.
Fall is coming, and with the changing of the season comes an increase in activity in the fintech world as organizations work to launch their latest initiatives before the end of the year.
Fortunately, our friends at FintechFutures have asked all the right questions in their latest video interview series. The clips below cover the current economic climate, fintech trends, and future industry technologies. These are all worth watching as you prepare your fourth quarter initiatives.
Fiserv and Akoya announced a partnership this week.
Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial organizations.
Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data held at financial institutions.
Digital banking and payments solutions company Fiserv has partnered with consumer-permissioned data company Akoya this week. Under the agreement, the two will facilitate financial data sharing among banks, their end customers, and the third party apps the customers engage with.
Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial institutions and brokerage firms, while Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data from more than 2,800 financial institutions.
“Fiserv and Akoya are empowering consumers to share their data by creating a broader and more secure data access network,” said Fiserv President of Digital Payments Matt Wilcox. “Direct access to data facilitates more integrated digital experiences for consumers and improves the security of the financial ecosystem.”
Akoya’s APIs can create secure, permissioned access to consumers’ account data across Fiserv’s client base of banks, fintechs, and merchants. This free flow of information across the network can help reduce risk related to account opening, funding, and account-to-account transfers. On the merchant side, consumers can opt to transact using a Pay by Bank option in which consumers link their bank account to the merchant’s wallet or app to make direct payments to the merchant.
Ultimately, the partnership will help consumers choose what financial data from their bank they want to share with third party providers.
“This will help consumers manage exactly who they give their data to and understand how their data will be accessed and used,” said Akoya CEO Paul LaRusso. “100% of Akoya’s traffic to financial institutions goes through APIs. Akoya doesn’t ask for consumers’ passwords, and it doesn’t screen-scrape. All consumers deserve this protection and control.”
In the U.S., where open banking regulations do not exist, partnerships like these are key to empowering consumers with control over their financial data. In addition to helping end customers, this open structure also creates efficiencies by empowering organizations with more data, reduces fraud by eliminating screen scraping, and reduces errors that come with manual data entry.
Founded in 1984, Fiserv’s solutions are used in nearly six million merchant locations and almost 10,000 financial insitution 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 $73.6 billion.
