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NTT Data Payment Services Taps Facctum to Stop Financial Crime 

NTT Data Payment Services Taps Facctum to Stop Financial Crime 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, NTT Data

NTT Data’s payments arm, NTT Data Payment Services, announced it has teamed up with risk analytics platform Facctum. The India-based payment company will leverage FacctView, Facctum’s anti-financial crime technology.

FacctView will help NTT Data Payments Services detect and assess sanctions, terrorism financing, and money laundering on its e-commerce platforms. In addition to protecting customers, FacctView’s technology also helps firms stay compliant. Because payment service providers are subject to increased regulation as fraudulent incidents increase, many have invested in risk screening capabilities.

“The payments ecosystem is facing a growing threat from financial criminals,” said Facctum Founder and CEO K.K. Gupta. “This is increasing the need for regulatory and compliance countermeasures. Leaders of PSPs have therefore recognized the vital importance of robust and resilient anti-financial crime technology to meet the challenges of regulatory change and ever-changing risks. I am humbled that NTT Data Payment Services has trusted Facctum technology to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of risk controls.”

Facctum’s FacctView leverages parallel processing technology and relies on a library of risk detection algorithms to detect financial crime risks on a comprehensive scale. FacctView also offers scalable, low-latency batch processing that supports bulk uploads and scheduled batch runs.

“Facctum technology is a great match for the needs of our high-growth and customer-focused PSP business in India,” said NTT Data Payment Services CEO Takeo Ueno. “Its addition to our anti-financial crime defenses shows our commitment to protecting customers and providing the highest standards of compliance effectiveness. This approach extends the capabilities of the business to provide continuous robust compliance whilst also improving the speed of services for customers.”

Facctum was founded in 2021 by former users and architects of financial crime compliance (FCC) technology. The London-based company has operations in Dublin, Johannesburg, Pune, and Bengaluru.

An alum of FinovateFall 2019, NTT Data offers a range of consulting, industry solutions, business process services, IT modernization, and managed services. The Japan-based company has made 26 acquisitions, including NTT Data Payment Services– then known as Atom Technologies. The company is publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under the ticker TYO:9613.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

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Solve Finance Unveils Latest Debt Management Partnerships

Solve Finance Unveils Latest Debt Management Partnerships
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Solve Finance
  • Solve Finance has partnered with credit analysis tool ScoreNavigator and home financing ecosystem Better.com.
  • The company’s Debt Optimizer is helping its customers understand their debt-to-income ratio (DTI), and ultimately qualify for financing.
  • The company is teaming up with Better.com to launch a feature to optimize consumers’ home-buying power.

Solve Finance recently unveiled two new fintech partners. The New York-based company has tied up with credit analysis tool ScoreNavigator and home financing ecosystem Better.com.

Solve Finance’s technology will help ScoreNavigator’s clients navigate their credit journey by looking at more than just their credit score. The company’s Debt Optimizer tool also shows them their debt-to-income ratio (DTI), a key metric in receiving a mortgage or refinancing an existing property.

“By partnering with Solve Finance, our members will get a complete analysis of their DTI, along with a plan to help them qualify for financing,” said ScoreNavigator CEO Rusty Bresse. “Solve Finance is making it easier for our members to navigate home finance by aligning incentives and automating the best possible borrowing outcomes with data and AI. We couldn’t be more pleased with this recent partnership.”

“Home affordability is especially tough in today’s environment, and we can’t wait to add a path to make the best-possible borrowing outcomes available to everyone,” added Solve Finance CEO Sean Hundtofte.

Solve Finance has also partnered with home financing platform Better.com by launching a feature to optimize consumers’ home-buying power. The new tool helps shift debt burdens and optimize up-front and monthly liquidity. Solve Finance reports it has been able to increase the mortgage users are able to afford by over 20%.

“This strategic alliance combines Solve Finance’s innovative financial technology and expertise with Better Mortgage’s innovative lending solutions,” the company said in a statement. “This partnership has significantly reduced the financial barriers to homeownership. This collaboration exemplifies Solve Finance’s commitment to driving financial inclusion and ensuring homeownership is attainable and affordable for individuals and families.”

This feature is currently in a pilot stage with mortgage lenders and homebuying platforms across the country. Ultimately, Solve Finance hopes to address consumers’ confusion about how much home they can afford in today’s interest rate environment and tackle financial exclusion in homeownership.

Solve Finance, which demoed at FinovateSpring 2022, was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in New York. The company’s Debt Optimizer tool, which is available as an API or as a direct-to-consumer platform, leverages real-time market and credit data to serve as a financial debt advisor and save users money.

Photo by Monstera

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Consumer Engagement Platform SKUx Launches New Card Program with Highnote

Consumer Engagement Platform SKUx Launches New Card Program with Highnote
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Highnote
  • Embedded finance company Highnote is powering the new card program from SKUx.
  • SKUx is a payments technology and consumer engagement platform headquartered in Florida.
  • San Francisco, California-based Highnote made its Finovate debut last May at FinovateSpring 2022.

SKUx, a payments technology and consumer engagement platform, has launched a new card program. The company has teamed up with embedded finance company Highnote to power the new offering. SKUx noted in a statement that the partnership will help the Florida-based company continue to innovate in the disbursements space.

Highnote’s card platform technology enables a range of solutions from SKUx. Among these products are SKUx Customer Care and Recovery, which streamlines the product recall process, and SKUx Crisis Disbursements, which streamlines emergency payments to individuals. These new solutions join SKUx’s flagship solution, SKUPay, for product-based payments redeemed at the point of purchase.

In a statement, SKUx co-founder and President Bobby Tinsley highlighted the “magnitude of money” that moves between merchants and customers. Tinsley also bemoaned the fact that so much of these flows take place over “outdated and clunky” systems. He added, “We are obsessed with powering the best experiences by providing payments at the speed of today’s consumer – designing products optimized for digital wallets, mobile payments, and QR codes. Our partnership with Highnote enables us to continue this vision at both the quality and service our clients demand.”

Founded in 2021, Highnote is based in San Francisco, California. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last year. At the conference, Highnote demoed its GraphQL API-based card issuance platform, showing how the technology enables organizations to make card issuance an embedded feature in their solution. The platform uses notifications and SDKs to empower developer teams to bring card products to market quickly. A no-code dashboard enables management and support, as well as providing product-wide visibility.

“The average consumer has become more digitally savvy, and their expectations around ease of use and instant access to funds have risen,” Highnote CEO John MacIlwaine said. “SKUx has tapped into this trend by providing more elegant and modern solutions to consumer needs, and we couldn’t be more proud to be their enabler in driving this digital transformation.”

Highnote has raised more than $104 million in funding. The company’s investors include Costanoa Ventures and Oak HC/FT.

Photo by SHVETS production

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FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Kani Payments

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Kani Payments
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2023, FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek, Kani Payments

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.

Kani Payments’ automated reconciliation and reporting services for payments companies and fintechs globally allows them to report accurately and fulfill compliance obligations fast.

Features

  • Reconciliation: End-to-end automated reconciliations
  • Compliance: Legal, regulatory, and scheme reporting requirements
  • Intelligence: Explore data and understand consumer and product behavior

Why it’s great

Electronic money institutions, BIN sponsors, challenger banks and fintechs use Kani to do weeks of complex transaction reporting and reconciliation work in under 30 seconds.

Presenters

Marc McCarthy, Chief Commercial Officer
McCarthy was appointed Chief Commercial Officer for Kani Payments in 2022 and has a wealth of experience in the financial services sector, with a background in banking, technology and business development.
Linkedin

Priya Jadeja, Head of Pre-Sales
Jadeja was appointed Head of Pre-sales for Kani Payments in 2023 with over seven years in financial services. She will be heading and shaping the pre-sales demo function for new opportunities.
LinkedIn

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FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Bankable Fintech

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Bankable Fintech
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: Bankable Fintech, FinovateSpring 2023, FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek

 A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.

Bankable Fintech streamlines how financial institutions, vendors, and fintechs find, partner, and buy from each other. Navigate through the noise of 120,000+ solutions and 1,500 financial institutions with unbiased, prescriptive AI.

Features

  • Prescriptive AI-enabled matching of banks, CUs, vendors, consultants, and fintechs
  • Comprehensive, personalized, and unbiased
  • Compliant, efficient, effective, and profitable

Why it’s great

Prescriptive AI enables smart sourcing and procurement, benefitting any sized financial institution, fintech, vendor, or consultant by removing bias and inefficiency and optimizing compatibility.

Presenter

Kim Fraser, CEO & Founder
Fraser founded and built Bankable Fintech. Previously, she led BD, Sales and Product teams at F100 financial institutions, global technology and data management firms, and startup fintechs, in all geos.

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FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Ionate

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Ionate
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2023, FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek, Ionate

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 23 and 24. Register today and save your spot.

Ionate deploys a cloud-modernization journey from any legacy to cloud-native microservices in under 18 months with SOTERIA (Discovery & Assessment) and APPDATE (Complete App Modernization).

Features

  • Discovery assessment tool showing business rules and logic
  • AI/ML to modernize and migrate legacy systems to high-performing cloud-native infrastructures
  • Ability to work with any legacy application

Why it’s great

Using both SOTERIA and APPDATE, Ionate ensures and employs the most efficient and productive end-to-end journey from discovery & assessment to complete app modernization execution.

Presenters

Ajanta Adhikari, CEO & Founder
As a leader and visionary at Akamai for over ten years and IBM, Adhikari took his technical innovation to start Ionate, Inc. in 2016. He saw a market need that he could solve successfully.
LinkedIn

Amol Dharmadhikari, CTO
With over 15 years experience at Oracle, Dharmadhikari has been with Ionate, Inc. since the beginning. As the CTO, he paved the way to disrupting digital transformation for enterprises with AI/ML.
LinkedIn

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Small Move, Big Impact: Plaid’s API Migration Paves the Way for U.S. Open Banking Revolution

Small Move, Big Impact: Plaid’s API Migration Paves the Way for U.S. Open Banking Revolution
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Julie's Column, Plaid, Thought Leadership

Financial infrastructure company Plaid made a relatively quiet announcement last week that will have a big impact on open banking in the U.S. The California-based company unveiled that it has migrated 100% of its traffic to APIs for major financial institutions, including Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, USAA, Wells Fargo, and others.

Taken at face value, this announcement appears to be nothing more than a fintech adding new bank clients. Looking deeper, however, there are three significant aspects of Plaid migrating its traffic to the banks’ APIs.

First, today’s move shows banks’ shifts in attitude toward open banking. Because the U.S. does not have regulation surrounding open banking, many U.S. banks don’t have the motivation to make consumers’ financial data open to third parties or don’t want to deal with the security implications that opening up consumers’ data to third parties may have. Additionally, in some cases, the banks do not want to make consumers’ data available to third party applications because the banks believe that they own the consumers’ data– or at least believe that they own the customer relationship.

The second significant impact of Plaid’s recent move is that it means that third party apps won’t need to rely on screen scraping to retrieve consumers’ data. The practice of screen scraping in financial services is less than ideal for multiple reasons, including:

  1. It requires consumers to share their bank login credentials with a third party, which may not have the same level of security as a bank.
  2. Since screen scraping extracts data based on the visual elements of a website, if the bank redesigns its website or changes the layout, it can result in inaccurate data retrieval.
  3. Screen scraping simulates user actions and requires a response from the bank’s website, which may slow the performance of the bank’s website, especially if multiple apps are screen scraping at once.
  4. Because screen scraping is essentially unauthorized access to a bank’s systems, the act of doing so may violate a bank’s terms of service.

As for the third impact– now that Plaid is working with the four aforementioned major U.S. banks to migrate traffic to APIs, it sends a signal to smaller banks, credit unions, and community financial institutions, which are more likely to follow suit. Potentially expediting the need for other financial institutions to jump on board, Plaid has also signed agreements with RBC, Citibank, and M&T, which will be migrating Plaid’s traffic to their APIs in the coming months.

“Our goal is to remove the need to rely on screen scraping in order for consumers to use the apps and services they want, and the momentum across our API integrations will help the industry get there faster,” Plaid Head of U.S. Financial Institution Partnerships Christy Sunquist said in a company blog post.

Despite the significance of this month’s announcement, there is still much work to be done. Some U.S. banks, such as PNC, are notorious for their unwillingness to work with Plaid, in essence taking a “closed banking” approach. Such attitudes may not prove beneficial in the long run, however, as many of the bank’s customers feel they are being shut out from essential third-party financial tools.

Photo by Jamar Penny on Unsplash

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Generative AI-Powered Business Automation Specialist Kognitos Secures $6.75 Million

Generative AI-Powered Business Automation Specialist Kognitos Secures $6.75 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Kognitos
  • Business automation specialist Kognitos raised $6.75 million in seed funding. The investment takes the company’s total capital to $9.35 million.
  • Kognitos leverages Generative AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enable business users to build automations using “English as code.”
  • Kognitos made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last year.

Here’s a funding announcement from a new alum that slipped beneath our radar. Business automation solution provider Kognitos raised $6.75 million in seed funding earlier this year. The round was led by Clear Ventures. Engineering Capital and Wipro Ventures, the corporate investment arm of Wipro, also participated. The investment takes Kognitos’ total funding to $9.35 million.

Kognitos will use the capital to expand its cloud-based Koncierge platform. The platform leverages an AI engine that interprets English as well as humans do. This enables businesses to build automations using natural language. Koncierge blends business data and logic with logic learning machine (LLM) technology to automate business processes at cloud scale.

“It’s time for computers to behave like humans, and humans to stop behaving like machines,” Kognitos founder and CEO Binny Gill said. He referred to the technology as an “unprecedented engine that runs English as Code.” He also noted that now “anyone can describe what they want to be automated, and their automation is generated – all in auditable English. That means no developers, no complex tools, no bots.”

Kognitos’ technology responds to two challenges. On the one hand there is a growing opportunity in business automation. On the other hand, there is a relative lack of skilled workers in the automation field. Kognitos’ solution tackles these issues with a combination of Generative AI and NLP to enable automation of a wide variety of processes from invoicing processing and insurance claims to credit card payment reconciliation. The ability to use natural language also gives Kognitos’ technology an advantage over many no code/low code solutions. This is because those technologies still require the involvement of IT and other service providers. Clear Ventures founder and General Partner Rajeev Madhavan underscored the value of avoiding this obligation. “Kognitos already has several customers using this capability in production,” Madhavan said, “saving significant time and resources in their businesses, without the need for developers.”

Founded in 2020, Kognitos made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, Gill and VP of Growth Jason Langone explained how its business automation solution helps all business users contribute to the company’s competitive advantage. By enabling them to build automations and microservices with NLP and Generative AI, Kognitos technology empowers users and helps remove obstacles and technical barriers-to-entry for a wide variety for businesses.

Kognitos is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Photo by Brett Sayles

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Smart Raises $95 Million for Retirement Technology

Smart Raises $95 Million for Retirement Technology
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Smart just landed $95 million in funding for its savings and investment platform.
  • The Series E funding brings Smart’s total raised to $391 million.
  • Today’s investment will fuel the company’s global expansion and boost its retirement savings platform, Keystone.

Global savings and investment platform Smart has raked in $95 million in a Series E round this week. The London-based company’s total funding now sits at $391 million.

Aquiline Capital Partners led the round, followed by existing investors Chrysalis Investments, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, DWS, Barclays, and Natixis Investment Managers.

Smart, which currently operates in Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, and Asia, will use today’s investment to further fuel its global expansion. The funding round will also help finance acquisitions and boost its retirement savings technology platform, Keystone.

Andrew Evans and Will Wynne co-founded Smart in 2014 after the U.K. launched its workplace pension auto enrollment requirement. The company serves more than one million end users and 70,000 employers. Smart’s flagship product, Keystone, is a retirement platform-as-a-service that offers companies infrastructure to offer employees digital retirement savings tools.

“Smart’s distinct retirement technology leadership coupled with Aquiline’s deep experience in the retirement technology industry makes this a compelling investment, as does the growing global need for better retirement saving technology,” said Aquiline Chairman and CEO Jeff Greenberg. “Smart has consistently delivered impressive commercial growth, and is backed by an array of top-tier investors whom we are delighted to join. Under the leadership of Andrew and Will, we have every confidence that Smart is a multi-billion pound company in the making.”

Based on the company’s growth, it is apparent that Smart has struck a nerve with its global user base. The company saw revenues top $83 million £67 million last year, which was a 65% increase over 2021. Earlier this year, The Financial Times ranked Smart among Europe’s fastest-growing companies. Smart currently has over $6.9 billion (£5.5 billion) in assets under management on its platform and expects to exceed $12.5 billion (£10 billion) by the end of next month.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION

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SMB Banking is Being Changed Rapidly by Embedded Finance

SMB Banking is Being Changed Rapidly by Embedded Finance
By Lili Nguyen Posted on
Categories: Sponsored

This is a sponsored article by Jesper Petersen, CTO, 9Spokes

SMBs have long been a challenge for banks to serve well. They are often too small to offer a tailored service that they may need during times when there is opportunity for growth or when their business is suddenly challenged.

Embedded finance is rapidly becoming a new norm for SMBs in payment and banking. The segment has expanded rapidly and is expected to generate revenue of $230 billion USD in 2025. This a 10-fold increase from the $22.5 billion generated in 2020.

At the same time, the SMBs are too diverse to address in a scalable way that makes sense for the banks. Whilst there are still dependencies between the SMB and the bank, many new options are also available for the SMB, which means many find alternatives that serve them better even if the cost may be higher.

Finance is one of those areas that is rapidly evolving and embedded financial options are becoming available in applications such as point of sales and marketplaces. An example of this is e-commerce marketplaces offering real-time credit product in the form of BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) at the point of purchase using finance providers such as Klarna, OpenPay, and Afterpay.

The funding behind these solutions in some cases come from the traditional banks but the bank has no relationship with the SMBs the service is offered to. Therefore, the bigger question here is if the relationship with SMBs is shifting away from the traditional banks to alternative providers. Alternative providers with tailored products for the SMBs to meet the demand when it emerges and to satisfy requirements where they operate.

The SMB landscape is also changing, and their skillsets are becoming stronger. People leave corporate functions and take their skills and understanding with them into the new businesses they start. A big driver for many is the desire to be self-sufficient which is the key decision point for almost 30% of new business starts in the U.S.

Most SMBs are back operating at pre-pandemic levels again. However, SMBs are not emerging unscathed from the pandemic. They know that they need to change and adapt to the demands to be able to overcome financial challenges when they emerge either through own choices or through societal challenges like Covid.

The finance market for SMBs is large and whilst more challenging to serve, it can be a lucrative market. The embedded finance options often utilize the data available in the platforms to provide SMBs with tailored solutions, to better meet their situation and need. The data they have access to means they have a better risk profile closer to real-time than a traditional bank would have.

A new range of services is also emerging embedded into the software utilised by SMBs instead of through the traditional banking route. Klarna is an example that offers lending services to its 250K customers through partners such as Liberis as an alternative to their own BNPL service.

The benefit of these services is that they are fast to access as they can make the evaluation largely with the data they access. It makes the experience of signing up and utilizing the service superior and significantly faster to access compared to traditional banking products. Furthermore, being rejected for a service has fewer consequences than a traditional bank rejecting a loan or credit card for a business.

Where does this leave us as the embedded banking services are expanding and alternative financial providers are increasing their market share significantly? Banks still have a role to play and are still serving SMBs, but they are missing out on expanding the services they provide. It is critical that they find ways to provide banking services to SMBs that utilize data to understand the real risk they are taking and enable them to respond faster.

SMBs still need their banking relationship but they seek alternative options as they struggle to get access to the financial services, they require to both survive and expand their businesses. Hence the need to find ways to facilitate better relationships using the data available and enable a real conversation about the business challenge.

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Finovate Global France: Automating Payments, Extending Loans, and Collaborating on Crypto

Finovate Global France: Automating Payments, Extending Loans, and Collaborating on Crypto
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, iProov, Mambu, MasterCard, Numeral, PaySend, Revolut, VISA

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech developments involving companies headquartered in France.

First up is news that European Buy Now, Pay Later firm Alma has partnered with BNP Paribas and new Finovate alum Numeral to automate payments.

“As part of our goal to create the most fluid and seamless experience for both merchants and customers, paying our 11,000 and growing merchants reliably and efficiently is critical,” Alma COO and co-founder Guillaume Desloges said. “Numeral enables us to scale with confidence and focus on our core business.”

Alma Finance and Strategy Senior Manager Simon Shohet explained that the integration of Numeral into both its systems as well as BNP Paribas’ systems, audit trails, and approval rules will enable automation of the process of managing “thousands of daily payments at scale.” Shohet added, “Thanks to Numeral, we can focus on the most critical incidents and rapidly solve merchant’s issues.”

Alma plans to eventually use Numeral’s platform to become a SEPA participant via BNP Paribas. This would enable Alma to issue IBANs in its own name, a strategic advantage for the firm.

Numeral made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London earlier this year. At the conference, the Paris-based company showed how financial institutions can leverage Numeral’s platform to automatically send, receive, and reconcile SEPA payments. The platform also enables financial institutions to manage payment errors via SEPA R transactions. The company is on track to process €5B in 2023.

Also this week, we learned that Revolut will begin offering customer credit products in France at the end of the month. The company announced that consumer loans will be available to Revolut’s more than two million French users starting on May 30th.

Revolut currently offers lending products in other European markets. These markets include Ireland, Lithuania, and Romania. Mortgage products are not part of the current package. But Revolut VP of Growth Antoine Le Nel said that these products are in the pipeline.

Thanks to Revolut’s embrace of open banking, prospective borrowers will be able to apply for loans without having to deal with hardcopy paperwork. Instead, applicants will get virtual “instant feedback” on their loan requests. Loans come with zero opening fees and are available from as low as €1,000 to as high as €50,000. Terms range from three months to 84 months and interest rates range from a low of 3.9% to 21.12%.

France has earned a reputation for being friendly to the cryptocurrency industry. This week’s news of a partnership between Canada’s Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), Cyprus’ Armenotech, and France’s Tempo France is another modest testament to this.

Back in at the beginning of the year, Armenotech and payments company Tempo Finance teamed up to develop an ecosystem supported by the Stellar blockchain. This week, we learn that London-based Advanced Payment Solutions has joined the pact.

APS CEO Serik Igbayev highlighted the importance of giving businesses the ability to work with traditional and digital assets. And in a statement, Igbayev praised the partnership with Armenotech for playing a key role in making this happen. “Clients increasingly demonstrate a demand for services that would enable them to operate both traditional and digital assets, combining various payment methods,” Igbayev said. “We have successfully been using state-of-the-art Armenotech solutions to meet this demand.” These solutions included tools that facilitate the conversion between fiat and digital assets, as well as products for fraud protection, security, KYC, and ALM.

Tempo France is serving as the corporate payment operator for the alliance. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Paris, Tempo France provides a fast and secure bridge between cash and cryptocurrencies. The company offers online, offline, and digitally backed remittances to nearly 100 countries with more than 300 physical agent locations. Alla Zhedik is CEO.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Chait Goli

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Expensify Now Facilitates Global Reimbursements

Expensify Now Facilitates Global Reimbursements
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Expensify
  • Expensify now enables business customers to reimburse international employees in multiple currencies.
  • Expensify customers can send employee reimbursements in over 154 currencies and across 200+ countries.
  • Today’s move also enables businesses to link withdrawal bank accounts in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the European Union.

Business expense management firm Expensify made a move this week to support businesses operating in the global economy. The San Francisco-based company now enables its business customers to reimburse their employees across borders in multiple currencies.

Using the Expensify app, customers can send employee reimbursements in over 154 currencies and across 200+ countries. The international reimbursement process doesn’t require businesses to pre-fund payment. Rather, businesses can pay employees at any time by linking their local bank account.

“Employees can work from anywhere these days and expect to be reimbursed quickly for out-of-pocket expenses regardless of where they live,” said Expensify Founder and CEO David Barrett. “We have listened to these customers and now include global reimbursements for free in all paid Expensify plans.”

Additionally, Expensify is taking another step to support international businesses. The company now enables businesses to link withdrawal bank accounts in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the European Union.

If you’re familiar with Expensify’s company culture, the only surprising aspect about this move is that the company didn’t launch it sooner. Even pre-pandemic, Expensify was known for its flexible working policy, taking its entire workforce to fun, overseas locations to work for a month. “The entire team goes on a month-long Offshore to a new country every year,” the company’s website states. “We start out the trip in hostels and Airbnbs, and then for our final week together, we re-locate to the most amazing or unique accommodation we can find!”

Expensify went public in 2021 and now trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker EXFY. The company launched expense reporting in 2008, and has since grown to add billpay, a travel concierge, a corporate payment card, and– as of last month– a co-working space as a perk for its business clients.

The business expense management space has become increasingly crowded in recent years, having seen competition from the likes of Brex, Ramp, Divvy, PayEm, Bento for Business, and more. According to Grand View Research, the market size for global spend management platforms was valued at $15.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a rate of 10.3% from 2022 to 2030. 

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