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Finovate Global Germany: Sustainable Investing for Families and Embedded Lending for SMEs

Finovate Global Germany: Sustainable Investing for Families and Embedded Lending for SMEs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Klarna, Nubank, Token, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech developments in Germany.

German fintech Bling launched its SavingsTrees solution this week. The new offering helps German families invest sustainably starting with as little as €1 a month. The solution is offered in partnership with wealthtech Evergreen, and represents an evolution in Bling’s product line, expanding from its origins as a family money management educational app and prepaid card.

“Simplicity and sustainability were paramount in the development of our investment offering,” Bling CEO and co-founder Nils Feigenwinter explained. “We prioritize families in our product development to offer a tailored solution that meets their needs. Everyone underestimates the market potential of families, which is why banks have neglected this area for decades. With Bling, we are addressing this.”

Cost savings was one of the reasons why Bling reached out to Evergreen. Cost is also one of the main reasons why more than 80% of German parents do not invest in the country’s capital markets, according to Bling. The complexity of investing and a lack of knowledge about investment products also have contributed to this lack of participation. To this end, Bling leverages visualizations and explanations from finance experts to make the investment process easier to understand.

Funds invested in SavingsTrees are globally diversified and are allocated specifically to sustainable investments. Direct investments in sustainable projects and companies, are available, as are investments in funds that support sustainability initiatives.

Read more about Bling in this TechCrunch profile from December.

Banxware, an embedded lending technology provider headquartered in Germany, has teamed up with Netherlands-based Rabobank to help SMEs secure the financing they need in order to grow. Rabobank will take advantage of Banxware’s embedded lending solution, which enables businesses to apply for short-term financing in as little as 15 minutes. After approval, funds can be available in the borrower’s account within 24 hours.

“This partnership brings Embedded Financing products tailored to the need of SMEs to popular business platforms,” Banxware CEO Miriam Wohlfarth said. “Together with Rabobank we now provide the full financing supply chain, including funds and end-to-end loan management to bridge cash flow shortfalls before they become an issue.”

The deployment will let business founders and owners apply for financing in familiar, everyday digital environments such as e-commerce platforms and booking software. Each firm will focus initially on marketing the solution in their home markets of Germany and the Netherlands, respectively.

Banxware’s partnership announcement follows news that the Berlin-based fintech had teamed up with liquidity management and financial planning company Agicap. Based in France, Agicap helps businesses automate, manage, and forecast their cash flows. Via its strategic partnership with Banxware, Agicap will add access to quick and tailored growth capital to its liquidity management offering.

“From now on, (SMEs) can not only see and manage their cash flows in a centered way, but they can also get new money when there are opportunities for growth,” Agicap Country Manager DE Stephan Krehl said.

Founded in 2020, Banxware is headquartered in Berlin. The company has raised $15 million (€14 million) in funding from investors including Varengold Bank and Element Ventures.

Finovate is proud to showcase fintech innovations from companies headquartered in Germany. This includes hosting our annual European fintech conference in Berlin in 2020.

Here’s a quick list of some of the Germany-based companies that have demoed their fintech innovations on the Finovate stage over the years.

  • aixigo
  • ayondo
  • Bitbond
  • BörseGo 
  • Cash Payment Solutions
  • Coconet
  • collectAI
  • Device Ident
  • Ecolytiq
  • figo
  • Fincite
  • FinTecSystems
  • Fintura
  • HAWK:AI
  • iBrokr
  • IND Group
  • Kreditech
  • Mambu
  • Modifi
  • NDGIT
  • Nextmarkets
  • Open Bank Project (OBP)
  • payever
  • Payworks
  • Pockets United
  • Risk Ident
  • Scalable Capital
  • Smartify.it
  • SOFORT
  • SwipeStox
  • TeamViewer
  • TESOBE
  • Vaamo
  • YUKKA Lab

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egypt-based fintech Axis launched its new digital payments platform, AxisPay
  • Dubai Islamic Bank launched its DIB ‘alt’ product, a new digital umbrella brand for the bank’s digital offerings.
  • UAE-based B2B fintech solutions provider FOO introduced its prepaid travel card and white label digital wallet.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India-based digital lender Lentra raised $27 million in a Series B extension round.
  • BNE Intellinews profiled Uzbekistani SME lender, Oasis.
  • India’s PayU partnered with Visa and Yes Bank to launch its Business Payment Solution Provider program.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Argentina-based mobile banking company Uala launched a new saving account offering in Mexico.
  • Brazil’s Nubank reached one million accounts in Mexico milestone in one month.
  • Lanistar introduced crypto trading on its app for users in Brazil.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based B2B payment infrastructure platform Thunes raised $60 million in Series C funding.
  • International payments software provider OpenWay launched a second hub in Vietnam.
  • Wise platform inked its first Japanese partnership, teaming up with GMO Aozora Net Bank.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian fintech Flutterwave forged a partnership with account-to-account (A2A) payments company Token.io.
  • International payment solutions company Unlimit secured license to operate in Kenya two months after expanding to Nigeria.
  • Harvard Business Review asked and answered the question “What African Fintech Startups Can Teach Silicon Valley About Longevity?”

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Klarna brought its Pay in 3 offering to Romania this week.
  • German identity verification company IDnow added automated document liveness capabilities, financial risk checks, and more to its platform.
  • International development agency USAID partnered with Albanian business solutions provider CBS to launch, Lores Plus, a platform to help Albanian SMEs get access to financing.

Photo by javier gonzalez

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SoFi at Work Launches Student Loan Verification Service 

SoFi at Work Launches Student Loan Verification Service 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SoFi
  • SoFi’s SoFi at Work is launching a Student Loan Verification service this week that will help employers match their workforce’s student loan repayments with retirement contributions.
  • The tool comes in response to Congress’ SECURE 2.0 Act that allows employers to match their employees’ student loan repayments with retirement contributions.
  • In addition to Student Loan Verification, SoFi at Work also helps employers offer student loan refinancing, repayment options, a debt navigator tool, financial education resources, and more.

SoFi’s SoFi at Work program is launching a new Student Loan Verification (SLV) service this week. The new tool will help companies match their employee’s student loan repayments with retirement contributions.

SLV will be added to SoFi at Work’s portfolio of employer financial wellness benefit solutions. The launch comes in response to Congress’ Securing a Strong Retirement Act (SECURE 2.0), which allows employers to match their employees’ student loan payments with contributions toward retirement plans.

“At SoFi, we’re dedicated to helping people get their money right, and SECURE 2.0 and the provision that makes it easier for companies to support all employees’ financial well-being is a great example of that,” said SoFi at Work Vice President, Business Lead Barrett Scruggs. “Our Student Loan Verification service makes it easy for companies to put this emerging, yet highly impactful benefit into action for a more inclusive future.”

According to a 2019 study from MIT, 84% of adults with student loan debt say it has impacted the amount they’re able to save for retirement. With SLV and SECURE 2.0, companies can enable their workers to contribute to their 401(k) or 403(b) plan while paying down their student debt.

Launched in 2016, SoFi at Work aims to help employers offer their workforce student loan refinancing, repayment options, a debt navigator tool, financial education resources, and more. Seven out of 10 Fortune 500 tech firms currently offer the perk to their employees.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

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FinovateSpring Demo Videos Now Available

FinovateSpring Demo Videos Now Available
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2023

Great news for those who missed out on FinovateSpring last month– the demo videos from the event are now available!

You can now watch all 44 demo videos that graced the Finovate stage. Don’t know where to start? Take a peek at the six Best of Show-winning demos, linked below.

Want to know their secrets to earning the Best of Show title? This year’s Best of Show-winning companies offer their tips on winning Best of Show in the video highlight below:

And for more multimedia content, don’t forget to check out the full FinovateSpring 2023 photo reel on Flickr.

Thanks to our demo companies, presenters, panelists, partners, sponsors, and to our audience for participating in this year’s event. We’ll see you at FinovateFall!

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Alternative Bank and Payment Data Firm Ribbit Acquires ValidiFi

Alternative Bank and Payment Data Firm Ribbit Acquires ValidiFi
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, ValidiFI
  • Alternative bank and payment data company RIBBIT has acquired risk mitigation and compliance solution provider ValidiFi.
  • The amount of the transaction was not immediately available.
  • ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2019.

ValidiFi founder and CEO Oscar DiVeroli noted the “commonality of entrepreneurial grit and innovation” among upsides of the newly-announced acquisition of his company by RIBBIT, an alternative bank and payment data provider.

Reported late last week, the acquisition will combine RIBBIT’s predictive analytics and data assets with ValidiFi’s verification and compliance solutions. The goal is to create the largest alternative database of bank and payment data in the market. “I’m excited about the enormous opportunity to bring these two dynamic, industry-leading companies together,” RIBBIT CEO Greg Rable said. “The combination of talented people, robust data, and best-in-class products makes this a win-win for our customers and for us.”

Existing investor ABS Capital supported RIBBIT in the acquisition, along with new investor MissionOG.

ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2019. At the conference, the company demoed its Payment Risk Optimizer (PRO) technology. PRO is a Platform-as-a-Service solution that scrubs payment files for ACH and card payments. The technology leverages proprietary payment instrument data services to assess the likelihood of a successful payment. PRO can be used to schedule recurring payments for customers, or to create a subscription service, on-demand marketplace, retail store, or gateway.

“Today there are 22 billion dollars of bank overdraft and NSF fees that are charged to merchants and to consumers each and every year,” ValidiFi Chief Operating Officer Jesse Berger said from the Finovate stage in September. “The PRO all but eliminates NSF overdraft fees to consumers and return fees to the merchants. It uses automated workflows and real-time AI source data from the banks directly to verify and validate how much funds are available in the bank account. The PRO solves that age-old question of whether or not a payment transaction will go through successfully.”

Founded in March 2015, ValidiFi is based in Sunrise, Florida. The company began 2023 as a Nacha Preferred Partner for Account Verification, earning the certification in January.

Photo by Pixabay

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Plaid Unveils New Identity Verification Experience

Plaid Unveils New Identity Verification Experience
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Plaid
  • Plaid released updates to its digital identity verification tool it launched last fall.
  • The update taps into the scale of the Plaid network to offer faster identity verification and a deeper risk insights.
  • Plaid’s overhaul also expands the types of identity documents it accepts, adds front-end support for more languages, provides a fake ID risk score, and improves the document capture experience.

Financial infrastructure fintech Plaid is updating a feature it launched last year that tackles one of the most pressing topics in fintech– digital identity.

At launch, Plaid’s identity verification tool offered consumers a one-click identity verification product that standardized a “verify once, verify everywhere” approach. As a result, users could authenticate themselves faster and with less friction, and organizations could remain KYC compliant.

And on the business side, these efficiencies are paying off. Companies using Plaid’s identity verification are reporting an average of 50% improvement of identity verification success rates.

Today’s update makes a handful of improvements on the current offering.

First, the upgrade enables Plaid Identity Verification customers to benefit from the scale of Plaid’s network. By leveraging its network, Plaid is able to offer faster verification experiences for end users while providing the organization with a more complete view of a user’s risk via their identity, financial account, and transactions.

“Now, when a user verifies their identity and links their accounts with Plaid, we detect if your customer is linking a bank account that belongs to them,” the company explained in a blog post. “We match onboarding data from identity verification with the financial institution information on file for an added layer of security.”

Next, Plaid has added a new score that indicates the likelihood that an identity has been stolen, fabricated, or manipulated. The company has also expanded the ID document types it accepts to include green cards and temporary ID cards like B1/B2 visas, and now supports front-end support for more languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and French. In addition, Plaid has improved its document capture experience to increase conversion by guiding the user’s capture window, optimizing image file sizes, and supporting more devices.

Plaid’s identity verification service is crucial for financial services firms and third-party providers. While these entities excel in their respective subsectors, they may lack a seamless identity verification solution. However, such a solution is essential not only for creating a pleasant user experience but also for meeting regulatory KYC requirements. Plaid’s service acts as a lifeline, bridging this gap and providing the necessary identity verification capabilities.

With $734 million in funding, Plaid helps 12,000+ financial institutions offer their customers access to its network of 7,000 third party financial services via a suite of APIs that connects consumers, financial institutions, and developers. The company also offers a suite of analytics products that provides further insights into transactions. Plaid was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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Flutterwave and Token.io Enable Pay-By-Bank Transfers in U.K. and E.U.

Flutterwave and Token.io Enable Pay-By-Bank Transfers in U.K. and E.U.
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Token
  • Flutterwave is integrating account-to-account payment infrastructure from Token.io.
  • Using Token.io’s technology, Flutterwave will add A2A payments to its Collect Payments and Send by Flutterwave products.
  • A2A payments are projected to exceed 6.5 billion in annual global volumes by 2027.

Africa-based payments technology company Flutterwave announced this week it has selected account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure provider Token.io to power A2A payments– also known as pay-by-bank capabilities– on its platform.

The move is expected to simplify money transfers for Flutterwave’s African users in the U.K. and E.U. looking to send money back to their home country.

Token.io was founded in 2016 and leverages open banking to offer payment providers the infrastructure they need to launch A2A payment capabilities without a team of developers. With a single API, payment providers can help their end users pay without a payment card. Token.io supports more than 567 million bank accounts– representing more than 80% of bank accounts held– in 16 supported countries.

Flutterwave has integrated Token.io’s technology to help clients of its Collect Payments product offer their end customers A2A payments. The pay-by-bank capabilities will also be available on Flutterwave’s cross-border payments platform, Send by Flutterwave, in the third quarter of this year.

The addition of the new payments method comes at an ideal time. According to Token.io CEO Todd Clyde, A2A payments are projected to exceed 6.5 billion in annual global volumes by 2027.

“Our partnership with Token.io will make it even faster and easier for individuals and businesses to pay and receive money,” said Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola. “By partnering with Token.io to provide Account-to-Account payments to our customers, Flutterwave will advance its mission of connecting Africa to the global economy.”

Flutterwave aims to create a flexible and affordable way for Africans to pay in the digital era. The company, which accepts payments in more than 30 currencies, processes an average of 500,000 payments each day. In addition to its payments technology, Flutterwave also offers invoicing technology, business loans, and analytics tools. Since it was founded in 2016, Flutterwave has raised more than $470 million and has processed over 400 million transactions worth over $25 billion.

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Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform

Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Glean AI
  • Glean.ai has launched its Automated Accruals solution to help finance teams more accurately report costs.
  • The new offering is a feature of Glean.ai’s intelligent AP platform.
  • The company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall in New York.

Spend management solutions company Glean.ai has announced new functionality for its Intelligent AP platform. The company recently unveiled its Automated Accruals technology, which will help companies more accurately report costs.

“Managing accruals manually in spreadsheets and over email is very time-consuming, error-prone, and can lead to an inaccurate reporting of expenses,” Glean.ai Growth Marketing Manager Spencer Campbell noted in a company blog post. Campbell wrote that reconciling accrued expenses is one of the “most time-consuming parts” of any accountant’s close process. “They have to determine which costs have been incurred by their company that have not been invoiced yet,” Campbell explained, “if invoices have been received for prior accruals, and if prior estimates of costs incurred were sufficient.”

To this problem, Glean.ai has introduced Automated Accruals as the latest feature on its spend management platform. The enhancement works by alerting users to potential accruals based on either past billing patterns or budget expectations. This enables finance teams to consult directly with vendors to determine if services were performed and to secure estimates for costs. From here, users can record the expense amount, record date, and reversal date for the accrual. Glean.ai’s technology automatically syncs the entries to the user’s general ledger, and also features real-time reporting to ensure transparency and a comprehensive view of all accrued expenses whether they are booked or reversed.

The addition of automated accruals, according to Glean.ai, is an example of the smart automation that drives the firm’s innovations. The company uses the phrase “Intelligent AP” to describe its approach to leveraging the data that flows AP and accounting to automate processes and empower decision-making.

Howard Katzenberg (CEO), Ankur Patel (Head of Data), and Alexander Jia (Head of Product) co-founded Glean.ai in 2020. The company demoed its technology in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September of last year. At the conference, Katzenberg talked about how millions of small businesses inadvertently overspend when paying vendors. This occurs, Katzenberg said, due to errors or other costs that could be reduced or eliminated with greater scrutiny. “Fifteen percent of their cash is silently walking out the door,” he said. To this end, Glean.ai analyzes all of the business’ bills at the line item level. This enables the technology to track purchases, prices, and volumes, and deliver “timely, relevant, and actionable ways to save money.”

Katzenberg added, “There are many AP solutions that will help you pay your vendors quicker, but there are none that will help you pay your vendors less – until now.”

Glean.ai is headquartered in New York. The company has raised more than $10 million in funding from investors including Outpost Ventures and B Capital Group.

Photo by Pixabay

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Fintech, Financial Services, and the LGBTQ Community

Fintech, Financial Services, and the LGBTQ Community
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Report series

What are the biggest challenges, concerns, and factors that impact LGBTQ financial consumers in 2023?

A wide-ranging survey by the Center for American Progress (CAP) from the beginning of the year actually sheds some light on the relationship between financial services themselves and the LGBTQ community. This knowledge can help guide banks, fintechs, and financial services providers better tailor their products, services, and experiences for a more diverse customer base.

Here’s one interesting example. The LGBTQ respondents tended to have higher employment rates compared to the non-LGBTQ respondents. At the same time, members of the LGBTQ community were more likely than members of the non-LGBTQ community to be engaged in part-time, freelance, or gig economy work. In the latter category, LGBTQ respondents outnumbered non-LGBTQ respondents 5% to 1%. With regard to transgender respondents, they were twice as likely as non-transgender respondents to report working part time.

These survey results have significant implications for financial services companies. Among other things, the responses underscore the importance of mobile and remote access to financial services. This includes features like virtual assistants to ensure 24/7/365 service for workers with atypical or irregular working hours. Offerings like Earned Wage Access can help workers smooth out irregular cash flows for part-time workers. Additionally, LGBTQ respondents to the CAP survey reported incomes that were on average lower than those of non-LGBTQ respondents. Providing cash flow services can be a way of helping this community avoid the temptation of more costly and potentially predatory financing options.

These responses also suggest a new approach for financing and lending services companies. In order to compete, they may need to think differently about creditworthy potential borrowers who don’t have traditional employment histories. The trend toward an embrace of alternative data in credit scoring is a good development, and one that is likely to benefit LGBTQ communities. The same is true about initiatives to deal with the challenge of bias in AI.

Both as workers in the financial services industry and consumers of financial services, members of the LGBTQ community suffer from discrimination and harassment. This can range from verbal harassment to the denial of equal access to services. While many companies in the financial services industry have been commended for their LGBTQ-friendly policies and environments, ensuring that the financial services workplace is free from anti-LGBTQ behavior is important for both workers and customers alike.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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Mitigram Raises $11 Million for its Global Trade Financing Platform

Mitigram Raises $11 Million for its Global Trade Financing Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, Fundings
  • Global trade financing platform Mitigram landed $11 million in funding.
  • The investment will bring Mitigram’s total funding to $38 million.
  • Mitigram will use the funding to scale its operations via software-as-a-service offerings.

Digital global trade financing platform Mitigram announced today it received $11 million in funding, boosting its total raised to $38 million.

The company will use the funds to scale its operations via software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and add competitive advantage by scaling its network. “The lack of connectivity is trade finance’s biggest cost,” said Mitigram’s Interim CEO Malin Bäcklund. “Around 4 billion paper documents are manually generated, checked and transported in trade each year, which creates the perfect storm for high operating costs and a spiraling lack of control. At Mitigram, we are passionate about closing the gap that is estimated to cost the industry $4 trillion in total each year. This new funding round will allow us to continue doing exactly that.”

Mitigram was founded in 2014, creating a digital exchange in global trade financing. The company offers three main products:

  • MitiSquare, which helps companies assess risks, capacity, and pricing from partner banks in global trade financing.
  • MitiManager, which allows organizations to view, manage, and structure all trade financing data.
  • MitiGateway, which digitizes origination records and manages the end customer experience.

Among the company’s clients are Louis Dreyfus Company, Bridgestone, Vale, Ericsson, ArcelorMittal, Trafigura, Siemens Healthineers, and over 150 banks.

As part of today’s announcement Mitigram CEO Milena Torciano is stepping down, but will remain on the company’s board of directors. Bäcklund, who currently serves as CEO of Moor Holding, will act as interim CEO until a replacement is found.

“We founded Mitigram with the mission to open up a closed market, and to streamline and augment global trade and I am incredibly proud of the tremendous growth that we have achieved since I joined six years ago,” said Torciano. “Today, we are trusted by more than 300 multinational corporations, leading commodity traders and financial institutions, and have facilitated $100+ billion in flows currently across 185 markets. This investment is an excellent opportunity to further build on the strong foundations we have established, and to deliver best practice for digitalized trade finance.”

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

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Payouts-as-a-Service Innovator PayQuicker Unveils Three New Fintech Partnerships

Payouts-as-a-Service Innovator PayQuicker Unveils Three New Fintech Partnerships
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, PayQuicker
  • Global payouts platform PayQuicker announced three new fintech partnerships this week.
  • The company has teamed up with Qolo, Web3 infrastructure company Fortress, and payments platform Citcom.
  • PayQuicker made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall in New York.

International payouts platform PayQuicker announced a trio of new fintech partnerships this week. The company has teamed up with Qolo, Fortress, and Citcon, who will take advantage of and enhance the functionality of PayQuicker’s Payouts OS platform. PayQuicker recently demoed the technology at FinovateFall.

“No single bank or payment provider can solve for cross-border payments alone,” PayQuicker President Charles Rosenblatt said. “We are uniting the power of these notable partners under our first in-market payouts orchestration platform to bring agile, secure, and convenient payout methods to businesses, and bring hard-earned money to gig and alternative workforces around the globe.”

Qolo will serve as an issuing-processing partner for PayQuicker’s Payouts OS. The company will issue an advanced suite of card solutions for corporate as well as SME business clients. This will make it easier for firms who need to make payouts to gig economy workers, for example, or to marketplace sellers. Fortress is a Web3 infrastructure company. Its partnership will enable PayQuicker to offer its clients a stablecoin wallet for payees. This will allow businesses to make disbursements in crypto instead of fiat currency. Lastly, Citcon is a global payment platform that offers solutions for payments in-store, online, and via mobile. PayQuicker customers around the world will gain new outlets via the collaboration.

“By combining Citcon’s robust global payment networks with PayQuicker’s expertise in secure and efficient payouts, we are empowering businesses to streamline their operations and enhance user experiences,” Citcon co-founder, President, and COO Wei Jiang said.

PayQuicker’s Payouts OS platform leverages a single REST API to deliver turnkey integration for multiple banks and global payment rails. The technology intelligently determines and facilitates the fastest and most cost-effective payout method for a given client. This includes saving clients time and money by comparing the processing and interchange fees.

Joined by company Chief Technology Officer James Legan, PayQuicker’s Rosenblatt demoed Payouts OS at the company’s appearance at FinovateFall last year. The team showed how the company has used Payouts OS to enable instant payouts in more than 200 countries and territories. These payouts were in local currencies and disbursed via prepaid debit card, virtual cards, and mobile wallets. “Payouts OS is the first Payouts-as-a-Service product,” Rosenblatt explained from the Finovate stage in September, “a payment orchestration platform for payouts that allows companies to go out and get the best rate, the best speed.” He added, “It will use lowest cost routing in order to be able to determine that for our clients.”

Founded in 2007, PayQuicker is baed in Rochester, New York.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán

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Coinbase Charged for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange

Coinbase Charged for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Coinbase

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced today it has charged Coinbase for operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency; and for failing to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.

Specifically, the SEC is alleging that Coinbase:

  • Provides a marketplace and brings together the orders for securities of multiple buyers and sellers using established, non-discretionary methods under which such orders interact
  • Engages in the business of effecting securities transactions for the accounts of Coinbase customers
  • Provides facilities for comparison of data respecting the terms of settlement of crypto asset securities transactions, serves as an intermediary in settling transactions in crypto asset securities by Coinbase customers, and acts as a securities depository

“We allege that Coinbase, despite being subject to the securities laws, commingled and unlawfully offered exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “In other parts of our securities markets, these functions are separate. Coinbase’s alleged failures deprive investors of critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC. Further, as we allege, Coinbase never registered its staking-as-a-service program as required by the securities laws, again depriving investors of critical disclosure and other protections.”

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, who testified yesterday before the House Committee on Agricultural Services on the new Digital Asset Market Structure Discussion Draft, said in a blog post that U.S. crypto firms are lacking clear rules for operating in the crypto space. In fact, Coinbase has been asking regulators for months to work together to help build regulation around crypto. The fintech has been straightforward that it wants to operate within regulation, but the SEC hasn’t been willing to work with Coinbase to define regulations.

Much of the issue between the two parties hinges on a lack of definition. Coinbase insists that it does not list securities on its platform, while the SEC has called out 61 cryptocurrencies that it believes are securities.

All of this back-and-forth has made two things clear. First, as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong explains in a TV commercial, crypto in the U.S. has valuable use cases, and companies need clear rules to operate in the space:

Second, regulators are making it very difficult for U.S. companies to facilitate crypto transfers. Today’s news comes a day after the SEC sued Binance CEO and Founder Changpeng Zhao for operating unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers, and clearing agencies; misrepresenting trading controls and oversight on the Binance.US platform; and for the unregistered offer and sale of securities.

In a tweet earlier today, Armstrong highlighted that the SEC’s suit against Binance is different from its suit against Coinbase. “Btw, in case it’s not obvious, the Coinbase suit is very different from others out there – the complaint filed against us is exclusively focused on what is or is not a security. And we are confident in our facts and the law,” he said.

Regardless of the differences, in my view, the SEC is making examples out of these crypto firms to not only serve as a warning to other companies operating in the crypto space, but to also drive down consumer interest in holding digital assets.

Armstrong also used Twitter to reinforce what his company has been saying for months. “Regarding the SEC complaint against us today, we’re proud to represent the industry in court to finally get some clarity around crypto rules,” he said. “Remember:

  1. The SEC reviewed our business and allowed us to become a public company in 2021.
  2. There is no path to come in and register – we tried, repeatedly – so we don’t list securities. We reject the vast majority of assets we review.
  3. The SEC and CFTC have made conflicting statements, and don’t even agree on what is a security and what is a commodity.
  4. This is why the US congress is introducing new legislation to fix the situation, and the rest of the world is moving to put clear rules in place to support this technology.

Instead of publishing a clear rule book, the SEC has taken a regulation by enforcement approach that is harming America. So if we need to avail ourselves of the courts to get clarity, so be it.”

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA

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Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves of FinovateEurope

Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves of FinovateEurope
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 10x Banking, CEO Interview, FinTech Insights by Scientia, Interview, NayaOne, Podcasting, TAZI AI

Join Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer (@GregPalmer47) as he catches up with the innovators that earned top honors at FinovateEurope earlier this year!

Greg Palmer talks with Karan Jain of NayaOne on streamlining and de-risking the onboarding process. Episode 168. Demo video.

“NayaOne is a digital transformation platform that helps you leverage the fintech ecosystem. We work with product, innovation, and tech teams in banks and insurance companies to help them get their products to market much, much quicker. We have synthetic data sets and building tools on the platform. Typically, it takes companies nine to twelve months to begin working with a fintech. Our customers can get to that outcome in about six to eight weeks.”

Greg Palmer and Nickolas Belesis of Fintech Insights discuss understanding the competitive landscape in fintech and financial services. Episode 170. Demo video.

“We provide the industry with a digital banking market research platform that’s analyzing the digital offerings of banks, fintechs, credit unions, across the U.S. and worldwide. We analyze – from A to Z – what the banks, fintechs, and credit unions are offering, how they offer it, (and) how well they offer it, all while providing them with the ability to benchmark against the market and organize their product roadmap to implement their digital banking strategies.”

Greg Palmer chats with Nicole Sanders and George Broom of 10x Banking on streamlining product development and getting to market faster. Episode 171. Demo video.

“10x is a cloud-native banking platform that acts like a real-time operating system for banks. It allows you to build and run your bank at record speed at a fraction of the cost. We demonstrated that at Finovate through the use of our Bank Manager UI application. This allows product managers at banks to build products in minutes rather than months. In that seven minutes, we built a current account with a card and also a loan ready for launch to production.”

Greg Palmer interviews Zehra Cataltepe of TAZI AI on using AI where it will impact the bottom line. Episode 172. Demo video.

“We are a scale-up, San Francisco-based, that provides a software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which enables business experts to stay in control of their AI models. We also empower the data science and engineering teams through our technology that consists of the ability to continuously learn from the data as the business world changes. We provide continuous explanations to business users and give them the ability to give feedback to the models so that the models are aligned with the business all the time.”

Stay tuned for more insightful conversations from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast!

Photo by Magda Ehlers

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