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Finovate Global: Showcasing International Alums at FinovateSpring

Finovate Global: Showcasing International Alums at FinovateSpring
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 9Spokes, Finovate Global, FinTech Insights by Scientia, FINTEQ & Smart Faktor, Flybits, Fundica, Horizn, Hyperswitch, Kani Payments, Lucinity, Nubank, PayTic, SESAMm

With FinovateSpring only days away (May 23 through May 25), this week’s edition of Finovate Global will showcase those innovators demoing at the event that are headquartered outside the United States.

There’s still time to register and join us in San Francisco, California for our annual Spring fintech conference. Visit our FinovateSpring 2023 hub today and get your ticket today!

9Spokes

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New Zealand, 9Spokes unlocks open banking and data, giving financial institutions a powerful set of tools to engage SMB customers. LinkedIn.

FinTech Insights by Scientia

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in London, U.K., FinTech Insights by Scientia offers a competitive analysis tool for banks and fintechs to help them create compelling digital banking experiences. LinkedIn.

FINTEQ

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Poland, FINTEQ removes credit risk from the supply chain, giving suppliers a healthy and sustainable trade finance alternative. LinkedIn.

Flybits

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Flybits offers a personalization platform that enables financial institutions to deliver best-in-class personalized digital banking experiences. LinkedIn.

Fundica

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Fundica is a government funding platform used by some of the largest financial institutions in North America to acquire clients at scale. LinkedIn.

Horizn

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Horizn helps financial institutions maximize the impact of digital and accelerate returns on digital investments with customers and employees. LinkedIn.

HyperSwitch

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in India, HyperSwitch is an open source payments switch designed to make payments fast, reliable, and affordable. LinkedIn.

Kani

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Newcastle, U.K., Kani offers end-to-end reconciliation and reporting, automating the back office for payments companies and fintechs, and ensuring accuracy and compliance. LinkedIn.

Lucinity

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland, Lucinity combats financial crime with innovative GenAI technology for smarter and faster FinCrime compliance. LinkedIn.

PayTic

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Charlottetown, Canada, PayTic is a SaaS platform that automates and manages all key aspects of program management: network fees, reconciliation, reporting, and fraud. LinkedIn.

SESAMm

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Metz, France, SESAMm specializes in big data and artificial intelligence, providing analytics from more than 20 billion articles and messages using NLP. LinkedIn.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

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Finovate Global Israel: Earnix Introduces New CEO, 40Seas Raises $111 Million, and a Look at Early Stage Startups

Finovate Global Israel: Earnix Introduces New CEO, 40Seas Raises $111 Million, and a Look at Early Stage Startups
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Earnix, Finovate Global, Nubank, Salt Edge

Earnix, an Israel-based company that provides insurers and banks with real-time, dynamic pricing and rating solutions, introduced a new Chief Executive Officer this week. Robin Gilthorpe will take over the top spot at the firm effective February 1st, replacing outgoing CEO Udi Ziv, who served as Earnix’s CEO for six years.

“Today’s end-customer demands unparalleled experience, alongside highly personalized and customizable solutions,” Gilthorpe said in a statement. “Earnix solutions serve as the go-to platform for financial services companies to address the growing demands of the world’s leading financial and insurance companies.”

Gilthorpe is a finance and insurance industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience at firms such as TIBCO, Vertexone, and Watersmart Software. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at insurtech company Salty where he helped generate a “nine-figure outcome” in the firm’s sale to CDK Global.

Founded in 2001, Earnix made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. In the years since then, the company has forged partnerships with companies like AI cloud platform DataRobot, cloud insurance software company Majesco and, last fall, J.D. Power. Also last fall, Earnix unveiled its Underwrite-It solution which helps businesses build and manage rules and decision logic to enhance decision-making during the underwriting process.

Earnix has raised more than $100 million in funding. The company includes Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) among its investors.

Israel-based cross-border trade financing company 40Seas secured $111 million in financing this week. The total includes $11 million in seed funding and a $100 million credit facility.

The seed funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. ZIM also was the entity behind the $100 million credit facility 40Seas received this week. The agreement comes with an option to extend the credit facility to $200 million.

40Seas leverages AI and data analytics to determine creditworthiness, and offers flexible payment arrangements to provide small importers and exporters, freight forwarders, and sourcing agencies with critical working capital. The company made its soft launch in October of last year and says that it already has financed transactions for “dozens of SMEs.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that small businesses represent more than 40% of all cross-border trade volume. Nevertheless, compared to large, multinational corporations, SMEs are “seven times more likely to be denied trade financing,” according to the World Trade Organization. Among the obstacles to these firms are siloed banking jurisdictions, working capital constraints, legacy processes, and more. To this end, 40Seas helps exporters get paid as quickly as possible and gives importers payment options that enable them to grow their businesses without incurring sizable additional debt.

“Given today’s harsh macroeconomic conditions, now more than ever, SMEs need easy access to financing to have the best chance of survival,” 40Seas co-founder and CEO Eyal Moldovan said.

40Seas is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Shenzhen.

Last month CTech published a short list of what it called the “five most promising early-stage fintech startups” in Israel. The list was based on the opinions of “prominent investors in the Israeli market” and looked at both “business potential” and “managerial depth.”

The businesses represented included travel insurance (Faye), an automated accounting platform (Trullion), a compliance platform (Sedric), a loan exchange for SMEs (Lama AI), and a payments workflow automation company (Nilus). Combined, the five companies have raised more than $47 million in funding from investors including Viola Ventures, F2, Third Point Ventures, Greycroft, Homeward Ventures, StageOne, Foundational Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

We’ll keep an eye on these and other innovative fintechs that are helping build Israel’s unique fintech ecosystem.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Photo by Haley Black

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Finovate Global Canada: Clik2pay Partners with Inovatec; BMO Offers Installments; RBC Buys HSBC’s Canadian Business

Finovate Global Canada: Clik2pay Partners with Inovatec; BMO Offers Installments; RBC Buys HSBC’s Canadian Business
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Compass Plus, Finastra, Finovate Global, MasterCard, nCino, Nordigen, Nubank, ThetaRay

There are many countries whose fintech innovations are often overlooked. And Canada, America’s legendarily kinder, gentler neighbor to the north, is among them.

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech headlines emanating from the Great White North this week. The news ranges from big new fundings to new product launches to deal-making in Canada’s banking industry.

Clik2pay, a payment service provider based in Toronto, Ontario, has teamed up with lending process automation expert Inovatec. The partnership will enables Inovatec’s clients to use Clik2pay’s direct-from-account payment platform to request payments from customers. The functionality leverages Interac’s e-Transfer money transfer solution to ensure safe and secure fund movement.

“Clik2pay is always looking for ways to make the payments process simpler,” Clik2pay Chief Commercial Officer David Robinson said. “Allowing borrowers to make payment directly from their bank account in real-time through an email or text makes paying incredibly easy for the customer and allows for more efficient collections and payment reconciliation by lenders.”

The collaboration will give lenders the ability to use email to collect payments directly from customer bank accounts – and have those payments reconciled automatically on Inovatec’s platform. The process supports agent-assisted collections, as well, enabling lenders to textc customers payment links and secure real-time notification of successful payments “before the borrower hangs up the phone” the company noted in a statement.

Clik2pay is the first Canadian company to provide real-time, direct-from-account payments for businesses at almost all FIs in the country. Founded in 2019, Clik2pay relaunched its Clik2pay mobile app for small businesses last month. The new app features an enhanced user experience, including improved, simplified onboarding. Mike Bradley is founder and CEO.

Canadian banks have made fintech headlines this week, as well. Bank of Montreal (BMO), for example, announced the launch of its new credit card installment offering. Currently available to BMO’s Canadian retail credit card customers via their online banking platform, the new plan – called PaySmart – enables customers to convert eligible credit card purchases of more than $100 into smaller monthly payments.

Customers will be able to choose between three, six, or 12 equal monthly payments. No interest is charged and BMO will access a monthly fee of up to 0.9%. Because purchases are within the customer’s existing credit limits, no additional credit check or approval is required.

BMO’s latest offering is part of a suite of solutions designed to help its customers better manage cash flow and finances. These solutions include the bank’s Pre-Authorized Payments Manager, Same Day Grace feature, and BMO CashTrack.

In other Canadian banking news, Royal Bank of Canada announced that it has purchased U.K.-based HSBC’s Canadian business for $10 billion (£8.4 billion; C$13.5 billion). The move comes as HSBC seeks to bolster its business in Asia – especially China. The company has more than 130 branches and 780,000 customers as part of HSBC Canada. And while HSBC has also expressed plans to abandon its retail banking operations in the U.S. and France, it is the company’s Canadian division that has turned a profit -whereas both its businesses in the U.S. and France have not.

The acquisition is the biggest by RBC under the tenure of CEO Dave McKay, who has also tried to calm concerns about potential layoffs by noting that RBC is considered one of the best workplaces in the country. McKay also pointed to the fact that RBC has nearly 6,000 open positions and referred to the acquisition as a “talent acquisition opportunity” for RBC. HSBC Canada has $134 billion in assets and 4,200 full-time employees.

“HSBC Canada offers the opportunity to add a complementary business and client base in the market we know best and where we can deliver strong returns and client value given our financial strength and award-winning service,” McKay said in a statement.

Earlier this week we shared news that Toronto-based FinovateFall 2019 alum Buckzy Payments had secured $14.5 million in Series A funding. The company offers real-time, cross border payments services, as well as banking-as-a-service capabilities, via its embedded finance platform. The company has more than 140 bank, neobank, and fintech customers since going live with its platform in 2020. This week’s funding takes Buckzy’s total equity capital to more than $23 million. The round was led by Mistral Venture Partners and Uncorrelated Ventures.

“This round of financing is a validation of Buckzy’s vision to create an intelligent and automated international payment system,” Buckzy CEO Abdul Naushad said. “We’re on a mission to build the plumbing for real-time money movement globally, the same way high-speed internet fundamentally shifted the communications industry.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazil’s Nubank announced that it will offer savings accounts and debit cards in Mexico via its digital banking arm, Nu México.
  • Chilean based alternative credit scoring fintech Destácame raised $10 million in funding.
  • Brazilian fund Latitud released its The LatAmTech Report 2022 this week highlighting trends for B2C fintech in Latin America.

Asia-Pacific

  • Finastra launched a new Center of Excellence (COE) at MRANTI Technology Park in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
  • Cambodia’s ABA Bank leveraged technology from Compass Plus Technologies to introduce instant card issuance kiosks.
  • Financial crime compliance company Napier announced its entry to the Japanese market via its financial crime risk management platform, Napier Continuum.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • ThetaRay and Ghanian mobile financial services company Zeepay partnered to help fight financial crime in remittance transactions.
  • TechCrunch profiled South African payments company Revio.
  • Kenyan payment service provider Cellulant launched its expansion to South Africa..

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg Commercial Bank announced that it has implemented and is now live on the nCino Bank Operating System.
  • ING Germany partnered with Viafintech to launch new cash service offering.
  • Estonia-based payment tracking company Transferlink announced a partnership with open banking platform Nordigen.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE-based expense management platform Qashio secured $10 million in seed funding.
  • Jingle Pay, a financial super app based in the UAE, announced a strategic agreement with Mastercard.
  • Israel-based workplace intelligence platform Shield raised $20 million in Series B funding.

Central and Southern Asia

  • KreditBee, a fintech platform based in India, raised $80 million in Series D funding.
  • Mumbai-based youth banking startup Galgal Money secured $1 million in funding.
  • M bank in Mongolia is the latest customer – and first Mongolian client – of Singapore-based B2B SaaS fintech finbots.ai

Photo by Andre Furtado

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German Neobroker Trade Republic Earns $5 Billion Valuation; Binance Labs Secures $500 Million to Fund Web3

German Neobroker Trade Republic Earns $5 Billion Valuation; Binance Labs Secures $500 Million to Fund Web3
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Buckzy Payments, Efigence, Finovate Global, Nubank, Temenos

European investment and savings platform Trade Republic has topped up its 2021 Series C round with an investment of €250 million led by the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. The funding gives Trade Republic a valuation of more than $5 billion (€5 billion), and will enable the company to “double down” on its product.

“We are amid a transformation of pension systems in Europe,” Trade Republic co-founder Christian Hecker said. “The financing will help us to invest strongly into product innovation to empower millions of Europeans to put their money to work. Improving our valuation in the light of the current market environment is the true testament to our progress in the last twelve months and the large potential ahead.”

Trade Republic enables its more than one million European customers to invest in equities, cryptocurrencies, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as fractional savings plans. With more than six billion euros in assets under management, Trade Republic offers investors the ability to invest in 9,000 stocks and ETFs; take advantage of 4,000 stock and ETF savings plans; and participate in more than 50 cryptocurrency-based savings plans. Trade Republic also provides access to 300,000 derivatives including warrant bonds, “knock-out products”, and factor certificates.

Trade Republic was founded in 2015 by Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke, and Marco Cancellieri. The company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of international cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has raised $500 million to invest in companies that are “building Web3”. The capital comes from VC firms DST Global and Breyer Capital, and featured participation from a variety of family offices and corporations which remained unnamed.

The new fund arrives at a time when cryptocurrrency prices are in a significant retreat. Binance Labs has suggested that the current weakness in digital asset prices might provide an opportunity for investment in companies involved in everything from NFTs to blockchain infrastructure. “The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and more,” Binance Labs Executive Director of Investments and M&A Ken Li said.

The new fund will invest in projects in a wide range of development stages including incubation, early-stage venture, and late-stage growth. Binance Labs has invested in and incubated more than 100 projects from more than 25 countries. The firm’s portfolio includes companies such as blockchain research firm Dune Analytics, as well as blockchain networks such as Elrond, The Sandbox, and Polygon.

In other international fintech news, Canadian Finovate alum Buckzy Payments announced an expansion to the Netherlands and its plan to pursue an EMI (Electronic Money Institution) license. The company, which demoed its real-time cross border P2P payments solution at FinovateFall 2019, opened a new office in Amsterdam this summer. The firm also noted that an EMI license will enable members of the Buckzy Payment Network to leverage virtual account services and real-time payments across the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) of 36 European countries and territories.

“Europe is a mature, technologically advanced market that is also a hotbed of fintech innovation thanks to its adoption of open API technology,” Buckzy President and CEO Abdul Naushad said. “(This) has opened up the financial sector and created opportunities for innovative new companies to provide new products and services. More and more of our customers around the world want to send and receive real-time payments to and from Europe, and we are enabling them to do so.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by energepic.com

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ThetaRay Forges Historic Partnership with UAE’s Mashreq Bank to Enable Secure Cross-Border Fund Transfers

ThetaRay Forges Historic Partnership with UAE’s Mashreq Bank to Enable Secure Cross-Border Fund Transfers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Nordigen, Nubank, Temenos, ThetaRay

Historic news out of the Middle East leads off our international fintech coverage this week on Finovate Global. Israel’s AI-powered transaction monitoring innovator ThetaRay has been selected by the UAE’s Mashreq Bank to help ensure secure cross-border transfers for its correspondent banking business.

The partnership marks the first time that an Israel-based fintech company has teamed up with a financial institution from the UAE. The collaboration was made possible by the historic Abraham Accords, signed in the fall of 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

“Mashreq Bank is our first customer in the UAE,” ThetaRay CEO Mark Gazit said. “We look forward to accelerating collaboration with additional financial institutions in the UAE and the entire Middle East, as part of the continued expansion of ThetaRay’s global reach.”

Making its Finovate debut in 2015, ThetaRay offers banks and financial payment providers the ability to detect anomalies in multiple data sets, regardless of size or source. This makes the company’s cloud-based, SaaS AI analytics platform is especially effective in monitoring cross-border payments, an area that has become increasingly vulnerable to financial crime – including money laundering – in recent years. ThetaRay estimates that the cross-border payments market will grow from $37.15 trillion in 2020 to nearly $40 trillion by 2026, potentially attracting an even greater number of fraudsters and thieves.

“ThetaRay’s technology, underpinned by advanced machine-learning based models complementing rules, sets the foundation for next-generation transaction monitoring,” Mashreq Bank’s Group Head of Compliance and Bank MLRO Scott Ramsay said. “By combining speed and agility with efficiency, it allows banks to effectively thwart financial crime risks in the increasingly complex space of cross-border payments.”

A leading MENA-area financial institution, Mashreq Bank is the oldest privately owned bank in the UAE, founded in 1967 as the Bank of Oman. Last fall, the bank announced a partnership with Visa to develop a new digital reconciliation platform for business expense tracking. Mashreq Bank was also the first regional bank to launch an API developer portal, going live with the platform back in October. A month later, the institution reported a net profit of $72 million (AED 265 million) for the nine months ending September 30th.

“Mashreq’s advanced digital transformation program has continued to deliver outstanding service to customers throughout the nine months ending 30th September 2021,” Group CEO Ahmed Abdelaal said. He highlighted the role of digital platforms in supporting the bank’s growth, and embraced the “development of a diverse, inclusive, and enabling working environment” courtesy of Mashreq’s adoption of a “work from anywhere culture.”

FinovateEurope 2022 is just one month away. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22 and 23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Manprit Kalsi from Pexels

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Brazilian Digital Bank Nubank Raises $2.6 Billion in U.S. IPO

Brazilian Digital Bank Nubank Raises $2.6 Billion in U.S. IPO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diebold, Entersekt, Finovate Global, Nubank, VISA

Selling nearly 290 million shares priced at $9 in its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange this week, Brazilian digital bank Nubank has raised $2.6 billion, reaching a market value of $41 billion. An alumni of Finovate’s developer’s conference FinDEVr in 2016, Nubank is now the most valuable financial institution in Latin America in addition to being the world’s biggest digital bank. CEO David Vélez, who co-founded the company in 2013 with an initial investment of $2 million from Sequoia Capital and Kaszek Ventures, now owns a stake in the company worth $8.9 billion at the IPO price.

“We don’t think the banking branch will survive the way it is,” Vélez said to CNBC this week. “It is too costly to serve the majority of users, especially in emerging markets where you have a very high cost of operations, so a lot of that physical infrastructure will probably disappear.” Vélez predicted that most financial services providers will transition into digital entities in the next five to ten years because of this, leading to an increased focus on customer service as well as lower costs and interest rates.

With more than 48 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and onboarding more than two million new customers a month on average, Nubank offers financial products for spending, savings, investments, loans, and insurance. The company claims to have provided more than five million people with their first credit card or bank account as of September 30, and to have saved its customers more than $4 billion (R$27 billion) in bank fees and more than 113 million hours of waiting time since inception.

Vélez said that the capital from the IPO will help fuel Nubank’s expansion in Mexico and Colombia, en route to becoming a truly pan-Latin American banking services provider. “There is a lot of opportunity to build the next generation of financial services, so we will continue to invest and grow for a very long time,” Vélez said an interview with the Financial Times.

This fall, Nubank acquired AI-powered assistant company Olivia, announced partnerships with a number of retailers to add a digital commerce section to its app in November, and purchased e-commerce payments company Spin Pay.

FinovateEurope 2022 is right around the corner. If you are an innovative fintech company with new technology to show, then there’s no better time than now and no better forum than FinovateEurope. To learn more about how to demo your latest innovation at FinovateEurope 2022 in London, March 22-23, visit our FinovateEurope hub today!

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by Cassiano Psomas from Pexels

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Instant Payments, TED, and PIX: Open Banking Advances in Brazil

Instant Payments, TED, and PIX: Open Banking Advances in Brazil
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, MasterCard, Nubank, Payoneer, VISA

This week marks the beginning of Phase 3 of Brazil’s embrace of open banking. Phase 3 is the second-to-last stage of the implementation plan set out by the Brazilian Central Bank. According to reports, Phase 3 arrives about one month late – the original date was September 30th – but the changes that the newest phase of the open banking initiative will bring are significant enough to be worth the wait.

Divided into four parts, the goal of Phase 3 is to usher in the regulation of payment initiation from any online platform. This will initially involve enabling consumers to pay for products and services using PIX – without the consumer having to use their bank’s app. PIX is the smartphone-based, instant payments technology launched by the Brazilian central bank almost a year ago. The second part of Phase 3, enabling payments made with TED (transferência eletrônica disponível) and transfers between accounts of the same bank, is set to begin in mid-February of 2022; the third part, enabling payments via bank slip, is slated to begin in late June; and the fourth and final part of Phase 3, enabling payment by debit account, is set to go live at the end of September.

Payment initiation is only one component of the open banking project Brazil has undertaken. Giving consumers the ability to make price comparisons, as well as compare rates and credit offers, are also major new possibilities for consumers that will be available thanks to the introduction of open banking in the country. These elements are expected to begin at the end of March 2022.

“The initiation will have a great impact especially on fintechs, which may offer more practical solutions for consumers or improve your internal financial processes from direct payment,” Belvo General Director Albert Morales explained. “Large banks, on the other hand, should start to rethink prices and solutions offered, both to attract new users and to retain users.”

Brazil’s open banking project, approved in 2019 by the country’s central bank, is part of a larger modernization effort for the Brazil’s entire financial system. And while the global pandemic has played a major role in complicating the project’s original timeline, officials expect open banking to be fully implemented in the country by September of next year.

Read more about Brazil’s open banking project in this interview with Otávio Damaso, Regulation Director for Brazil’s central bank, conducted by The Paypers last month. Damaso explains why Brazil has embraced open banking, and how open banking fits into the larger context of regulatory changes and trends in the country.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Aline Cardoso from Pexels

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Argentina’s Veritran Earns $225 Million Valuation, Joins Finovate’s Largest Latin American Cohort To Date

Argentina’s Veritran Earns $225 Million Valuation, Joins Finovate’s Largest Latin American Cohort To Date
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Finovate Global, Mambu, Nubank, VeriTran

Low-code fintech platform provider Veritran has secured a strategic growth investment from Trivest Partners, a private equity fund based in Miami, Florida. The specific amount of the investment was not disclosed, but the company did report that funding gives the Buenos Aires, Argentina-based firm a valuation of $225 million.

“Today marks a major milestone for Veritran’s team, as we embark upon a new chapter of becoming the next fintech unicorn,” Veritran CEO and co-founder Marcelo Gonzalez said, “while continuing to democratize access to the digital economy.” Gonzalez highlighted Trivest Partners’ successful track record of working with “founder-owned businesses” and said the collaboration would help Veritran expand “into new geographies and reach new customers.”

Founded in 2005 and maintaining offices in the U.S., Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, and Guatemala, Veritran offers a low-code platform that helps companies integrate new, enabling technologies into their legacy systems. Companies looking to enhance customer engagement via digital channels ranging from mobile banking and digital wallets seek out Veritran’s technology to future-proof their retail and corporate banking operations, as well as digital payments and onboarding processes.

With 50 bank clients and 25 million users, Veritran processes 25 billion transactions a year on its platform. In August, the company announced that it had partnered with Visa to promote push payments, tokenization, and Click to Pay projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. The previous month, Veritran teamed up with behavioral biometric-based online fraud detection platform Revelock to help banks reduce fraud losses and call center costs. The partnership with Revelock – a Feedzai company – followed Veritran’s collaboration with another biometric technology company, FaceTec, which brought its facial recognition technology to the Buenos Aires-based firm’s low code platform.

Veritran’s funding announcement comes less than a month before it makes its return to the Finovate stage at FinovateFall in New York. The company will join what may be the largest contingent of Latin America-based fintechs ever assembled at a Finovate event (see below).

FinovateFall 2021 takes place at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City, September 13 through 15. For more information, including how to attend our autumn fintech conference live or on-demand, visit our FinovateFall hub today.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Photo by Florencia Potter from Pexels

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How the Indian Diaspora Helps Fuel Fintech Innovation in the UAE

How the Indian Diaspora Helps Fuel Fintech Innovation in the UAE
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Coinbase, Finovate Global, Nubank

Recent news headlines have underscored the long-standing relationship between fintechs in India and the UAE.

This week, we learned that Indian payment solution provider PayMate has teamed up with both Visa and Citi to automate business payments in the UAE. The collaboration will involve both accounts payables and receivables, enabling institutions to benefit from end-to-end payment automation.

Access to PayMate’s platform also will give corporations in the UAE the ability to take advantage of longer Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) as purchasers, as well as make supplier payments earlier. The platform, which auto-reconciles both made and received payments in real-time, also allows for settling of corporate card payments directly into the accounts of suppliers.

A Visa-certified Business Payment Solution Provider (BPSP), PayMate is looking to leverage its relationship with Visa into offering both its platform and working capital solutions to other countries in the region. More than 105,000 Indian businesses currently use the PayMate platform.

Also this week we learned of that a partnership between the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) and UAE-based Mashreq Bank will bring Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to the UAE to support Indian business and leisure travelers to the country.

Unified Payments Interface is an instant, real-time payment system launched by NPCI that enables multiple accounts to be controlled via a single mobile app. The solution supports a wide range of banking features ranging from money transfers to bill sharing and billpay to merchant payments. Introduced in 2016, UPI currently facilitates 10% of all retail payments in India, and has more than 100 million monthly active users in the country. Last year, $457 billion in value moved on the UPI platform, and analysts believe that UPI will top both Visa and Mastercard in India by 2023.

And while bringing UPI to the UAE will be a major boon for Indian travelers and expats in the country, the UAE stands to benefit as well from the support that additional digital payment activity will provide to the UAE’s digital payments ecosystem.

“We are delighted to collaborate with NIPL (NPCI International Payments) to introduce their mobile-based real-time payment systems to our customers in the UAE,” EVP and Head of Payments for Mashreq Bank Kartik Taneja said. “Given the position of UAE as an international commerce and tourism hub, retail merchants in the Emirates always enable the latest payment methods that are expected by our international clients.”

It is worth pointing out that Indians represent the largest expatriate community in the United Arab Emirates, its more than 3.4 million members representing more than 38% of the UAE population. And while this is no surprise to anyone who has visited the UAE, the impact of this sizable population on the fintech industries of both nations is notable. In the summer of 2019, the Dubai Startup Hub, a project of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, announced its intention to “woo” Indian fintechs to the UAE with a $100 million fund for financial services startups.

Underscoring Dubai’s role as a “testbed” for enabling technologies like blockchain and AI,” Manager of the Entrepreneurship Department at the Dubai Chamber of Commerce Natalia Sycheva noted that Indian startups represented more than 30% of the total start-up community in the country. “When we decided to launch the programme of attracting overseas start-ups here,” Sycheva said, “naturally the first choice was India, as 30% co-founders of our Dubai Startup Hub have Indian origin.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by Sreenadh TC from Pexels

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Canada’s Latest Fintech Unicorn FreshBooks Scores $130 Million

Canada’s Latest Fintech Unicorn FreshBooks Scores $130 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Mambu, Nubank

From the snap election called by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the country’s recently expressed eagerness to accept refugees in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there have been more than a few reasons for the Great White North to make news headlines of late.

Now fintech fans in particular have another reason to pay attention to what’s going on in the chronically under-discussed nation. FreshBooks, a cloud accounting software company based in Toronto, Ontario, has raised $130 million in new funding. This gives the firm a valuation of more than $1 billion, becoming Canada’s latest fintech unicorn.

FreshBooks CEO Don Epperson said that the funding, which included $50 million in debt financing, was an “injection of confidence” in the company’s mission to help small businesses digitize their accounting operations. Epperson added that the capital will fuel investment in markets that are experiencing significant increases in regulation and help those small business owners better “manage their finances” by “simplifying workflows.”

The Series E round was led by long-time FreshBooks investor Accomplice. Also participating in the funding were J.P. Morgan, Gaingels, BMO, and Manulife. New investor Barclays, one of FreshBooks’ platform partners, was also involved in the financing.

Founded in 2003, FreshBooks is active in more than 160 countries, including Croatia, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the U.S. – as well as its native Canada. The company’s technology has helped more than 30 million people better manage their finances, billing operations, and payments, while increasing customer engagement with its ten-time Stevie award-winning customer support. In July, the company announced that it was teaming up with the Ontario government in a data-sharing partnership to help understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small businesses. In May, FreshBooks co-founder Mike McDerment was featured in Profiles in Leadership where he discussed the company’s origins from its humble beginnings in “his parents’ basement” to the 500-employee company that is now among the top cloud accounting software firms in the world.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels

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NuBank’s $750 Million Funding Round Proves Digital Challengers Are Still in the Game

NuBank’s $750 Million Funding Round Proves Digital Challengers Are Still in the Game
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Nubank

Digital banking giant NuBank is about to become even more gigantic. That’s because the Brazil-based pulled in $750 million in Series G funding. When added to the $400 million it raised in January, the funds bring the Series G round to $1.15 billion.

Today’s round was led by Berkshire Hathaway, which contributed $500 million. Additional investors include Sands Capital, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, MSA Capital, Advent’s Sunley House Capital, Brazilian asset managers Verde Asset Management, as well as Absoluto Partners.

With the new investment comes a new valuation. NuBank is now valued at $30 billion, a figure that rivals the valuation of Brazil’s number three bank, Banco Santander Brasil.

NuBank was founded in 2013 to serve the underbanked population across Brazil, a group that adds up to 30% of the country’s population. Today, the digital challenger has 40 million customers and offers a robust range of banking services including a debit card, insurance, loans, small business accounts, and P2P payment tools.

Today’s news comes after the company brought on two C-level hires, Matt Swann as Chief Technology Officer and Arturo Nunez as Chief Marketing Officer.

NuBank will use the funds from today’s investment to fuel further expansion into Mexico and Colombia, launch new products, and hire more employees. While the company has been in Mexico since 2018 and Colombia since last October, NuBank’s banking tools are currently limited to credit cards in both nations.

The massive size of this round and the notoriety of the lead investor offer a hint that digital-only banks are not just a fad limited to 2020. These newcomers have the ability and willingness to serve populations that banks have consistently ignored. Because of this, existing digital banks have increased their customer numbers in the past year, and there has been a massive onslaught of new digital banking players vying for a niche subset of the population.

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Public and Private Investors Boost Latin American Fintech

Public and Private Investors Boost Latin American Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Evo Snap*, Finovate Global, Nordigen, Nubank, Revolut

It’s a good week to be a fintech in Latin America. Uruguay-based fintech dLocal made its Nasdaq debut, raising more than $617 million in an IPO that gave the firm a valuation of $6 billion. The company, founded five years ago, offers a payments platform that enhances the ability of global merchants to operate in emerging markets. With customers ranging from Amazon.com to Uber, dlocal will use the capital from the IPO to add new features to its platform as well as enter new markets, according to an interview with Reuters.

Also this week, Latin American open finance API platform Belvo announced that it had secured $43 million in Series A funding. The round featured participation from new and existing investors – including investment angels like David Vélez, founder and CEO of Brazilian fintech Nubank. Belvo will use the new capital to “scale and enhance” its data enrichment solutions in particular, as well as launch its bank-to-bank payment initiation offering in both Mexico and Brazil. Adding to its 70-person workforce is also part of the company’s plans, with a goal of doubling headcount by the end of the year and “hiring more than 50 engineers in Mexico and Brazil in the coming months.”

Elsewhere in Latin America, Mexican payment gateway Prosa is reportedly considering a sale that could bring the company a valuation of more than $1 billion. The firm is one of the region’s biggest payment processors, facilitating more than 4.5 billion transactions in 2020. Also this week, EVO Payments announced that it had agreed to acquire Chilean e-commerce payment gateway Pago Fácil.

As Angela Strange and Matthieu Hafemeister noted this spring in their report Latin America’s Fintech Boom, “there is an enormous amount of untapped opportunity in Latin America for financial services of all types.” The authors cite five reasons to be optimistic about the demand for financial services, factors ranging from the region’s size to the opportunity to replace largely cash-based systems, as well as four reasons why Latin American fintech may be at a “tipping point.”

“As is often the case,” the authors wrote, ” growth appears gradual for a long while, then happens suddenly, seemingly all at once. Latin America is currently experiencing an explosion in fintech activity, and this is just the beginning.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Photo by Juan Cruz Palacio from Pexels

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