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BIL Suisse Renews Strategic Partnership with Avaloq

BIL Suisse Renews Strategic Partnership with Avaloq
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Avaloq
  • Wealthtech platform Avaloq and Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL Suisse) renewed their strategic partnership this week. The two entities have worked together for more than ten years.
  • Avaloq and BIL Suisse noted that the next phase of the collaboration will emphasize joint innovation and enhanced client-based services for customers in the Swiss market.
  • Founded in 1985, Avaloq won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2018 in Hong Kong.

Wealth management technology platform Avaloq and Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL Suisse) renewed their strategic partnership this week. BIL Suisse has leveraged Avaloq’s platform and banking operations service for more than ten years and noted in a statement that the “next phase of collaboration” with the Zurich-based fintech will focus on joint innovation and enhanced client-focused services for the Swiss market.

Going forward, BIL Suisse will continue to rely on Avaloq for its core banking system, which is delivered in a SaaS model. Avaloq manages both the system and infrastructure, including regulatory updates, enabling the bank to scale efficiently while maintaining operational stability and compliance. BIL Suisse and Avaloq will also work together on joint innovations to facilitate BIL Suisse’s secure integration with third-party services. This will involve fortifying both the financial institution’s KYC processes and data connectivity to ensure effective risk management and seamless data integration.

BIL Suisse will also continue to use Avaloq’s Banking Operations service for its high levels of straight-through-processing (STP), enhancing back-office efficiency, reducing manual intervention, and providing embedded risk and compliance controls.

“For more than 40 years, BIL Suisse has served the Swiss market with a deep commitment to tailored service and a boutique approach inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of our people,” BIL Suisse Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Tobias Kamber said. “Avaloq has been a key partner on this journey, providing the technology that streamlines and enhances our front-, middle-, and back-office operations. We value this long-standing collaboration and the important role it plays in our digital transformation, helping us deliver the seamless, high-quality experience our clients expect.”

A boutique private bank, BIL Suisse provides bespoke wealth management, advisory, investment, and lending services. The institution serves high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, family businesses, and professional intermediaries around the world. Founded in 1985, the institution is a subsidiary of Banque Internationale à Luxembourg SA, the oldest private bank in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

“This renewal builds on a partnership that has enhanced BIL Suisse’s operations over many years,” Avaloq Managing Director for Switzerland and Liechtenstein Christian Haux said. “Looking ahead, we will work closely with BIL Suisse to advance the bank’s digital transformation, delivering higher levels of automation and supporting a high-quality client experience. We thank BIL Suisse for its continued trust and look forward to continuing to serve as their partner for core banking and back-office operations.”

Founded in 1985, Avaloq won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2018. The company provides wealth management technology and services for financial institutions worldwide. This includes private banks, wealth managers, investment managers, and retail and neobanks. Avaloq’s platform covers the entire value chain from the front to the back office, helping clients achieve straight-through processing rates of up to 99%, increase revenue per adviser by as much as 10%, and enable firms to expand into new markets in as little as six months. Acquired by Japan’s NEC Corporation in 2020, Avaloq today has more than 175 clients around the world on its platform, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and HSBC.

Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unsplash

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CSI Acquires Qolo for Undisclosed Amount

CSI Acquires Qolo for Undisclosed Amount
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Mergers & Acquisitions, Qolo

Fintech solutions provider CSI has acquired payments infrastructure and treasury solutions provider Qolo for an undisclosed amount.

CSI anticipates that the acquisition will strengthen its commercial banking solutions by offering its community financial institution clients more flexible deposit structures and expanded commercial card programs. Adding Qolo’s existing clients to its own roster will also extend CSI’s geographical reach.

More specifically, CSI will use Qolo’s technology to serve as the orchestration layer across payments, accounts, and workflows. The Kentucky-based company will integrate with CSI’s core banking platform, digital banking solution, and broader API capabilities to bring community financial institutions prepackaged, pre-integrated commercial banking solutions, including:

  • A real-time account ledger that gives banks and businesses instant visibility into balances, transactions, and authorizations.
  • Multi-rail payment orchestration that offers a unified payment engine to orchestrate domestic and international money movement across multiple payment rails and business workflows.
  • Enhanced card capabilities that expand integrated issuing and processing across debit, prepaid, virtual, and secured corporate credit card programs.

Qolo, which demoed at FinovateFall 2022, was founded in 2018 with the aim of simplifying payments through a unified infrastructure layer. Its platform combines an embedded ledger, card issuing, money movement, real-time reconciliation, and cross-rail connectivity into a single API. Rather than requiring banks to replace legacy cores, Qolo overlays its technology on top of existing systems, enabling institutions to deploy new payment capabilities in months, not years.

CSI said that the combined company will remain focused on serving community financial institutions with new ways to attract, retain, and grow customer relationships by offering modern commercial banking capabilities typically found at large banks. Keeping up with current, constantly changing technology can help small community banks compete more effectively with banks that have large R&D budgets.

“Community financial institutions are built on trusted relationships, local expertise, and deep knowledge of their markets,” said CSI President and CEO Nancy Langer. “But businesses in their communities also need sophisticated banking capabilities that simplify and fit more naturally into their day-to-day financial operations. With Qolo, CSI is helping community banks bring those capabilities to market in ways that help them grow commercial relationships and become more central to how businesses operate. At the same time, it expands our ability to support fintechs and B2B payments providers as demand grows for financial services embedded directly into everyday business workflows.”

For community banks, the acquisition is less about adding another payments tool and more about simplifying how commercial banking services are delivered. As businesses increasingly expect real-time payments and integrated treasury capabilities, banks are looking for unified platforms that reduce technology complexity while enabling them to embed financial services more naturally into their customers’ day-to-day operations.

“The line between traditional banking and embedded finance is becoming increasingly blurred,” said Qolo Co-founder and CEO Patricia Montesi. “Whether you’re a community bank modernizing your commercial offering or a fintech building embedded finance products, you’re often running into the same challenges: fragmented vendors, disconnected payment rails, and manual workarounds that limit growth. By joining CSI, we can invest more deeply in the infrastructure that powers modern financial experiences and help our customers become a more seamless part of how businesses manage and move money every day.”

In an interview at FinovateFall last year, I sat down with Montesi to discuss how the company helps modernize payments infrastructure. “We set out to build an entire, comprehensive payments stack that includes ledger, card, payments, virtual account management—everything all available through a single API served up to you so that you can then focus on your customers,” said Montesi.

Rather than replacing legacy cores outright, banks are increasingly layering modern payments, ledger, and treasury capabilities on top of existing infrastructure. Qolo built its platform around that philosophy, making it a natural fit for CSI’s strategy of helping community financial institutions modernize without undertaking large-scale core replacements.

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Entrust Launches Agentic AI Trust Accelerator

Entrust Launches Agentic AI Trust Accelerator
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Entrust Datacard
  • Entrust launched its Agentic AI Trust Accelerator to help enterprises build the identity, authorization, and governance infrastructure needed to deploy autonomous AI agents in production.
  • The program focuses on identity, authorization, cryptographic assurance, and accountability to ensure AI agents can be authenticated, governed, and audited.
  • As banks increasingly explore agentic AI for sensitive tasks and transactions, trust infrastructure is becoming a critical requirement for enterprise adoption.

Identity solutions company Entrust unveiled its Agentic AI Trust Accelerator, a program that will help firms build the identity and trust infrastructure needed to move autonomous AI projects from pilot to production.

Entrust’s new tool helps bridge the gap between the utility of AI agents and the lack of formal governance around them. AI agents notoriously lack the necessary infrastructure to ensure AI agents are who they say they are, to verify that the person behind the agent is who they say they are, and to authenticate the relationship between the person and the bot. Additionally, organizations need to know who authorized the agent, what it is allowed to do, and how its actions can be proven after the fact.

“AI agents are advancing faster than the trust infrastructure needed to govern them,” said Entrust COO Anudeep Parhar. “Enterprises need to be able to trust autonomous actions across business processes, partners, and systems. Whether organizations are experimenting with AI agents, deploying initial use cases, or preparing for broader adoption, they need a trust foundation that can scale with them. The Agentic AI Trust Accelerator brings together customers and partners to develop practical approaches for identity, authorization, cryptographic trust, and accountability that work with their existing platforms. We call this the trust plane for autonomous AI.”

Founded in 1994 as Entrust Datacard, the Texas-based company offers fraud solutions built around identity to help its customers in over 150 countries proactively verify customer identity, secure connections, and fight fraud and stay compliant by using ongoing monitoring. The new Accelerator program leverages Entrust’s identity and cryptographic security capabilities to help enterprises confidently use AI agents to enhance their operations. The tools help organizations verify identity and proof of action across systems, partners, and workflows.

The Agentic AI Trust Accelerator program centers on four core pillars: identity, authorization, cryptographic assurance, and accountability. The identity component verifies both human users and AI agents while ensuring every agent action can be traced back to a responsible individual. Authorization limits agents to approved roles, policies, and permissions, with human oversight built in when needed. Cryptographic assurance secures agent operations through capabilities such as digital signing, while accountability provides verifiable records of agent actions to support compliance, audits, and regulatory requirements.

Entrust’s Accelerator program addresses a growing need for agent authentication. As organizations move beyond AI assistants to autonomous agents capable of initiating transactions, accessing sensitive data, and making decisions with limited human intervention, identity and authorization are becoming necessary infrastructure. For banks in particular, the ability to verify who is taking an action and to produce an auditable record of that activity will likely become a prerequisite for deploying agentic AI at scale.

“Agentic AI will reshape how enterprises operate, but trust will determine how quickly organizations can move from experimentation to production,” said Entrust CEO Tony Ball. “Entrust is helping customers build the identity, authorization, and cryptographic foundations required for autonomous systems operating in real-world environments.”

At launch, Entrust is opening the Accelerator program to a limited number of customers, banks, and partners.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

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TAPP Engine and Envestnet Team Up for Goals-Based Investing

TAPP Engine and Envestnet Team Up for Goals-Based Investing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Envestnet, TAPP Engine
  • Wealthech solutions provider TAPP Engine has teamed up with wealth management and financial planning platform Envestnet.
  • Courtesy of the partnership, TAPP Engine will integrate Envestnet’s ActivePassive ETF model portfolios into its digital investing platform.
  • TAPP Engine made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025. Envestnet most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2021 in New York.

Embedded wealthtech solutions provider TAPP Engine will offer Envestnet’s ActivePassive ETF model portfolios as part of a new partnership announced late last week. TAPP Engine will integrate these portfolios into its digital investing platform to enable credit unions and banks to offer a more customized, goals-based investing experience to their members and customers.

TAPP Engine currently offers self-directed brokerage accounts, goals-based automated investing, fractional share investing, commission-free equity trading, digital account opening and onboarding, single sign-on (SSO) integration with digital banking platforms, integrated custody and clearing services, as well as investor education and financial wellness tools and resources. Integrating Envestnet’s portfolios will provide greater personalization, enhance the overall digital investing experience, and enable TAPP Engine to bring innovative wealth management solutions to more community financial institutions.

“Our mission has always been to help financial institutions deliver modern digital wealth experiences that strengthen member relationships and support long-term financial wellness,” President of TAPP Engine Securities and TAPP Engine Advisors Mark Guglielmo said. “Working with Envestnet allows us to help credit unions and community banks deliver a more customized, goals-based investing experience that keeps the member’s financial journey connected to the institution they trust most.”

The partnership between Envestnet and TAPP Engine comes at a time of growing consumer expectations when it comes to digital investing: namely, that digital investing should be as straightforward and seamless as online banking. Making Envestnet’s ETF portfolios available through TAPP Engine’s platform will enable community financial institutions to deliver the kind of customized digital investing experience that supports financial wellness and drives long-term engagement.

Envestnet’s ActivePassive ETF portfolios are a hybrid investment product that combines both active and passive ETF management strategies into a single portfolio framework. This framework includes passive components such as low-cost, index-tracking ETFs to provide core market exposure along with active components in the form of actively managed ETFs that pursue outperformance via strategic selection and market timing. These portfolios are popular among many investors because they combine the stability and predictability of core holdings with the potential for outperformance and the ability to navigate market volatility.

“For decades, Envestnet has helped shape how advisors think about combining active and passive investing to build better portfolios,” Group Head of Investment Management at Envestnet Erik Preus said. “This collaboration brings that investment discipline to TAPP Engine, giving credit unions and community banks access to institutional-quality ETF portfolios grounded in rigorous research and disciplined portfolio construction. It reflects our belief that sophisticated investment capabilities should be accessible to more institutions and, ultimately, to more investors.”

An alum of both Finovate and our developer conference, FinDEVr, Envestnet made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2021 in New York. The company’s adaptive platform offers interconnected wealth management and financial planning solutions, as well as access to model portfolios, tax management, and high-net-worth consulting. Envestnet has $7 trillion in platform assets and its technology is used by more than a third of all financial advisors across leading banks, wealth managers, brokerages, and RIAs.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts, TAPP Engine made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025. At the conference, the wealthtech firm demonstrated how its platform enables financial institutions to embed modern wealth solutions directly into their offerings. TAPP Engine’s turnkey microservices infrastructure solutions include end-to-end wealth management services for investing, cash management, custody, and clearing. The company’s platform supports multi-custodian integrations across equities, ETFs, options, and tokenized assets. Tosin Osunsanya is Founder and CEO.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

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How Profitability, Customer Relationships, and AI are Driving Investor Preferences in Fintech

How Profitability, Customer Relationships, and AI are Driving Investor Preferences in Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: David's column

CB Insights recently unveiled its 2026 State of Venture Tracker. Among the top takeaways from the data is that “bigger, fewer” continues to define VC investing with deal counts at multi-decade lows and so-called mega-rounds taking up more than 80% of invested capital.

Specifically within fintech, the firm noted that while funding was up over the last 12 months compared to the previous 12 months (and by a significant 20.7%), the second quarter of this year saw a pullback of 8% in funding relative to the first quarter. The number of deals in the last three months was also significantly lower than the previous three months, by a factor of more than 27%.

What’s going on? There are at least three main trends driving investment decisions in fintech as we move into the second half of 2026. Here’s a look at what they are and what they mean for fintechs that are seeking funding.

Fewer Bets, Bigger Convictions

The most distinct trend in fintech funding may be the growing preference for companies that can demonstrate proof of performance. If the mantra of recent years has been “how big could this company get?”, the concern now is whether “this company” can become a profitable enterprise.

A growing number of investors have determined that the strategy of five or so years ago of funding many companies, diversifying bets on success, is no longer viable and that backing firms that are—or seem to be—the most likely winners in a given sector is a much surer route to good exits in a reasonable amount of time.

How long will this trend endure? Some observers have suggested that this shift is more structural than cyclical. This, in part, is less because of changes in fintech and more because of changes in the venture capital industry itself. Limited partners (pension funds, family offices, university endowments) are increasingly focused on careful deployment of capital and realized returns. Similarly, a venture capitalist on our All-Star Investor Panel at FinovateSpring in May noted that many LPs have become concerned about the slowing pace of exits and the resulting liquidity challenges they face.

What to watch for? A better IPO environment including strong aftermarket performance would be helpful, as would lower interest rates. An acceleration in M&A activity could also play a major role in shifting VC attitudes toward what companies get funding. Additionally, keep an eye on deal count versus funding amounts.

Customer Relationships Are Where the Value is

The other interesting trend in VC investing in fintech is a growing preference for companies that are closest to the customer rather than companies that essentially sell tools to them. In other words, challenger and neobanks, crypto-native financial institutions, and digital banking platforms are more attractive to investors right now than bank-enabling firms offering core systems, onboarding, etc.

This largely has to do with the perception among investors that, in financial services, the value is in the customer relationship. As financial institutions modernized over the past decade, it seemed as if funding the companies that were providing the tools to accomplish this—payments and wealth APIs, lending infrastructure, data aggregation—was the best investment—and would remain that way. Now, however, investors are finding greater value in things like deposits, customer relationships, cross-selling, and proprietary transaction data, and those “assets” are found among those companies that “own” the customer relationship.

In this thinking, customer relationships—as represented by deposits, transactions, and so on—are hard to build, but difficult to displace once established. On the other hand, technology can be replicated, or even replaced by new technologies. This is not to say that investors believe that fintech infrastructure is a bad investment. In fact, the success of fintech infrastructure companies has in some ways created a glut of these firms in virtually every category from identity and fraud to payments. This makes it harder for investors to differentiate between companies and contributes to the preference for “waiting for the winners” rather than covering the field with multiple modest bets on many companies in the same business.

AI Uber Alles

The amount of spending on AI is the elephant in the room when it comes to venture funding in general. It is no secret that both AI companies and those companies that are making effective, proven use of AI technologies are attracting the lion’s share of investor dollars right now. In fact, if there is an area where that “growth now, profit later” mentality endures, it is here rather than in the world of payments companies.

Is there anything stopping the AI bullet train? The challenge is that AI companies are producing annual recurring revenue numbers that are significantly beyond what software companies were producing ten years ago—and doing it faster. This combination of capital efficiency and growth is virtually irresistible to venture capital investors. AI also has the advantage of being, at least for now, a horizontal technology that reaches a dizzying array of industries from finance and healthcare to manufacturing and law. Like cloud computing, the internet, and the smartphone, AI has a breadth that means increasingly that every investment partnership has an AI aspect.

There are those looking for storm clouds on the horizon. Some critics have suggested that even if AI proves to be every bit the revolutionary technology its proponents believe it will be, not everyone connected with AI is going to get rich because of it. What happens if many of these AI companies struggle to retain customers or spending on (or support for) infrastructure becomes a problem? What happens if fundamentals fail to live up to what turn out to be peak valuations?

The one hopeful aspect of this for fintech is that AI could play a role in revitalizing areas of the industry, such as financial wellness, that have fallen out of favor with VC investors in recent years. Another venture capitalist on our All-Star Investor Panel at FinovateFall last year concluded her remarks with this observation. From regulatory compliance to smart saving, AI has the capacity to help us solve old and new problems with unprecedented efficiency, precision, and personalization–and to make previously lackluster-seeming investment opportunities potentially worth a second look.

Photo by Mike van Schoonderwalt from Pexels

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Citi Sees First Bank Goes Live with its Clearing and Token Services Solution

Citi Sees First Bank Goes Live with its Clearing and Token Services Solution
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Citi, Daily news
  • Siam Commercial Bank is the first financial institution to go live with Citi’s integrated 24/7 USD Clearing and Citi Token Services offering.
  • The solution uses tokenized deposits on a private permissioned blockchain to support near real-time cross-border USD payments around the clock.
  • The launch shows how banks are combining distributed ledger technology with traditional banking infrastructure to reduce payment delays without relying on public blockchains or stablecoins.

Citi announced that Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) has become the first financial institution to go live with Citi’s 24/7 USD Clearing and Citi Token Services. The integration enables near real-time, 24/7 cross-border US dollar payments for SCB’s corporate and institutional clients.

Adopting Citi’s 24/7 USD Clearing with Citi Token Services will help SCB reduce the friction that has historically limited clients’ global payment operations. Traditionally, cross-border USD payments have been constrained by banking hours, weekends, and holidays, creating delays for companies operating across time zones. Offering near real-time settlement around the clock will give corporate clients greater flexibility in managing liquidity, cash flow, and making time-sensitive international payments.

Citi Token Services leverages a private permissioned blockchain that operates within the traditional, regulated banking system. The new service allows the bank to tokenize deposits held within Citi’s global network. When integrated with Citi’s 24/7 USD Clearing solution, which connects over 300 financial institutions across more than 50 geographies, the service creates an always-on payment rail that bridges Citi and non-Citi accounts across borders.

“At SCB, we continuously invest in innovative capabilities that help our corporate and institutional clients operate more efficiently in an increasingly global and connected business environment,” said Siam Commercial Bank Head of Transaction Banking Thanawatn Kittisuwan. “Through our collaboration with Citi, we are the first bank in Thailand to leverage tokenization to enhance cross-border USD capabilities, helping our clients simplify operational constraints and conduct their international business activities with greater flexibility.”

Demonstrating the utility of the always-on nature of the new system, SCB client Phillip Securities Thailand used Citi’s enhanced 24/7 USD Clearing capabilities and Citi Token Services to transfer US dollars from a Citi London account of a subsidiary to the beneficiary account with SCB in Thailand over the 4th of July weekend, a federal holiday in the US. The transfer marked SCB’s first transaction with the new solution.

For Citi, this partnership is an example of the firm’s effort to modernize cross-border payments by combining tokenization with its existing, traditional banking network instead of using public blockchain infrastructure or stablecoins. Citi is one of many financial institutions that are seeking to use distributed ledger technology to improve the speed and availability of traditional banking services while staying within existing regulatory frameworks.

“Our enhanced 24/7 USD Clearing solution integrated with Citi Token Services is an industry-first that bridges traditional and digital rails to expand our suite of always-on client solutions,” said Citi Asia South Head of Services Mridula Iyer. “It furthers our ‘network of networks’ approach as we build capabilities that are interoperable so that they are multi-bank, multi-market and multi-network. This gives our clients the optionality they need, now and for the future, as the global financial infrastructure continues to rapidly evolve.”

Photo by Tom Fisk

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Nu Receives Full Banking License in Mexico

Nu Receives Full Banking License in Mexico
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Nubank
  • Nu Mexico received authorization from the CNBV to begin operating as a bank, moving from its previous SOFIPO status into Mexico’s formal banking sector.
  • The approval makes Nu Mexico the country’s largest digital bank, with more than 15 million customers and a presence in 98% of Mexico’s municipalities.
  • The bank license gives Nu a stronger platform for growth, allowing it to expand its product suite, deepen deposit relationships, and compete more directly with incumbent banks.

Nu, the parent company of Brazil-based Nubank, is making Nu Mexico more official this week. The bank has received authorization from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) to begin operations as a bank.

The new authorization will make Nu Mexico the largest digital bank in the country, counting more than 15 million customers, a figure that represents more than 15% of the nation’s population.

“We are building a new way of delivering financial services in Mexico, one truly centered on people,” said Nubank Founder and Global CEO David Vélez. “The authorization we receive and the growth we have achieved confirm that this model works and has the potential to transform the relationship millions of people have with their money. Mexico is a key market for Nubank, and this is a decisive step in our long-term commitment to the country, with a total projected investment of $4.2 billion through 2030.”

Until now, Nu has operated in Mexico as a Sociedad Financiera Popular (SOFIPO), a licensed non-bank financial institution in Mexico that can offer services such as savings accounts, loans, payments, and other financial products, often aimed at consumers and underserved populations. “Receiving authorization after an unprecedented process of transforming from a SOFIPO into a bank is a milestone we have not reached alone,” said Nu Mexico CEO Armando Herrera. “We got here alongside millions of Mexicans who have placed their trust in Nu to transform the way they relate to their money. We are ready to keep building with them the financial experience they deserve.”

The authorization moves Nu Mexico from the non-bank fintech category into the country’s formal banking sector. That will allow Nu to broaden its product suite, attract and retain deposits, and compete more directly with Mexico’s incumbent banks. It also validates the company’s strategy of using a digital-first model to reach customers that traditional institutions have underserved.

Nu has operated in Mexico since 2019, adding an average of 12,000 new customers per day over the past seven years. Nu Mexico launched its first product, a no-fee credit card with customizable financing plans, in 2020 and has since added a savings account and new features such as Cajita Turbo and Scam Alert to protect its customers from fraud attempts. The fintech also offers personal loans and secured cards to help customers access credit and build a credit history. Today, Nu Mexico has a presence in 98% of the country’s municipalities, has given 54% of its customers their first credit card, and has helped 60% of its users start a savings habit.

Nu Mexico has 30 days to complete its transformation into a bank. The bank aims to keep the customer experience unchanged during the transition and maintain communication with its users.

Photo by Julio Lopez

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Finovate Global Israel: Autonomous AI and Cross-Border Payments

Finovate Global Israel: Autonomous AI and Cross-Border Payments
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Equifax, Finovate Global, MasterCard

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech headlines from companies headquartered in Israel.

Tangos AI raises $20 million in seed funding

Tangos AI, an Israeli fintech that specializes in providing autonomous AI solutions for financial crime, fraud, and compliance investigations, has raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by Red Dot Capital Partners, and featured participation from Leaders Fund, Clarim, Venture Israel, Signal Fire, Clutch Capital, Selah Ventures, and Bright Data.

Founded in 2025 by Eyal Azoulay, Tangos offers an advanced AI-powered investigation platform that enables financial institutions, fintechs, government agencies, and other organizations to conduct complex investigations into suspicious activity faster, more accurately, and at greater scale. Tangos is unique relative to other compliance solutions insofar as it is built to perform investigative operations automatically. The platform uses domain-specific AI models, structured investigative workflows, and expert-trained reasoning systems to evaluate evidence, test hypotheses, validate findings, and provide comprehensive case studies that can be reviewed, approved, and acted upon by human investigators.

“Financial crime has evolved into a network problem that increasingly exceeds the capacity of traditional investigative processes,” Eyal Azoulay, Founder and CEO of Tangos, said. “Organizations have made tremendous progress in detecting risk, but the investigation process remains one of the largest operational bottlenecks in financial crime prevention. We built Tangos to bring the speed, scale, and consistency of autonomous AI to a process that has historically depended on highly manual work.”

Importantly, Tangos enables firms to expand their investigative capabilities without proportional increases in headcount. This is especially helpful at a time when the growth in fraud and financial crime is resulting in rising alert volumes, increased regulatory expectations, and a worldwide shortage of experienced financial crime investigators. Tangos empowers compliance and risk management teams to work more efficiently while at the same time boosting investigative quality, capacity, consistency, and regulatory readiness.

Western Union to acquire Israeli startup GMT for $70 million

In a transaction valued at more than $66 million, Western Union will acquire Israel-based fintech GMT.

“This marks a brand-new chapter for GMT, unlocking global opportunities, expanding our capabilities, and accelerating our growth,” GMT noted on its LinkedIn page. “We are incredibly proud of our journey so far and thrilled to continue innovating, building, and leading together as part of the Western Union family.”

Founded in 2001, GMT offers international money transfers and advanced payment solutions for Israelis, migrant workers, and their employers. GMT operates under a license from the Israel Securities Authority and holds a banking identification code from the Bank of Israel. Following completion of the transaction, GMT will become a part of Western Union, but will maintain its popular, Israeli brand. Eran Sarouk, GMT CEO, will continue to lead operations after the acquisition.

“The fact that a global company of Western Union’s scale chose GMT from among many international and local players is a tremendous badge of honor for the entire Israeli fintech industry,” Sarouk said. “The transaction will allow us to improve service availability and offer more accessible and advanced solutions to customers in Israel. Beyond that, this is an extraordinary opportunity to integrate the advanced technologies we developed here in Israel into Western Union’s global network.”

Mastercard teams up with Neema

Mastercard has expanded its partnership with Israeli fintech Neema to include a commercial arrangement to leverage the company’s technological infrastructure to support its global money transfer platform, Mastercard Move. The service is expected to launch “within months.”

Mastercard Move is Mastercard’s international money transfer arm. Mastercard Move provides an alternative to traditional cross-border transfers via the SWIFT banking network. In contrast to SWIFT-based transfers, which typically move through a chain of intermediary banks in a process that can be both time-consuming and expensive, Mastercard will use its partnership with Neema to enable companies and individuals outside of Israel to transfer funds into Israel faster, relying on local payment infrastructure rather than the common correspondent banking approach.

“This is another step in our mission to make global payments as seamless as local ones,” Neema noted in a LinkedIn post announcing the partnership. “We’re excited about what’s ahead and look forward to continuing to expand our global payment infrastructure with leading financial institutions and fintechs worldwide.”

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and founded in 2015, Neema offers a global cross-border payments platform for financial institutions. Available in more than 120 countries and transacting in 80+ currencies, Neema delivers 98% of its transactions in real-time and provides access to more than seven billion accounts.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Mastercard inked a commercial partnership with Israel-based payments platform Neema to enable real-time money transfers into Israel via Mastercard Move.
  • UK-based Taptap Send received three licenses from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, enabling the firm to offer payments, digital wallets, and cards, and more in the country.
  • Western Union agreed to acquire Israel fintech GMT for $70 million.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Nepal-based commercial bank, Machhapuchchhre Bank Limited (MBL), partnered with ZIGRAM for its AML and financial crime risk management technology.
  • Digital financial services company Atome Philippines secured a $81 million credit facility with Asia United Bank (AUB) to support its continued expansion in the Philippines.
  • Indian payment infrastructure company TotalPay earned authorization from the Saudi Central Bank to operate as an e-commerce payment technical service provider.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Equifax announced plans to acquire Mexican credit bureau Círculo de Crédito.
  • Tether invested $20 million in a strategic growth financing round for Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin.
  • Seattle-based commercial payments firm Convera partnered with Uruguay’s dLocal to enhance cross-border payments infrastructure and streamline international payments.

Asia-Pacific

  • Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank teamed up with Citi to become the first financial institution to to live with its token clearing solution.
  • Indonesia announced plans to build an International Financial Centre designed to attract between $16.7 billion and $27.8 billion in foreign investment.
  • Singapore-based fintech M-DAQ Global signed plans to integrate with Vietnamese fintech group METech.

Photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

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Swift Goes Live with New Blockchain-Based Ledger

Swift Goes Live with New Blockchain-Based Ledger
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Swift launched a blockchain-based ledger that lets banks move tokenized deposits across borders 24/7 before completing final settlement through existing banking systems.
  • The ledger is designed to make blockchain interoperable with bank infrastructure, giving financial institutions a shared layer for digital money without requiring them to abandon current rails or compliance processes.
  • Seventeen global banks will participate in the initial pilot, moving Swift’s blockchain work from prototype to live testing with major transaction banks across six continents.

Swift has officially launched its new blockchain-based ledger that will support 24/7 cross-border payments with tokenized deposits, enabling funds to move in any regulated form, anywhere, with a high level of security.

The shared, blockchain-based ledger offers banks an orchestration layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits on their own ledgers. The blockchain ledger enables banks to move funds for customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, before completing final settlement through the banks’ existing systems. In addition to always-on settlement, banks can offer clients global liquidity while maintaining compliance, credit, risk, and control standards.

“With our new ledger capability, we’re extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money,” said Swift Chief Business Officer Thierry Chilosi. “It allows tokenized value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resiliency, security, and compliance global finance requires. The strong support from banks shows the practical value of this approach—one that will help scale benefits globally while creating a foundation for future innovation in areas like programmable money and agentic commerce.”

Unlike other new payments technology, Swift’s ledger brings blockchain-based payments into the infrastructure banks already use. While previous digital money efforts were fragmented across pilots, private networks, and bank-specific systems, Swift’s approach gives banks a shared layer for moving tokenized value across borders while preserving the compliance, resiliency, and settlement processes that each region requires. Rather than asking banks to abandon existing rails, Swift is positioning the blockchain as an interoperable layer that can work alongside them.

Today’s announcement comes ten months after Swift teased the launch of its ledger, testing a prototype blockchain with more than 30 financial institutions across the globe. This is the first use case for Swift’s ledger, which the cooperative anticipates will set a new precedent for interoperability on payments infrastructure. Swift has made it clear that it will offer fee transparency and a faster, more consistent customer experience. Today’s upgrades to the ledger move Swift’s blockchain ambitions out of the experimentation phase and into a live pilot with some of the world’s largest transaction banks.

Swift reports that the speed of payments on the new blockchain-based network exceeds current standards. “A full 75 percent of payments on the network reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, and often in seconds, and the cooperative is going even further to advance the industry to meet the G20 targets for international transactions,” the company states. The member-owned cooperative plans to expand the network functionality and availability after an initial pilot phase that will include 17 banks from six continents. Among the pilot banks are ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), FirstRand Bank Limited, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, Mashreq, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB, and Wells Fargo.

“We see interoperability as the key enabler for scaling tokenized deposits beyond individual institutions,” said UBS Managing Director, Group Head of Digital Assets Mr. Andreas Kubli. “Swift’s ledger is an important industry initiative that can help connect digital money networks, supporting real-time settlement, greater liquidity mobility and the broader adoption of tokenized payments and digital assets across the global financial ecosystem.”

Photo by Sonny Sixteen

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nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale Solution Gets a New Capability and a New Customer

nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale Solution Gets a New Capability and a New Customer
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, nCino
  • Agentic AI banking platform nCino announced a new partnership with Cornerstone First Mortgage, a full-service mortgage bank based in San Diego, California; as well as new capabilities for its Mortgage Point of Sale solution.
  • Cornerstone First Mortgage highlighted nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale solution in its partnership announcement, praising the technology’s flexibility and mobile capabilities.
  • nCino also unveiled LeadGen PreQual, a new capability for its Mortgage Point of Sale solution that gives borrowers key eligibility information before opening an account or filling out a loan application.

This week marks both a new customer and a new capability for nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale.

Agentic AI banking platform nCino announced this week that Cornerstone First Mortgage (Cornerstone) has selected nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale to enhance the customer experience and to support the firm’s continued expansion across the US. The San Diego, California-based full-service mortgage bank chose nCino’s solution for its ability to support Cornerstone’s branch-based model while still providing a consistent borrower experience nationwide. Cornerstone operates in 49 states through a network of 130 branches that support dozens of local brands.

“Your point-of-sale platform is the first representation of your company after that initial conversation with a borrower,” Cornerstone President of Operations Eric Rotner said. “As we evaluated the next phase of growth for our business, we wanted a solution that could support our branch network, preserve the local brands our loan officers have built and provide a better experience for our borrowers. nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale stood out because of its flexibility, mobile capabilities, and the team’s commitment to helping us succeed.”

Cornerstone, which has doubled in size twice over the past three years, has leveraged its deployment of nCino’s technology to reduce borrower friction and streamline the lending process. The bank is using nCino-connected verification tools to boost adoption of digital income, employment, and asset verification, and is also speeding up its adoption of solutions such as eNotes and remote online notarization (RON).

“Cornerstone has built an impressive growth story by empowering entrepreneurial branch leaders while maintaining a strong commitment to the borrower experience,” nCino General Manager Casey Williams said. “We’re proud to support their continued expansion and look forward to helping the organization drive even greater efficiency, consistency, and customer satisfaction through nCino’s Mortgage Point of Sale.”

nCino’s partnership announcement accompanies news that the company has added a new capability to its Mortgage Point of Sale solution. LeadGen PreQual enables borrowers to receive a real, credit-backed prequalification letter before opening an account or filling out a loan application. The new capability delivers flexible credit and verification options, lender branding, and seamless profile continuity to meet borrowers where they are and where they go.

Why is this a significant addition? nCino notes that many lenders require potential borrowers to create an account and complete a full application before getting any sense of how much they will be able to finance. This often leads to borrower abandonment. While some lenders have attempted to reduce friction with more minimalist lead capture forms, these alternatives fail because they tend to collect unverified, borrower-provided information that produces soft leads rather than credit-backed assessments of borrower eligibility. This forces lenders to have to make product and qualification decisions based on unconfirmed, potentially inaccurate information.

With LeadGen PreQual, borrowers click a link from their loan officer and complete a short, mobile-optimized form. With borrowers’ consent, an automatic credit check analyzes if a conventional loan may receive an Accept risk class from Freddie Mac’s Loan Product Advisor (LPA). This includes the determination of whether the loan is eligible for an automated collateral evaluation (ACE) appraisal waiver. Based on a review of the assessment results, credit information, and data from the mobile form, borrowers can immediately generate and download a prequalification letter on their mobile device.

“Borrowers today expect the same immediacy from their lender that they get from every other financial service they use,” Williams explained. “LeadGen PreQual meets that expectation at the moment it matters most, giving buyers a real answer about what they can afford from their phone before they ever step into a lender’s office.”

Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, and founded in 2011, nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017. With more than 2,700 customers worldwide—including community banks, credit unions, independent mortgage banks, and some of the largest international financial institutions—nCino offers an agentic banking platform that enables organizations to reduce inefficiency, enhance decision-making, and deliver better outcomes for their customers.

nCino is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the symbol NCNO. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.9 billion. Sean Desmond is nCino’s President and CEO.

Photo by Artful Homes from Pexels

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Making an IMPACT: Finovate’s Funders and Founders Event Launches This Fall

Making an IMPACT: Finovate’s Funders and Founders Event Launches This Fall
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: IMPACT, Speaker series

A decade ago, Finovate launched its developer conference series FinDEVr. The goal was simple: to provide a place for software developers, programmers, and technologists to showcase APIs, open banking solutions, developer tools, and more during a truly revolutionary time in the history of fintech innovation.

Today, one of the biggest challenges to fintech innovation is ensuring that fintech founders get the support and funding they need to grow and succeed in an even more complex and competitive financial services landscape.

Meet IMPACT

The first-ever event bridging capital and innovation in the financial services space, IMPACT Funders & Founders comes to New York for a full day of curated investor meetings, dynamic discussions, and breakthrough pitches from innovative startups ready to scale. Running concurrently with FinovateFall, IMPACT Funders & Founders takes place on Friday, September 11, at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Heather Stowell, Finovate VP and Informa Senior Director, shared her thoughts on the upcoming event, and why it is an important opportunity for fintech founders and investors alike.

The core of this new event is to connect startups and scaleups with investors. Many of these startups and scaleups will be raising funding, but we also want to foster an exchange of information.

So, in addition to raising funding, a lot of these conversations will also revolve around investors’ insights that they can share with startups and fostering connections with investors early on that will be useful down the road. It’s all about combining these two communities and creating a real synergy between them.

Heather Stowell is the VP of Demos for Finovate and Senior Director of Fintech and Startup Ecosystems for Informa. Over the last 10 years, Stowell has curated innovative demo lineups for dozens of events, launched a developer conference series in the US and abroad, coached startups to help them deliver impactful demos and presentations, and coordinated VC connections for startups raising early-stage funding.

Learn more about IMPACT in our full-length explainer—Introducing IMPACT: A New Event for Fintech Founders and Investors.

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3 Ways Fiserv’s Payments Network Sale Could Reshape Payments

3 Ways Fiserv’s Payments Network Sale Could Reshape Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: List series

According to the Wall Street Journal, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC are in conversation with Fiserv about acquiring its two debit payment networks, STAR and Accel. While there is not an official deal on the table, the initial discussions surrounding the sale raise important questions about the future of the payments infrastructure in the US. If a sale of the payment networks does take place, the impact would extend far beyond Fiserv. Here are three ways it could reshape payments.

Large banks could gain more control over payment economics

Right now, banks, card networks, and merchants each play a unique role. Banks issue cards, card networks route the transactions, and merchants pay the interchange fees. Much of the value of STAR and Accel is that they route debit transactions. If all of a sudden, banks own the network, the dynamics change. The large banks that end up owning the payment networks could capture more economics from transactions made on the networks. Some analysts have suggested that owning the networks could provide strategic advantages related to debit routing and interchange economics.

Community banks and fintechs could lose a neutral network partner

Fiserv currently serves a range of smaller financial institutions, including community banks, regional banks, fintechs, and credit unions. If Fiserv offloads STAR and Accel to some of the nation’s largest financial institutions, smaller institutions would have to rely on infrastructure owned by their competitors. This is of concern to smaller players, especially since banks like JPMorgan and Bank of America stand to profit more if competitors lose market share. Because of these conflicts of interest, payments infrastructure is most valuable when participants view it as neutral.

The race to own the infrastructure accelerates

Fintechs and banks alike have shown growing interest in moving down the stack to own more of the underlying financial infrastructure. Capital One’s acquisition of Discover would give the bank ownership of a major card network, reducing its reliance on Visa and Mastercard. At the same time, the rise of stablecoin payment rails is creating new infrastructure that bypasses traditional card networks altogether, while FedNow is giving banks direct access to real-time payment capabilities. Together, these developments show that banks and fintechs are no longer content to compete solely through customer-facing products. Increasingly, they are seeking greater ownership of the infrastructure that powers payments. Bringing more of the stack in-house can reduce dependence on third parties, provide greater control over the customer experience, and create new revenue opportunities.

Whether or not the deal ultimately happens, it shows that banks are no longer content to compete only on products and customer experience. Instead, banks are seeking ownership of the infrastructure that powers payments. If a deal goes through, it could reshape competition across banks, fintechs, merchants, and payment networks.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

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