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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Stockpile is adding a kids debit card as part of its retail investing product suite for minors.
The debit card will be powered by Green Dot’s banking-as-a-service tool.
The card will have built-in parental controls and oversight.
Youth-focused brokerage company Stockpile is adding a new product to its lineup this week. The company will begin offering minors a debit card as part of its retail investing product suite.
The payment card, which will be powered by Green Dot’s banking-as-a-service, will have parental spending controls. Parents can set up debit cards for their kids, set and control the access they’d like their kids to have, and maintain oversight over their spending.
“Green Dot’s depth of experience embedding seamless, innovative and value-driven financial tools into their partner ecosystems, along with their passion for providing accessible financial services to consumers and businesses, make them a great fit for Stockpile’s long-term vision and growth trajectory,” said Stockpile CEO Victor Wang. “Partnering with Green Dot adds a new dimension to Stockpile’s hands-on financial learning and access, and will deliver a seamless and responsible debit card experience as an educational stepping stone to investing.”
Stockpile plans to add more tools and functionality to its product suite in the future. Based on competing payment tools for minors, such as Greenlight and GoHenry by Acorns, Stockpile may add budgeting tools, giving options, and a savings account.
Founded in 1999, Green Dot offers direct-to-consumer digital banking tools as well as a B2B banking-as-a-service offering. According to the release, Stockpile is among the first of Green Dot’s partners to build and operate from its cloud-native banking-as-a-service platform.
“We’re proud to partner with Stockpile to embed powerful financial tools and experiences that fuel engagement and value for their customers,” said Green Dot Head of Enterprise Business Development, Embedded Finance Simran Singh. “We’re passionate about giving people and businesses access to seamless, affordable banking and financial tools that build financial confidence and prosperity, as well as partnering with companies like Stockpile that share our values, purpose and vision.”
Notably, this announcement comes the same week that Acorns unveiled a new premium tier that includes access to GoHenry in the U.S. and two months after Greenlightlaunched a new solution to help teens build credit.
FinovateEurope 2024 takes place at the InterContinental O2 London over February 27 and 28.
FinovateEurope has delivered an exceptional line up of must-see demos for over 10 years. 2024 is no exception.
With a focus on innovation, Finovate remains the primary choice for fintechs looking to establish their presence and a valuable platform for those showcasing new technology and partnerships. Whether it’s their first, second, or even fifth appearance on stage, all selected organizations are keeping the fintech industry plugged in to the latest trends and innovations.
Each event brings a new wave of demo deals and successes. Here are just a few from 2023 demo alum:
A month after FinovateEurope, London-based fintech NayaOne won tender from the Financial Conduct Authority to build a digital sandbox.
Europe alum and bank orchestration platform Numeral partnered with core banking provider Tuum to help FIs and fintechs launch and grow across Europe and the U.K.
ConnectEarth, an environmental data company, raised $5.6M in Seed funding less than two weeks after the London event.
Weeks after demoing, AutoRek, an end-to-end financial data control platform, was selected by the U.S. Federal Reserve to feature in its provider showcase.
Natural language analytics innovator and Best of Show winner SESAMm returned to the Finovate stage in March. Clearly a winner all around as they secured $37M in Series B funding that same month.
And newcomer StockRepublic raised $2.81M for its social trading platform after demoing this March.
This is your chance to join the 2024 demo lineup and add your own success story to the list. Apply by Friday, October 13 for early-bird discounts.
ieDigital, a digital banking software company based in the U.K., has acquired U.S.-based digital banking technology company Connect FSS.
Terms of the deal were not immediately available.
ieDigital made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2018.
U.K.-based digital banking software company ieDigital announced a major acquisition this week. The firm will acquire its U.S.-based counterpart, digital banking technology company, Connect FSS. Terms of the transaction were not immediately available, but the deal will make ieDigital one of the biggest digital banking software providers in the world.
The acquisition comes at the end of ieDigital’s multi-month search for a business partner that would help the company meet its growth goals, especially with regard to increasing ieDigital’s international reach. The company noted in a statement that the acquisition will bring greater scale and more resources to bear on the challenges facing business customers. The acquisition will also help accelerate innovation as teams from both companies begin to collaborate and work together to design and market new, enhanced digital solutions.
“Joining forces with Connect FSS will enable us to support a broader range of customers in different geographies that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach, and strengthen our technology with insight from our new colleagues in the U.S.,” ieDigital CEO Jerry Young said. Connect FSS President and CEO Grant Parry added that the partnership with a “natural next step” in Connect FSS’s evolution. “Our joint ambition is to provide excellent customer service and tailored solutions to clients,” Parry said.
For now, both ieDigital and Connect FSS will retain their brand identities in their respective markets. The firms will sit as part of a new ieDigital Group in which ieDigital’s Young will serve as CEO while Connect FSS’s Parry will serve as EVP of Strategy.
Founded in 1984, ieDigital made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2018. At the conference, the company demoed its Money Fitness solution which helps users better manage their day-to-day finances. In the years since, the company has grown into a major fintech in the U.K. financial services ecosystem. ieDigital has partnered with four of the five largest banks in the U.K., and has provided digital software solutions to more than 50 financial services businesses.
This spring, ieDigital announced that Suffolk Building Society has chosen the company as its partner for its eSavings platform. The offering will give Society members access to online savings products and will be powered by ieDigital’s Interact software. Interact is a suite of digital services that work in concert with a financial services provider’s existing technology.
Artificial intelligence has taken the technology world by storm – and fintech is no exception. But questions remain as to how AI can be best applied in the world of fintech and financial services.
I talked with Anu Sachdeva, Global Service Line & Solutions Leader at Genpact, during the FinovateFall conference last month to discuss the role of generative AI in particular in financial services. Among the topics covered were:
How banks can realize the true value of generative AI.
What use cases banks and other financial services organizations have found for generative AI.
What are the most important considerations for financial services organizations when adopting generative AI.
2023 is bringing new regulations and transparency requirements to shape the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) marketplace. This guide, Navigating the Path to Data Modernization in the BFSI Industry, explores the practical steps business leaders can take to accomplish their objectives — from identifying suitable technological solutions to effectively implementing them to maximize their influence.
By following these recommendations, you as a business leader can embark on a successful journey of modernization that not only fosters growth, but also enhances the profitability of your business.
Key Highlights
Banking Data Modernization Challenges
Numbers Don’t Lie!
Data Modernization Isn’t a Brand-New Concept
Data Modernization – The Need of the Hour
The Journey of Data Modernization
First Step to Data Modernization
Data Modernization Roadmap: The 8 Pillars of a Winning Strategy
The End Objectives of Data Modernization
No Disruption on the Road to Digitization – Cheat Sheet: Key Tips for Next-Gen BFSI Orgs & How Can Indium Help
If you were among our audience at FinovateFall last month, then you know what the rest of the fintech world is missing out on. Among everyone’s favorite Finovate experiences is watching the live demos.
Starting today, everyone has the ability to watch the 64 demos from FinovateFall for free. To get you started, we’re featuring a selection of the demos our audience voted Best of Show.
For those not familiar with the process, here’s how it works: companies have seven minutes on stage to demo their new technology, live in front of the audience. If the speaker runs over the seven minute time limit, a gong sounds, their mic is cut, and the MC walks on stage to thank them and introduce the next company.
The company will use the funds to enhance its wealth management platform and expand its reach.
Investors include Moneta VC, iAngels, Guy Gamzu, Jonathan Kolber, and Rafi Gidro.
Wealth management platform Vyzerunveiled today it has received $6.3 million in Seed funding. The New York-based company will use the funds to enhance its platform and expand its reach.
Vyzer was founded in 2020 to offer Limited Partnership investors and family offices with complex portfolios– including alternative assets– a single, holistic view across all of their investments. The company helps users track, analyze, and optimize their investments, view and plan their cash flow, and more. Vyzer’s peer benchmarking tool leverages AI capabilities to offer clients insights into investment strategies, fund managers, and activities of similar investors.
“The funds will enable us to enhance our platform’s AI capabilities, develop new features, and broaden our market presence,” said Vyzer Co-Founder and CEO Litan Yahav. “Our ultimate goal is to simplify and streamline complex wealth processes for our customers, equipping each member with greater insights and control. This, in turn, empowers them to maximize their investment potential and foster wealth growth.”
Today’s funding round marks the company’s first investment and includes contributions from Moneta VC, iAngels, Guy Gamzu, Jonathan Kolber, and Rafi Gidro.
Vyzer’s launch comes amid what is expected to be the largest transfer of wealth in history. Analysts expect that, in coming years, baby boomers will shift $68 trillion to their heirs. This tech-savvy group is increasingly investing in alternative assets, some of which can be difficult to digitize. Vyzer’s technology seeks to fill in that visibility gap. As iAngels Founding Partner Shelly Hod Moyal explained, “Vyzer’s solution provides investors with broad and transparent visibility into their portfolios. It allows them to capitalize on the ever-growing investment landscape by making informed and timely decisions, and it enables them to effectively scale their portfolios at an affordable cost.”
Payments-as-a-service platform Rainforest has raised $11.75 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Accel, and included a $3.25 million venture debt facility courtesy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
Rainforest helps software companies embed financial products into their solutions.
In a round led by Accel, payments-as-a-service platform Rainforest has secured $11.75 million in seed funding. The round also featured participation from Infinity Ventures, BoxGroup, The Fintech Fund, Tech Square Ventures, and Ardent Venture Partners, as well as strategic angel investors. The funding included $3.25 million in a venture debt facility courtesy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), making the total equity raised in the round $8.5 million.
Rainforest founder and CEO Joshua Silver referenced his own experience as founder of a healthcare software company and as a payments consultant in explaining the “why” behind Rainforest. “I personally experienced the challenges and tradeoffs associated with embedded payments,” Silver said. “I recruited former colleagues and other all-star payments and SaaS veterans, and together we built Rainforest – the embedded payments platform we always wanted but didn’t exist.”
Rainforest offers an embedded payments solution that helps software platforms monetize their money flows. By building a platform specifically for software platforms, Rainforest believes that it has an edge over most payment providers that build solutions primarily for merchants. The company is able to help software platforms deal with both the risk management and compliance issues that accompany payments, while enabling them to take advantage of the growing opportunity to embed and monetize payments.
“Not every software company wants to become a full-fledged fintech,” Silver said, “but nearly all want to embed financial services.”
Rainforest’s embedded components enable companies to build payment rails to facilitate payments from providers such as Visa and Mastercard, as well as same-day ACH and Plaid verification. Rainforest supports next-day payouts, and the company anticipates adding same-day options like RTP and push-to-card soon. The company notes that its open ecosystem encourages integration with alternative payment networks, vertical-specific ledgers, and other financial service providers. “It’s a game changer,” Rainforest VP of Engineering Chris Church said, “and I’m thrilled to see platforms’ response to it.” The company notes that it secured client commitments representing more than $500 million in processing shortly after launch. In addition to financial services, Rainforest acknowledges interest in its technology from companies in verticals ranging from healthcare and professional services to logistics and construction.
Founded in 2022, Rainforest is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company includes RoadSync, PayGround, and QuoteMachine among its clients.
BHG Financial announced a partnership with financial crime effectiveness testing company Cable.
BHG Financial will leverage Cable’s technology to enhance its own compliance programs.
Founded in 2020, Cable made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2022.
Unsecured business and personal loan specialist BHG Financial announced a partnership with Cable this week. The company will use Cable’s financial crime effectiveness platform to improve its own compliance efforts.
Headquartered in the San Francisco, California, Cable gives banks, financial services firms, fintechs, and other organizations the tools they need to enhance their compliance programs. These tools include automated risk assessments, automated assurance, quality assurance, management information, and reporting. BHG Financial’s Director of Financial Crime & BSA Officer Bryan Holloway, stated that the partnership underscored the company’s commitment to regulatory compliance by providing “advanced tooling” for “greater efficiency, visibility, and insights across our business.”
BHG Financial has established one of the largest community bank loan and product networks in the U.S. The company has originated more than $16 billion in loan solutions since its founding in 2001.
“We’re delighted to partner with BHG Financial to bolster their automated financial crime assurance and testing capabilities,” Cable CEO Natasha Vernier said. “With increasing regulatory scrutiny on banking and fintech compliance, it’s a privilege to partner with innovative companies like BHG Financial (that are) taking compliance very seriously and embracing the best tooling available to protect their business.”
Cable made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Automated Assurance solution. This technology enables banks and fintechs to automate their compliance assurance and effectiveness testing. Automated Assurance also allows organizations to discover breaches and control failures in the moment. Additionally, Cable’s technology streamlines a number of manual processes including quality control, stakeholder reporting, and record management.
Founded in 2020, the company raised $11 million in Series A funding in May of this year. Stage 2 Capital and Jump Capital participated, along with existing investor CRV. More recently, Cable announced a partnership with Grasshopper Bank, joined the Banking-as-a-Service Association, and introduced new Chief Revenue Officer Candace Sjogren. Sjogren comes to Cable after serving most recently as SVP, Global Head of Sales at crypto-as-a-service provider Zero Hash.
Want to feel good about the spread of real-time payments? Alabama-based Exchange Bank, a financial institution that has been serving customers since 1909, has turned to Pidgin to bring instant payments to its account holders.
The partnership between Pidgin and Exchange Bank will give the bank’s customers the ability to access faster payments to transfer funds between accounts, as well as pay employees, vendors, and more. Direct payment routing from financial institution to financial institution means that funds are settled and available in the recipient’s account almost immediately as soon as the transaction is completed.
“Banking has changed drastically since 1909, but our long-standing history is a testament to our bank’s dedication to keeping up with our customer’s needs,” Exchange Bank chairman and CEO Ricky Ray said. Ray referred to the partnership with Pidgin as an example of the bank’s ability to evolve and offer new ways to help its customers “thrive financially.”
Added Pidgin founder and CEO Abhishek Veeraghanta: “Today’s customers are looking for instant payment options to gain more flexibility and control over their transactions. We look forward to empowering Exchange Bank and their customers with more efficient payment options.”
Pidgin leverages its status as a central connection point to the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service as well as faster payment networks such as The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payment Network. Founded in 2022, the company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall. At the conference, Pidgin demoed its faster payments ecosystem, which enables FIs to send and receive faster payments almost instantly, while providing greater security compared to virtual wallet alternatives.
Pidgin founder and CEO Abhishek Veeraghanta demoing the company’s faster payments technology at FinovateFall 2022.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Pidgin was among the first fintechs to secure certification for the FedNow instant payments service launched by the Federal Reserve earlier this year. Also this year, Pidgin announced a new partnership with U.S. Century Bank, a Miami-based institution with more than $2.1 billion in assets. The bank will leverage its new relationship with Pidgin to provide instant payments to its growing customer base of small business owners, professionals, and entrepreneurs based in south Florida.
Other partnerships forged this year by Pidgin include the company’s work with fraud and compliance platform Effectiv (also a Finovate alum) and Community Bankers’ Bank.
paymints.io has partnered with Cross River Bank, which will facilitate a connection to The Clearing House’s RTP network.
Through the partnership, title insurance companies and real estate brokerages can send and receive digital payments in and out of escrow accounts in real time using paymints.io’s platform.
The RTP network will be available in addition to the payment rails that paymints.io already offers, including ACH and wire.
When it comes to real estate transactions, buyers and sellers have come to expect a slow process. But while appraisals and due diligence take time, the transfer of funds doesn’t have to. That’s why paymints.io has teamed up with Cross River Bank to help title insurance companies and real estate brokerages send and receive digital payments in and out of escrow accounts in real time.
paymints.io will leverage Cross River’s operating system, which will create a streamlined connection between Cross River and The Clearing House’s (TCH’s) RTP network, offering both businesses and consumers real-time access to funds for transactions under $1 million. By bringing in Cross River, paymints.io will not need to rely on a third-party provider for real-time money movement.
paymints.io was founded in 2020 to offer real estate companies a compliant and modern payments tool that sends funds via ACH and wire. The addition of the RTP network as a payment rail will facilitate the the receipt of money deposits, client and vendor disbursements to third parties, and account-to-account transfers between companies.
In addition to providing real estate professionals, buyers, and sellers with immediate access to funds, the company also expects the new partnership will cut down on the inefficiencies of paper checks, reduce settlement times, and mitigate wire fraud.
As paymnts.io CEO and Co-founder Jason Doshi explained, “… we view adding the RTP instant payment capability as more than the addition of a payment rail but a true evolution of our product offering. Allowing real estate industry participants to move funds instantly and securely while providing real-time visibility drastically improves the real estate transaction experience.”
Cross River and paymints.io have worked together before. The two partnered earlier this year to modernize real estate transactions with ACH and domestic wire capabilities.
“One of the most impactful benefits of our proprietary banking core is the ability to scale with our partners, allowing innovative industry leaders like paymints.io to grow and expand product offerings,” said Cross River Head of Payments Keith Vander Leest. “paymints.io is transforming financial transactions within the real estate industry and we’re proud to power their real-time payment capabilities.”
The use of TCH’s RTP has grown immensely since its launch in 2020. In the third quarter of this year, TCH reported that it facilitated 64 million transactions valued at $34 billion. With the addition of FedNow, which just surpassed 100 participating organizations, as another real-time payments option, consumer expectations will change and we will start seeing real-time payments become the rule, rather than the exception in the U.S.
Fintech software has become a critical component of the financial services industry, allowing customers to readily access financial products on their own terms while also enhancing operational efficiency. Digital technology continues to revolutionize the way financial institutions operate, and developers work hard to create new applications that can manage workloads previously spread across multiple systems and software.
Document viewing and sharing capabilities are among the most important features for fintech applications. While developers can use a variety of document lifecycle solutions to avoid the difficult task of building those features from scratch, the financial industry faces unique security and compatibility requirements when it comes to selecting integration partners. To fully understand these technical challenges, it’s important to understand the role of Java in the development of today’s fintech applications.
How Java Became So Important to the Financial Industry
Financial institutions were early adopters of computerized workflows. The first electronic communication network that made it possible to trade financial products outside the stock market floor was introduced in 1969. Computerized order flows became more widespread in the 1970s, with most institutions developing their own in-house systems. Digitization really took off in the 1980s and early 1990s following the introduction of the Bloomberg terminal and the Financial Information eXhange (FIX) protocol. In the late 1990s, the Nasdaq made it possible to execute securities trades without manual intervention by adopting Island ECN.
Java burst onto the programming language scene in 1995, and its arrival proved to be well-timed. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw extensive mergers and acquisitions in the financial industry, which left many companies struggling to integrate disparate applications and data. Java programming language, with its ability to support multiple platforms (“Write once, run anywhere” was an early slogan used by Sun Microsystems) proved to be an attractive solution to this challenge, and many financial applications were ported into Java. It also helped that Java was easy to use and orders of magnitude faster than legacy code running on outdated platforms.
Within just a few years, Java became the dominant programming language for the financial services industry. Its popularity only accelerated after the release of OpenJDK, a free and open-source implementation of the language, in 2007. By 2011, an Oracle report estimated that over 80% of electronic trading applications and almost all FIX engines were written using Java. Even now, nearly 30 years after its introduction, Java remains the dominant programming language used by financial services, far outpacing other open-source alternatives.
Why the Financial Industry Loves Java
Developers in the financial sector haven’t just stuck with Java for so long out of habit or inertia; Java’s distinctive features make it uniquely suited for the needs of financial applications, both for longstanding enterprise-grade banking systems and innovative new fintech solutions.
Security
It goes without saying that security is always a top consideration in the financial services industry. Banking and trading applications need to have security measures in place to protect financial data and personally identifiable information from unauthorized access. Java makes it easy to restrict data access and offers a variety of memory safety features that mitigate potential vulnerabilities, especially those caused by common programming errors. Oracle also continues to provide regular updates that patch known vulnerabilities and account for the latest cybersecurity threats.
Portability
As a platform-independent language, Java applications can run on almost any device. This has always been a major advantage in the financial industry, but it has proved even more valuable in the age of cloud computing and mobile applications. Developers can use the same code to deploy software in a virtual environment and make it accessible to end-users from their smartphones, computers, or other devices. Java virtual machines also support other programming languages, which further enhances the language’s flexibility.
Reliability
Since Java has been in continuous use for nearly 30 years and enjoys support from a robust development community, it has become one of the most reliable programming languages in the world. Potential instabilities have long since been addressed and there are many developer tools and documentation available to ensure that software is built upon a strong foundation. This is critically important for banking and financial applications, which require high levels of performance paired with fault tolerance.
The Need for Java-Based Document Viewing & Sharing
As fintech developers continue to build new applications that make life easier for customers and employees within the financial sector, they are increasingly finding that users expect more when it comes to viewing and sharing documents. Nobody wants to waste time and resources processing paper documents by hand, and most organizations want to avoid the security risks that come with relying on external applications for managing digital documents.
Unfortunately, today’s application users expect complex document viewing capabilities that are difficult for most developers to build from scratch. While there are several integrations available that can add document lifecycle features, most of them are not Java based and require additional development work to incorporate them into existing fintech solutions. Without the ability to support viewing, sharing, and editing natively within the Java application, users often turn to workarounds involving external programs, which creates security and version confusion risks.
Implementing Java-based Document Features with VirtualViewer
Accusoft’s VirtualViewer is a powerful HTML5 document viewing solution built from the ground up using Java to ensure maximum compatibility with fintech applications in the financial services industry while also meeting complex functionality and security requirements. With support for diverse document types, such as PDF, TIFF, JPEG, AFP, PCL, and Microsoft Office, VirtualViewer eliminates the need for multiple viewing solutions to create a better user experience within fintech software.
As a Java-based integration, VirtualViewer is compatible with almost any operating system and is both easy to implement and manage. No software needs to be installed on the user’s desktop, which allows fintech developers to roll out a scalable solution that meets their critical security and business continuity requirements within a single, high-speed application. VirtualViewer’s server component quickly renders and delivers individual document pages for local viewing as needed so users can access, view, annotate, redact, and manipulate financial documents on the fly. Since documents are displayed within the web-based viewer, there’s no need to download or transfer files, which enhances both security and efficiency.
When implemented as a replacement for a mortgage lender’s content management system, VirtualViewer made it possible to import and deliver more than half a million documents across the enterprise each day. Documents could be retrieved and viewed in under two seconds, contributing to a 40% improvement in mortgage processing times.
Enhance Your Java Fintech Application with VirtualViewer
Accusoft’s VirtualViewer provides true cross-platform document support for your Java-based applications. Whether you’re deploying your application within the cloud, on-prem, or as part of a hybrid environment, VirtualViewer’s powerful APIs can instantly provide your software with the document viewing and sharing features your customers are looking for. Installing the viewer takes less than ten minutes, and our out-of-the-box connectors make it easy to quickly connect to leading ECM applications, including Alfresco, IBM, and Pegasystems.
