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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Very Good Security (VGS) has got a brand new boss. The data security and compliance platform has appointed Chuck Yu as its Chief Executive Officer.
Vertex Ventures U.S. General Partner Jonathan Heiliger, whose firm is a major investor in VGS, praised Yu’s experience in financial services. “His deep ties in the fintech and payments space will help advance VGS’ industry leadership position as the company looks to help its clients secure critical data and streamline compliance in more powerful and progressive ways,” Heiliger said. He called Yu “a transformational force.”
Yu’s background includes executive leadership roles at Visa, Point Digital Finance, and TrialPay, where he was Chief Revenue Officer. TrialPay was acquired by Visa in 2015. While at Visa, Yu led teams in business development, sales, finance, and operations. He also helped build strategic partnerships as the head of business development for Visa’s Global Fintech team.
In a statement, Yu underscored VGS’s goal of being a powerful steward “of the world’s sensitive data.” He added, “I am eager to work closely with our talented team to forge new strategic partnerships with industry leaders, and deeper relationships with the top brands that have chosen to trust us with their critical financial data.”
In its Finovate debut last spring, VGS demonstrated its VGS Zero Data Platform. The technology collects sensitive data from end users and conducts operations on the data – including exchanging it with third parties. The platform accomplishes this without allowing the original data to come in contact with your network. This allows companies to extract business value from sensitive data without touching it. As such, by enabling businesses to “offload” their data security burdens, Very Good Security allows these companies to focus on delivering innovative solutions to their customers.
Very Good Security has raised more than $104 million in funding. The firm’s investors include Vertex Ventures, Visa Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, VGS was founded in 2015.
Digital banking provider Bankjoy announced an integration with Fiserv Portico, a full-service account processing system.
The integration will enable credit unions working with Fiserv Portico to offer their members an online and mobile banking experience with a modern, intuitive UX.
Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022.
Michigan-based digital banking provider Bankjoy has integrated with Fiserv Portico, a full-service account processing system. The integration will enable credit unions using Fiserv Portico to offer an online and mobile banking experience that will attract new members and deepen current member engagement.
“Investing in a truly cutting-edge digital banking solution can seem out-of-reach for institutions without extensive engineering resources and IT budgets,” Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan said. “Our integration with Fiserv Portico aims to solve this by giving credit unions more flexibility to roll out the digital banking features that today’s members expect in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.”
Founded in 2015 and built by credit union executives, Bankjoy gives credit unions the ability to offer a wide range of contemporary banking services. These services include both mobile and online banking, e-statements, online account opening, online loan origination, conversational AI, and more.
“Ongoing digital transformation over the last decade has accelerated the need for financial institutions of all sizes to deliver a state-of-the-art digital banking experience,” Duncan said. “Their success as an institution depends on this.” He added that, according to research from McKinsey & Company, the top performing financial institutions receive an average of 24-28 digital banking log-ins per account holder every month. These digital banking customers are driving revenue growth by an average of 10% to 15% each year.
Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. At the conference, the company showed how its Business Banking Platform provides SMEs with a single portal for multiple business accounts, and enables them to manage multiple users, control permissions, send transfers to multiple recipients, and more.
In addition to the company’s integration with Fiserv Portico, Bankjoy has also secured out-of-the-box integrations with third-party partners ranging from Allied Payments and Savvy Money to Vertifi and UrbanFT. This week’s integration news comes a month after Bankjoy announced securing new funding in a round led by Curql Collective. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. Duncan said that the capital will help the company “help more community financial institutions thrive in an increasingly competitive environment.”
Visa is launching Visa+, a peer-to-peer payments interoperability tool.
PayPal and Venmo are piloting the launch.
Visa partners DailyPay, i2c, TabaPay, and Western Union will also integrate Visa+ within their platforms.
Fintech has solved a lot of problems by creating a multitude of different peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps. In so doing, however, it has also created a problem– the platforms are not interoperable. Many people use different payment apps, and they don’t all work together. Visa is seeking to solve this issue with its new launch, Visa+, which helps users move money between different P2P payment apps.
Piloting the launch of Visa+ are PayPal and Venmo. After setting up a personalized payment address linked to their Venmo or PayPal account, users of either app can send and receive payments between the two platforms. Visa+ serves as the backend infrastructure behind the transfer.
PayPal and Venmo users will be able to begin using Visa+ later this year. Visa partners DailyPay, i2c, TabaPay, and Western Union will also integrate Visa+ within their platforms. The addition of new apps and platforms will not only increase the reach of Visa+, but it will also have the potential to add new use cases– such as payouts for gig workers, creators, and online marketplace sellers.
“Consumers continue to seek simple and seamless ways to digitally move money between friends and family, including the ability to send money between different payment platforms,” said Visa Global Head of New Payment Flows Chris Newkirk. “We are thrilled to partner with like-minded innovators to broaden the reach of P2P payments across platforms. Through this collaboration, Visa+ can help break down barriers for payment app users as they connect, engage and move money.”
While PayPal and Venmo are as good a starting point as any for P2P payments interoperability, there are many other players– Square Cash, Zelle, Google Wallet, and Apple Wallet– that should be added to maximize the utility of Visa+ and make it an everyday tool for U.S. users. Visa expects to launch Visa+ with select partners in late 2023. The company is planning general availability in mid-2024, so we may see additional partners in the later launch.
Axle raised $4 million in a Seed round led by Gradient Ventures.
Today’s investment brings the Atlanta, Georgia-based company’s total funding to $4.5 million.
Axle is bringing consumer permissioned data to the insurance vertical.
Consumer permissioned insurance data company Axle has raised $4 million this week for a tool it calls “the Plaid for insurance.” The Seed round brings the Atlanta, Georgia-based company’s total funding to $4.5 million.
Gradient Ventures led the round, which also saw contributions from existing investor Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Contrary Capital, Rebel Fund, BLH Ventures, and others.
“Axle’s innovative approach to insurance and commitment to a personalized customer experience has already demonstrated early traction and validates their potential to make a significant impact in the market,” said Gradient Ventures Partner Wen-wen Lam. “We look forward to supporting the team and their mission to democratize access to insurance data.”
Axle was founded in 2022 to offer a universal API that allows individuals to connect their insurance account to companies seeking to verify their insurance. The tool enables rental car companies, lenders, and gig services to quickly obtain proof-of-insurance, as long as they have permission from the end user.
“We plan to use the funds to grow our team, enabling us to service new and existing demand from our fast-growing list of customers, strengthen our carrier network, and expand into new markets,” the company said in a blog post.
The company’s current carrier network includes hundreds of insurance carriers and supports policy information including term, insureds, premiums, third parties, and more.
Consumer permissioned data is widely used across the financial services industry– from credit scoring to payment processing and personalized marketing. Plaid— the company to which Axle is comparing itself– may be the most well-known fintechs facilitating consumer permissioned data. The California-based company uses consumer permissioned data to facilitate the data exchange between financial institutions and third-party applications.
Cardstream is launching PayFac-as-a-Service, a new white label service for companies seeking to become payment facilitators.
PayFac-as-a-Service clients will benefit from Cardstream’s regulatory position, enabling customers without a license to operate compliantly.
Cardstream has built a network of 400+ acquirers, alternative payment methods, shopping cart platforms, and fraud providers.
European payment service provider Cardstream announced the launch of new white label PayFac-as-a-Service.
The cloud-based service will offer acquirers access to Cardstream’s third party payment facilitator program and provides a pathway for those looking to become a payment facilitator. PayFac-as-a-Service users will also benefit from Cardstream’s regulatory position, as customers without a license will be able to operate compliantly.
“Our complete PayFac-as-a-Service is the quickest and most versatile way for companies to enter the rapidly growing billion dollar global marketplace,” said Cardstream CEO and Chairman Adam Sharpe. “Any company keen to capitalize on the rapidly growing PayFac space should put us on its shortlist, be it an Acquirer; a company applying for its own PayFac regulatory approval; or one opting to benefit by operating under our FCA regulated OBN.”
PayFac-as-a-Service offers merchants a holistic approach to the payment facilitator market. Cardstream is including workflow onboarding, underwriting, compliance due-diligence, real-time fraud screening and monitoring, dispute and chargeback management, funds management, automated fee collection, invoicing, referral commissioning, and more.
Founded in 1999, Cardstream has built a network of 400+ acquirers, alternative payment methods, shopping cart platforms, and fraud providers. The company supports all global currencies and major card schemes in more than 120 countries. Cardstream’s client portfolio includes 100+ reseller partners and their 18,000+ merchants.
In today’s announcement, Sharpe hinted at ambitions to grow Cardstream, sharing plans to round out its platform with additional services later this year. “As we move through the rest of 2023, we expect to have a series of further announcements of many new, additional Cardstream Group services,” he added.
The payment facilitator market in Europe is heavily regulated, with the introduction of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in 2018, which aims to increase security, competition, and innovation in the payments industry. The market, which is expected to reach a value of $1.72 trillion (€1.57 trillion) by 2024, includes a sizable number of players ranging from traditional financial institutions to fintech companies and digital payment providers. Among the top payment facilitators in Europe are PayPal, Adyen, Stripe, Worldpay, and Klarna.
Canadian Crypto Combo: A trio of Canada-based cryptocurrency exchanges announced plans to merge into a single entity. Vancouver-based WonderFi, along with Toronto-based Coinsquare and Coin Smart Financial, are the firms involved. Together, they represent more than $600 million CAD in assets under custody and more than 1.65 million users. The merger will create what the companies are calling “Canada’s largest regulated crypto asset trading platform.”
The road to the three-way union had its complications. At one point, Coinsquare had been poised to acquire CoinSmart. At another point, a merger with WonderFi was allegedly on the table. CoinSmart had been both cold and hot to an acquisition by Coinsquare and reportedly was prepared to seek monetary damages in court when the acquisition deal did not work out. But those days are gone, and the three companies have decided they are better off serving cryptocurrency customers together than they are on their own.
UAE and ANZ Get Busy with CBDCs: There have been a few CBDC-oriented stories in fintech and crypto headlines in recent days. First up is news that the UAE has selected technology and legal partners ahead of the launch of its CBDC strategy. The country’s central bank has picked Clifford Chance to provide legal oversight. R3 and G42 Cloud will serve as technology and infrastructure providers. This will enable the central bank to begin Phase 1 of its CBDC project. This initial phase has three components: initiating real-value cross-border CBDC transactions for international trade settlement, proof-of-concept work for bilateral CBDC bridges with India, and proof-of-concept work for domestic CBDC issuance covering wholesale and retail use. Phase 1 is expected to take place over the next 12 to 15 months.
Meanwhile in Australia, ANZ bank reported that it had concluded one of its projects in the country’s CBDC trials. The project involved using the ANZ stablecoin to settle tokenized carbon credit transactions. ANZ Bank is involved in four of the 15 use cases and projects in the country’s CBDC pilot. With regard to this specific use case – applying tokenization to the carbon markets – ANZ Banking Services Lead Nigel Dobson expressed optimism. He highlighted the potential to improve both efficiency and transparency, as well as “preserve the unique characteristics of underlying projects to incentivize investment in climate solutions.”
Speaking of the relationship between crypto and the climate, SEB and Crédit Agricole announced this week that they are jointly launching so|bond, a sustainable and open platform for digital bonds built on blockchain technology. The platform enables issuers in capital markets to issue digital bonds onto a blockchain network in an effort to enhance efficiency and support real-time data synchronization between participants. Additionally, the network is using a validation protocol, Proof of Climate awaReness, that encourages participants to minimize their carbon footprint.
“Crédit Agricole CIB is proud to contribute to the emerging market of digital assets,” Crédit Agricole CIB Head of Innovation and Digital Transformation Romaric Rollet said. “The platform’s innovative approach, both to the blockchain infrastructure and to the securities market, is coupled with the strong commitment to green and sustainable finance that is at the center of our Societal Project.”
And while on the topic of the blockchain use cases, we report that Acre, a blockchain-based mortgage platform, has raised $8.1 million (£6.5 million). The fundraising is the second major capital infusion for the London-based company and brings the firm’s total equity funding to $14.3 million (£14.3 million). The round was led by McPike, an investor in Starling Bank, as well as Aviva and Founders Factory.
Acre helps traditional brokers compete with their digital counterparts by using blockchain technology to enhance the mortgage and insurance application process for advisers. The company’s technology brings together all aspects of the process into a single “record of the transaction.” This, according to Acre founder and CEO Justus Brown, helps brokers deliver “speedy, efficient advice that meets the individual requirements of each case in a dynamic market.”
Acre was founded in 2017. Brown reports that the company grew by 10x in 2022, and processes £10 billion in annual mortgage volume. In the wake of the latest investment, Acre will focus on forging new partnerships with lenders and insurers to enable brokers to recommend the most competitive financial products and services for their clients.
Coinbase Announces Derivatives Exchange Upgrade: Last up for this edition of 5 Tales from the Crypto is news from one of the industry’s banner companies, Coinbase. The firm announced this week that it had partnered with Transaction Network Services (TNS). The partnership is designed to enable faster, more efficient transactions on its derivatives exchange (CDE).
“Crypto has witnessed both volatile and liquid markets, and with institutional adoption remaining strong, we believe the time is right for the offering that TNS brings to the table,” Coinbase Derivatives Exchange CEO Boris Ilyevsky said. “Dedicated cloud infrastructure connectivity coupled with our derivatives exchange represents a mission-critical step toward supporting and maintaining a vibrant and reliable crypto derivatives market.”
Coinbase launched its Derivatives Exchange in June of last year with the goal of attracting more retail traders to its platform. This week’s news shows that the company recognizes the potential attraction its exchange could have for institutional investors, as well. Regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the CDE will leverage its new TNS-provided financial trading infrastructure to enable institutional investors to grow their storage capabilities and process large data sets with less delay.
Digital banking solutions company Payfare is expanding to offer clients earned wage access.
Payfare will target workers in Canada and in the U.S., which it estimates to have a total addressable market of over 131 million people.
Payfare’s solutions target gig workers and its client base include Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash.
Digital banking solutions company Payfare is expanding into the earned wage access (EWA) market. The move will enable the company’s one million active users to receive access to wages they’ve already earned.
The Canada-based company believes the move will benefit its one million active users across the U.S. and Canada by smoothing out their cashflow. By jumping into EWA, Payfare joins a handful of fintechs already operating in the space, including Payactiv, Wagestream, DailyPay, and more.
Founded in 2015, Payfare serves both end consumers and businesses with digital banking, instant payment, and loyalty rewards solutions. The company offers gig workers and contract laborers faster access to their earnings with a payout debit card featuring cashback rewards and tandem mobile app with financial wellness tools. Businesses can use Payfare’s technology to send payouts to their workforce with lower processing fees than traditional paycheck services.
“We don’t believe payday loans should exist in the modern world with real time integration to payroll records as well as the capability to repay at source,” said Payfare CEO and Founding Partner Marco Margiotta. “We have built an award-winning digital banking product that has helped our gig platform partners reduce their worker acquisition costs and boost productivity. We look forward to sharing progress on our expansion into EWA over the course of 2023.”
Payfare reports the market for an EWA tool is sizable in both the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., for example, more than 78 million workers earn a wage hourly, more than 131 million people earn an annual salary of less than $75,000, and 12 million people rely on a payday loan at least once a year. In Canada, over 22 million people earn under $75,000 annually.
Since inception, Payfare has raised $49 million (C$65.4 million). The company’s clients include gig worker platforms such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has selected AutoRek to feature its technology in its FedNow Service Provider Showcase.
The showcase will give the Scotland-based company the ability to offer its payments technology, including automated reconciliation software, to financial services providers in the U.S.
AutoRek made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope 2023.
AutoRek, an end-to-end financial data control platform, has been selected by the U.S. Federal Reserve to feature in its FedNow Service Provider Showcase. The Showcase connects financial institutions with providers that offer real-time payment solutions. As a featured provider, AutoRek will have the opportunity to “offer a number of its instant payment services to U.S. financial services organizations preparing for the new real-time payments system.”
The FedNow Service is an instant payments infrastructure developed by the Federal Reserve. Going live in July, the technology will enable consumers and businesses alike to send and receive payments in real-time. The Federal Reserve launched its FedNow Service Provider Showcase just over a year ago in March. The Showcase is an online resource that facilitates connections between financial institutions and businesses looking to adopt the FedNow service with service providers in the instant payments space. AutoRek offers banks and payments companies the ability to implement and improve on instant payments with solutions for data management, automated real-time reconciliation and machine learning, reporting, and automating workflows.
“As part of the FedNow community, we know we’ll be able to add huge value to all organizations embarking on the journey of instant payments,” AutoRek Global Payments Sales Manager Nick Botha said. “With our solutions, banks and payments companies will be able to save time, increase efficiency and scale at speed while ensuring complete financial control across their business.”
AutoRek made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London. At the conference, the company demoed its global automated reconciliation software. The technology leverages machine learning and other technologies to help financial institutions better manage high-volume reconciliation challenges, improve auditability, and reduce operating costs.
Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, AutoRek rebranded in February of this year to better position itself to enter new growth sectors, such as payments. The company, which has tripled in size since 2020, has more than 100+ leading financial services clients and has processed more than 2.4 billion transactions since inception.
“At a time when technological developments are happening at a faster rate than ever before, anticipating where the market is going next is the only way to stay at the cutting edge,” AutoRek founder and CEO Gordon McHarg said when the rebrand was announced earlier this year. “And this rebrand represents AutoRek’s commitment to and belief in the need for continuous innovation.”
SoFi is saying, “Welcome home!” to Wyndham Capital Mortgage this week. The California-based fintech acquired the mortgage lender yesterday in an all-cash transaction for an undisclosed amount.
Headquartered in North Carolina and founded in 2001, Wyndham Capital has worked with more than 100,000 borrowers.
SoFi, which is acquiring Wyndham Capital’s technology and its employees, expects the purchase will broaden its mortgage-related offerings and minimize its reliance on third-party partners and processes.
“At SoFi, we’re on a mission to help people get their money right and purchasing a home is often one of, if not the, biggest financial decision individuals make in their lives,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto. “Today’s acquisition of Wyndham Capital will not only allow us to scale and keep pace with accelerated growth, but also allow us to foster that growth in a way that brings value to our members through sales and operational efficiencies and helps members get their money right when it comes to one of life’s most significant financial milestones.”
SoFi, which presented at Finovate’s developers conference in 2017, launched in 2011 to disrupt the student lending market. Since then, the company has added a variety of banking products– including personal loans, auto refinancing, credit cards, investing, checking, savings, insurance, and others– to become a more holistic banking option for consumers. SoFi sealed its status as a bank last January, when it received approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company.
It’s a reasonable time for SoFi to double-down on mortgages to diversify from its flagship offerings, student loans. The company may be starting to feel heat from the loss of revenue from its student loan refinancing tools. In fact, SoFi went to such an extreme last month as to sue the Biden administration for its continued pause on federal student loan repayments. The fintech argues that the moratorium, which has been extended eight times over three years, has no legal basis.
SoFi estimates it has lost $6 million in profits from the latest extension and, expects losses to total $30 million if the moratorium continues through August. “In essence, SoFi is being forced to compete with loans with 0% interest rates and for which any ongoing repayment of the principal is entirely optional,” SoFi argues in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court and is expected to be resolved by June.
Amsterdam-based digital bank bunq announced plans to expand to the U.S.
The bank will be targeting the population of five million European expatriates living in the U.S.
Since launching in 2012, bunq has expanded to more than 30 markets in Europe and now facilitates payments in 16 different currencies.
Amsterdam-based digital bank bunqannounced this week it is “bringing the bank of The Free to the land of The Free,” meaning it has officially applied for a U.S. banking license.
Founded in 2012, bunq set out to make a bank that customers love to use that is designed to make life easy. When the company received its European banking license in 2014, it was the first organization in 35 years to do so. Since then, bunq has expanded to more than 30 markets in Europe and now facilitates payments in 16 different currencies, provides both personal and business banking accounts, and offers a mortgage product.
When bunq launches in the U.S., the company will target the population of five million digital nomads– European expatriates and businesses operating in the U.S. that struggle to obtain a traditional bank account as non-U.S. citizens.
“We’re going stateside with a simple proposition, offering a banking product that enables U.S. consumers and businesses to bypass banking bureaucracy by opening a fully fledged international bank account in just five minutes,” said bunq Founder and CEO Ali Niknam. “Using bunq, they can effortlessly manage their finances from anywhere in the world.”
bunq has received $260 million in funding and was valued at $1.9 billion in 2021. The company recently became profitable, having secured $2.5 million in profit in the last quarter of 2022. If successful in its mission to obtain a U.S. banking license, bunq may be able to build on that profitability into the rough waters of 2023.
Other European fintechs have proven that the route to success in the U.S. may not be easy, however. Germany’s N26 pulled out of the U.S. market in late 2021 after initially launching in the region in 2019. When U.K.-based Monzo faced difficulties securing its U.S. banking license in 2021, the fintech ultimately decided to partner with a traditional bank to launch its services stateside. Similarly, Revolut is also working with a partner bank in the U.S., though it is currently awaiting the approval of its U.S. banking license.
“In our opinion, applying for a U.S. license is the only way we can maintain independence and provide The Free with the easy and safe banking experience they deserve,” said Niknam. Will bunq’s U.S. expansion look like that of other European digital banks that have gone before it? If it does, the company may need to sacrifice a bit of that independence and find a partner bank that shares its vision to create “the bank of The Free.”
“Kroll’s exceptional reputation for thought leadership in the risk and advisory space is well-known over the world,” EverC CEO Ariel Tiger said. “Working so closely together offers a significant competitive advantage.” Tiger added that having Kroll as both an investor and as a partner would help EverC build its “global brand with innovative technology to help make ecommerce more safe, secure, and profitable for payment providers, platforms, and marketplaces.”
The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but ahead of the funding EverC has raised more than $61 million in equity capital, according to Crunchbase. Kroll is an independent provider of risk and financial advisory solutions, founded in 1972 and headquartered in New York. Kroll was acquired by Duff and Phelps in 2018. Duff & Phelps rebranded as Kroll in 2021.
The partnership between Kroll and EverC comes as demand grows for fraud detection and prevention tools that can keep up with the increased pace of cyberattacks and illicit ecommerce activity in the payments industry. Calling “transaction laundering” the modern-day equivalent of money laundering, EverC provides innovative solutions such as its MerchantView technology. MerchantView helps companies reduce and avoid fines, protect their brands, and remain compliant by helping them identify illicit transaction behavior. EverC also offers MarketView, a solution for marketplaces that automatically detects and removes false, illegal, and/or dangerous products.
Earlier this year, EverC announced that it had forged a strategic partnership with KPMG. The partnership will combine the financial advisory expertise of KPMG with EverC’s innovations in the ecommerce risk space to help companies grow while successfully managing risk. “As payments providers and marketplaces face an increasingly challenging threat landscape, they will seek ecosystem partners to provide innovative solutions and expert guidance to support their growth,” Tiger said.
Stratyfy raised $10 million in funding last week in a round co-led by Truist Ventures and Zeal Capital Partners.
The capital takes the company’s total equity funding to $11.8 million, according to Crunchbase. Stratyfy will use the investment to fuel innovation on its technology that leverages AI and ML to help financial institutions make better, data-driven decisions.
Stratyfy won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2022 with a demo of its UnBias solution.
Stratyfy, which leverages AI to enable financial institutions to make better decisions at scale and drive greater financial inclusion, has raised $10 million in funding. The round was co-led by Truist Ventures and Zeal Capital Partners. Also participating were Mendon Venture Partners, The 98, FIS, and serial entrepreneur Barry J. Glick.
The New York-based company will use the funding to continue innovating its technology that helps financial institutions use AI-driven decision-making to enhance credit risk decisioning, fraud detection, bias mitigation, and more. The investment takes Stratyfy’s total equity funding to $11.8 million, according to Crunchbase.
“Stratyfy is growing fast as financial institutions recognize the urgent need to improve transparency and reduce bias in their decision processes,” Stratyfy co-founder and CEO Laura Kornhauser said. “With the increased adoption of AI and machine learning, transparency and controls around these solutions are essential so that the biases of our past do not encode into our future.”
Stratyfy made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2018. The company returned to the Finovate stage four years later and took home a Best of Show award for a live demo of its UnBias solution. Delivered via API, UnBias enables users to continuously identify and address sources of bias in complex financial decisions. UnBias is part of Stratyfy’s suite of transparent machine learning tools developed to help financial institutions minimize bias, promote financial inclusion, and drive risk-adjusted returns.
Founded in 2017, Stratyfy has helped customers like Aflac boost their fraud flagging ability by 2.6x, and detect fraud 28 weeks faster on average, while simultaneously reducing the effort and resources needed to identify fraud by 66%.
“Our investment in Stratyfy is an opportunity to learn about innovative technologies, commercialize impactful solutions, and positively support our communities,” Truist Ventures Head of Corporate Development Tarun Mehta said. “Our platform of senior executives and technical experts look forward to being a part of the development and growth of this mission-driven, disruptive company.”
