Bittrex Files for Bankrupcy After Being Sued by SEC

Bittrex Files for Bankrupcy After Being Sued by SEC
  • Digital asset trading platform Bittrex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
  • Bittrex Global will not be impacted by the change.
  • Today’s news comes three weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Bittrex and its former CEO William Shihara for operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency.

U.S. digital asset trading platform Bittrex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. The company’s international operation, Bittrex Global, will not be impacted by the change.

Seattle-based Bittrex shut down in the U.S. on April 30, but has asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to re-open temporarily so that it can return crypto assets to U.S. customers who were unable to withdraw their funds prior to the April 30 closure.

Today’s bankruptcy filing comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Bittrex and its former CEO William Shihara for operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency on April 17. Specifically, the agency alleged that Shihara encouraged crypto asset issuers to delete public statements that could lead regulators to investigate those token offerings as securities.

Bittrex has denied the SEC’s allegations that its digital assets are securities or investment contracts.

Unfortunately for the crypto world, the news of a digital asset trading platform shutting down in the U.S. is not shocking. Bittrex’s U.S. shutdown and bankruptcy follow the demise of FTX, Celsius, Voyager, and BlockFi– all of which have taken place in the past year. One reason decentralized finance (DeFi) companies operating in the U.S. are becoming an endangered species is because of the ambiguous regulatory environment in the U.S.

The SEC has not firmly laid out rules for crypto companies and, based on the fines it has issued, is making it clear that crypto firms are not as welcome in the U.S. as they are in other geographies.


Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

First National Bank of Oklahoma Partners with Teslar Software to Streamline Lending

First National Bank of Oklahoma Partners with Teslar Software to Streamline Lending

Teslar Software and First National Bank of Oklahoma announced a new partnership this week. The bank will leverage Teslar Software’s technology to streamline its lending processes. The partnership will also enable First National Bank of Oklahoma to better track exceptions and manage documentation.

First National Bank of Oklahoma president and CEO Mel Martin called Teslar Software a “natural fit to partner”. The relationship between the two entities goes back to the pandemic days when First National Bank of Oklahoma used the fintech’s PPP solution. “We experienced firsthand that they’re a nimble, dependable organization that truly understands and cares about community banks,” Martin said. He added that the technology from Teslar will not only help the bank become more efficient, “it will also help us better manage risk in our portfolio.”

Headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, and founded in 2008, Teslar Software made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015 as 3E Software. The company returned to the Finovate stage last year for FinovateFall. At the conference, Teslar demoed its technology that simplifies, digitizes, and automates the indirect lending process for community financial institutions.

“How can it be that a bank has a great relationship with a small business?” Teslar Software founder and CEO Joe Ehrhardt asked during his company’s live demo last fall. “How is it that they are financing them, but they fail to finance that business’ end user?” Teslar Software’s Indirect Lending product helps community financial institutions grow their customer base by teaming up with local businesses to provide financing for purchases of items like power tools, outdoor equipment, and furniture. As Erhardt explained, financing for these purchases is often cumbersome and inefficient for consumers. Facilitating partnerships between community financial institutions and local small businesses in the community is how Indirect Lending solves the problem.

With $750 million in assets, First National Bank of Oklahoma maintains offices in Oklahoma City, Ponca City, Tonkawa, and Tulsa. The bank was chartered in 1917, and recently celebrated its 105th anniversary. First National Bank of Oklahoma is only the most recent financial institution to partner with Teslar. The company teamed up with Ohio’s Merchants National Bank in March and announced a collaboration with Mississippi-based Magnolia State Bank in April.


Photo by Raychel Sanner

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Illuma

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Illuma

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

Illuma’s Shield Voice Authentication is now integrated with Glia’s Digital Customer Service Platform for frictionless yet secure voice engagements.

Features

  • Better customer experience with frictionless account access
  • Improved operational efficiency by cutting minutes from each phone call
  • Better security with biometric voice authentication

Why it’s great

The Illuma Shield voice authentication integration with Glia improves operational efficiency, security, and customer experience for community banks and credit unions.

Presenters

Milind Borkar, Founder & CEO
Borkar brings a background in R&D and more than 50 successful product launches to his role as Founder and CEO of Illuma Labs.
LinkedIn

Greg Cummings, Director, Global ISV Partners
Cummings has over 20 years of experience in the customer engagement space and currently serves as the Director of Global ISV Partnerships at Glia.
LinkedIn

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Wink

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Wink

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

Wink’s revolutionary biometric payments and identity platform eliminates passwords and fraudulent activities utilizing advanced AI/Machine Learning, cutting-edge face, and voice recognition for unparalleled authentication.

Features

  • Goodbye passwords, fraud, and compliance costs with multi-factor biometric authentication
  • Full-service payment orchestration delivers secure payment experiences with failover protection
  • Guest checkout elimination simplifies checkout

Why it’s great

Wink enables any institution to offer simpler and superior identity and payments experiences through biometrics that ensures full privacy protection that cannot be decrypted.

Presenters

Deepak Jain, CEO & Founder
With multiple patents in payment and security technologies, Jain has built transformational businesses and products in the NFC payments, neobanking, blockchain and cross-border payment spaces.
LinkedIn

Gary Bender, CBO
Bender brings a depth of experience with technology, payments, banking, fintech, and a track record for team building, refining strategies, and focused execution.
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FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: pave.dev

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: pave.dev

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

Pave.dev helps credit teams reduce risk and identify healthy borrowers. By unifying banking, credit, and proprietary performance data, their Scores & Attributes predict borrower behavior.

Features

  • Supplement credit report data with real-time cashflow to identify healthy borrowers
  • Dynamically adjust credit limits
  • Personalize payment plans to improve collections success

Why it’s great

With new data comes new risk – credit risk teams can’t keep up with the explosion of consumer permissioned data. Pave gives credit risk teams the best tools to power credit decisions with cashflow intelligence.

Presenter

Raymond Rouf, CEO & Co-Founder
Rouf is a 3x analytics founder with over 15 years of experience building and growing analytics products.
LinkedIn

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: upSWOT

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: upSWOT

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

upSWOT enhances FI relationships with business clients by offering real-time, actionable insights, personalized suggestions, and relevant financing at the right time during the customer’s journey.

Features

  • Provides real-time actionable insights
  • Offers SMB underwriting data
  • Includes comprehensive health indicators for business clients

Why it’s great

Embedding upSWOT insights will improve outcomes and profitability for both the FI and the SMB.

Presenter

Adam Dolby, SVP Partnerships & Alliances
Dolby has been in the global fintech space for 20+ years and has worked to deliver solutions in partnership with industry leaders, such as Q2, Alkami, NCR, FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry, and others.
LinkedIn

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Front Financial

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Front Financial

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

Front Financial is a modern embedded infrastructure with transfer and execution capabilities across 300+ financial institutions, exchanges, wallets, and brokerages.

Features

  • One click asset transfer to exchanges and wallets
  • Read, write, and transfer capabilities
  • Account aggregation across asset classes

Why it’s great

Front Financial offers embedded experience to their clients across asset classes and financial operations with their read, write, and transfer integrations.

Presenters

Bam Azizi, Co-Founder & CEO
Azizi is a serial tech entrepreneur and an API integration expert. At his previous startup, his team built over 2000 integrations with third-party apps.
LinkedIn

Rani Nagpal, VP Marketing
Nagpal is an innovative, tech-centric senior leader with deep operations and marketing experience and a background in economics.
LinkedIn

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Flybits

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Flybits

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

Flybits is an award-winning personalization platform, enabling financial institutions to deliver best-in-class personalized digital banking experiences across mobile, web, and the metaverse.

Features

  • Deliver hyper-personalized experiences
  • Bring the person back into personalization by contextualizing digital touchpoints and interactions
  • Create interactive VR experiences in a secure environment

Why it’s great

Flybits’ Open Dome enables users to deepen their relationship with their customers by interacting with them in a secure VR environment using advanced capabilities.

Presenters

Hossein Rahnama, CEO & Founder
Rahnama is the Founder of Flybits, a data intelligence company with over $60M in funding and global offices. He’s a visiting MIT professor, co-founded the DMZ, and has 40+ publications/patents.
LinkedIn

Chris Pinkerton, CGO
Pinkerton has over 15 years of experience working with companies like Google and Microsoft to apply insight to their acquisition and monetization models.
LinkedIn

Paydora Finance Unveils White-Label Banking Platform

Paydora Finance Unveils White-Label Banking Platform
  • Paydora Finance is publicly launching its white-label embedded finance tool today.
  • Germany-based Paydora Finance can help organizations launch their own branded digital bank account, payment card, and onboarding experience.
  • Dock is powering the technology and regulatory infrastructure behind Paydora Finance.

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) company Paydora Finance announced its public launch today. The Germany-based company offers a white-label banking platform that enables organizations to offer their own embedded finance solutions.

Businesses and organizations can leverage Paydora’s solution to offer their B2B or B2C customers a fully branded digital banking account, Mastercard payment card, onboarding experience, and customer data hub. The product enables companies to create new revenue streams while maintaining control of the branded experience. What’s more, Paydora’s BaaS platform can be launched in as few as 30 days, with no coding experience necessary.

“Companies and organizations can now embed B2C and B2B banking solutions into their own product ecosystem much faster and without any development effort and bring them to market in the shortest possible time. This allows them to offer significant added value to their existing and new customers, which generates additional revenue,” explained Paydora Cofounder and CEO Claudio Wilhelmer.

Wilhelmer comes to Paydora from Revolut and NumberX. He is joined by co-founders Matthias Seiderer, previously with Anyline and NumberX; and Christofer Trowe, previously with PPRO and Payback.

Paydora, which was originally founded last year, counts retail chain Metro, mobility service provider Eurowag, travel portal Booking.com, and more as clients. The company’s technology and regulatory infrastructure is built from Dock, a BaaS company that helps businesses digitize complex financial processes and simplify their processing.

BaaS has taken off not only within the fintech world, but also across a range of industries. Many companies have sought to create additional revenue streams by adding digital banking tools, payment cards, and more under their brands. However, as BaaS popularity has increased, so has regulatory scrutiny. Last week, the FDIC sent a cease-and-desist order to fintech partner bank Cross River Bank. The government agency accused the bank of engaging in unsafe or unsound practices related to its fair lending compliance. 

Less Fraud, Less Friction: Darwinium Launches Continuous Customer Protection

Less Fraud, Less Friction: Darwinium Launches Continuous Customer Protection
  • San Francisco, California-based fraud prevention startup Darwinium has launched its Continuous Customer Protection platform.
  • The new offering helps close the gap between digital security and fraud prevention silos.
  • Darwinium made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London.

Security and fraud prevention specialist Darwinium has launched its Continuous Customer Protection platform. The technology helps deal with the problem of disconnected point-in-time API integrations and risk scores. These issues can lead to both data breaches and a poor customer experience. Darwinium’s Continuous Customer Protection platform provides continuous visibility and control throughout the entire customer journey. This enables the technology to proactively cover the distance between the silos of digital security and fraud prevention.

In a statement, Darwinium co-founder and CEO Alisdair Faulkner noted research that highlighted the impact of fraud controls on the customer experience. More than 80% of businesses, according to the report, said that fraud controls contribute to unwanted friction for customers. “To create a low-friction customer experience while also enabling optimal fraud and security controls, Darwinium has architected a new path forward for improved fraud detection in real time that performs dramatically better and faster and takes only minutes to deploy – all while providing a positive and privacy-protected customer online experience and frustrating fraudsters,” Darwinium CEO and co-founder Alisdair Faulkner said.

Darwinium is deployed at the network edge, via content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure, using edge workers. This gives the technology full, omni-channel visibility and the ability to provide real-time insights into device, network, identity, behavior, content, and location. The solution also can call out to third-party APIs to conditionally refine risk decisions.

Darwinium’s primary customers are payment service providers, fintechs, gaming companies, and online marketplaces. Faulkner indicated that further penetration of these markets was high on Darwinium’s agenda. “The challenges online U.S. businesses face with surging fraud and operational silos, combined with our unique solution make this an ideal time to expand and enter the market in force,” Faulkner said.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Darwinium made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London. The company was launched in 2021 by the team that founded, built, and scaled digital identity innovator ThreatMetrix. Relx Group acquired ThreatMetrix in 2018.


Photo by Johannes Plenio

Meet at the Cafe: Fintech Bloodbaths, Brand Building, and Adulting in Financial Services

Meet at the Cafe: Fintech Bloodbaths, Brand Building, and Adulting in Financial Services

What is the state of fintech midway through 2023? I caught up with our Meet at the Cafe analysts to hear their thoughts on the trends and tensions that are driving fintech today. My conversations featured Chris Skinner, author and CEO of the Finanser.com; Richard Neve, Executive Creative Director, Cognito Media; and Suraya Randawa, Head of Omnichannel Experience, Curinos.

Join our upcoming Meet at the Cafe conversation featuring myself and Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn, at FinovateSpring on Wednesday May 24th.


Chris Skinner: On Crypto Winters and Fintech Bloodbaths

For Chris Skinner, the circumstances for cryptocurrencies in specific and fintech in general are dire. Referring to our current moment as “the crypto winter and fintech bloodbath,” the CEO of The Finanser and frequent Finovate keynote speaker sees the crisis in crypto and the current challenges to fintech as part of the fallout from the overinvestment, overvaluation, and over-enthusiasm of the COVID era. He explained that we are now seeing those valuations plunge as the overhyping of all things digital becomes corrected post-pandemic. Skinner’s recent blog post “The 7 Deadly Sins of Startups” underscores the ways many would-be innovators of our time have, in too many instances, brought misfortune down upon themselves.

Fortunately, Skinner noted, the underlying systems that have made Bitcoin and digital assets possible – and continue to make fintech innovation possible – remain intact. In this, he sees a period for startups not unlike the post-dot.com era of retrenchment. It will be a “rocky road” in Skinner’s estimation, but perhaps not as long a journey as we might fear. He suspects we could start to see new business cases in crypto and digital assets as soon as the next two years.

What should we look for to know when the crypto winter is starting to turn toward spring? Skinner suggests not just watching for a recovery in venture capital and private equity spending, but also noticing what they are investing in. He’s on the lookout for strong B2B use cases, as well as companies solving real customer problems in retail and banking. Lastly, he points to the leaders – the Nubanks, the Klarnas, the Stripes. If fintech rebounds, then companies like these should have long coattails for a new round of startups to chase.


Richard Neve: Make Profits and Invest in Your Brand

For Richard Neve, the days when all that mattered were growth, top line gains, market share – the idea of getting big first and making money later – are gone. Now that fintechs are increasingly graded based on their profitability – or lack thereof – there are few things more important than showing potential investors and partners that you have a clear pathway to a strong bottom line.

“Now it’s about return on equity,” Neve said. “Companies need to think about their product – which customers do – not just the number of customers they have.”

But profitability isn’t easy. Not the least of which is because, as Neve, puts it plainly: “financial services is an expensive business.” A significant portion of that expense, he notes, is the result of meeting regulatory obligations consistently and accurately, which drives costs in a notoriously “people-intensive” industry like financial services.

The key to profitability, Neve explained, is volume, and the path toward greater volume for fintechs is via distribution. “If you’re a fintech, you need to grow in order to keep up with the HSBCs, the larger players,” he said. Fortunately, there are multiple ways for fintechs to grow and what works for one fintech may not work for another. In some instances, partnering with a larger player is preferable. The larger partner may be a bank, of course, but partnerships with Big Tech and Big Retail – and even Big Social – could all provide opportunities for fintechs to reach more customers. More intimately, M&A and joint ventures with other fintechs will also be routes startups will pursue to achieve greater scale and profitability. “The smart entrepreneur will scout out any opportunity available,” Neve said. “In a larger constellation, (they) will always be stronger than they will be on their own.”

Lastly, Neve wanted to make a point about the importance of brand in financial services – especially when it comes to attracting partners. “People want to do business with people they know,” he said. “If people don’t have a narrative about you, (then) they don’t want to partner with you or invest in you. The fintech that will win is the one that continues to invest in its brand.”


Suraya Randawa: Adulting in the World of Banking

The importance of making money as a financial services organization – bank or fintech – is a major issue from Suraya Randawa’s perspective, as well. “Investors are patient,” Randawa said, “but at the end of the day, you need to turn a profit.” She recalled the meme in recent years that “balance sheet banking was dead” – not so much, it seems, as the recent spate of bank failures attests.

Randawa is sympathetic to the challenges that fintechs face, and she is clear on their strengths, as well. “Fintechs are good at targeting segments, designing interfaces, and then delivering excellent user experiences – if not excellent customer experiences,” she said. “Fintechs are great for discovery. (They) are the place for innovation and failure. That’s why banks are attracted to them.”

But as the popularity of the fintech’s solution grows, and the number of users grows, new challenges appear. Some users will be content with a company’s initial offerings. Yet the sheer volume of these individuals can become an issue as startups realize the importance – and cost – of the less glamorous aspects of running a customer-facing business. These issues include things like dispute management, or customer service at a time of social panic (like a global pandemic or a systemic financial crisis or a terrorist attack).

Other users will bring new demands, a phenomenon we’ve seen – at its most powerful – help an online bookstore become The Greatest Retailer on Earth and turn a teen dancing app into a major international social marketing tool. Randawa talked about fintechs that have successfully expanded their offerings over time, companies like Monzo, Revolut, Chime, and SoFi. “They were strong with their initial segments, and then successfully grew,” Randawa said. Asked how much of this ability to scale – and even transform – is customer-driven and how much is powered by the vision of company leaders, Randawa suggests both factors are likely at work.

Given all the attention on the lifecycle of companies, Randawa reminds us that the customers have a lifecycle, too. And as customers get older and their lives become more complicated, so will their financial needs. “Customers are adulting and maturing along with your company,” Randawa said. The customer who only needed a savings account and a debit card today may be seeking financial advice – let alone a car loan, a mortgage, or a college savings fund (or two) – sooner than anyone thinks. As such, Randawa believes that successful fintechs will keep this in mind and come up with innovative ways to respond to these needs as they arise. “The successful fintech,” she said, “puts the customer at the center, at the heart of their service and innovation.”


FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Total CollectR

FinovateSpring 2023 Sneak Peek: Total CollectR

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

Total CollectR helps banks, credit unions, and other credit grantors solve one of their most challenging problems: unpaid receivables.

Features

  • Built by domain experts who understand consumers and how to get them to pay
  • Collect more money with fewer resources
  • Collect money faster than ever before

Why it’s great

Total CollectR is the collections platform built by domain experts that can collect more money than a human counterpart.

Presenters

Jordan Akins, CEO
From serving in an executive-level role at the nation’s largest collection agencies to establishing, growing, and selling multiple collection agencies, Jordan Akins has more than 17 years of experience.
LinkedIn

Janice Boyd, COO
Boyd is a global operations and business development professional with over 23 years of experience and success partnering with clients on collections and BPO strategies.
LinkedIn