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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
There’s not much room in 2021 for 2020-style pessimism. Sure, if you look, you can find plenty of things to be negative about so far this year. However, one aspect of 2021 that’s giving fintechs hope is the recent uptick in valuations across the fintech sector.
Despite last year’s global events, many fintechs received valuations exceeding $1 billion. In fact, in December 2020 alone, four fintechs, including eToro, Creditas, PhonePE, and GoCardless, received unicorn status.
This year seems to be off to a similarly bullish start, with four fintechs becoming unicorns in just the first three weeks of 2021:
Digit Insurance
India-based Digit Insurance became India’s first unicorn of 2021 after the country saw 11 new unicorns in 2020. Just 15 days into the new year, and after raising $18.5 million, Digit Insurance unveiled a new valuation of $1.9 billion.
Divvy
Spend management startup Divvy received a valuation of $1.6 billion after its Series D round on January 5. The $165 million came from new investors PayPal Ventures, Whale Rock, Schonfeld, and previous backers NEA, Insight Venture Partners, Acrew, and Pelion. The pandemic has spurred increased traffic to Utah-based Divvy; the startup has experienced a 500% increase in monthly sign-ups since March 2020.
Mambu
SaaS banking platform Mambuearned its unicorn title after landing a $135 million investment on January 7. The boost gave the Germany-based company a post-money valuation of just over $2 billion. Mambu will use the funds to increase its presence in Brazil, Japan, and the U.S.
MX
The second fintech unicorn to come out of Lehi, Utah is fintech data company MX. Founded in 2010, MX raised $300 million in Series C funding on January 13, bringing the company’s total capital to $505 billion and boosting its valuation to $1.9 billion. Company CEO Ryan Caldwell said that MX will use the funds to hire more staff and improve its data collection and enhancement capabilities.
SaaS banking platform Mambu is even more prepared to support the banking-as-a service trend that’s sweeping the fintech industry. That’s because the Germany-based company received $135 million (€110 million) in new funding this week.
The investment was led by TCV, followed by new contributors Tiger Global and Arena Holdings and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Runa Capital, and Acton Capital Partners. TCV General Partner, John Doran, will join Mambu’s board of directors.
The company also disclosed a new valuation of more than $2 billion (€1.7 billion), which places it in the fintech unicorn club (two-times over!).
Mambu will use the funds to accelerate growth and boost its presence across the globe. Specifically, the company announced intentions to deepen its footprint in Brazil, Japan, and the U.S.
“As an increasing number of challenger and established banks sign on to prepare themselves to thrive in the fintech era, we have, and will continue to provide them with a world-class platform on which to build modern, agile customer-centric businesses,” said Mambu CEO and Co-founder Eugene Danilkis. “This latest funding round allows us to accelerate our mission to make banking better for a billion people around the world and address one of the largest, most complex global market opportunities that’s still in the infancy of cloud.”
Mambu was founded in 2011 and emerged as one of the pioneering players to move banking software to the cloud. Since then, the company has seen success from its concept of composable banking that allows clients to build a banking experience to suit their needs without being tied to a specific vendor, product, or technology. This shift away from legacy core banking platforms, along with plug-and-play integrations, helps banks future-proof their systems to better serve their customers. Among Mambu’s customers are ABN AMRO, N26, OakNorth, Orange, and Santander.
Today’s news comes after a strong period of growth for Mambu. The company has seen around 100% YoY growth and is planning to support it by doubling its team to more than 1,000 by next year.
A pair of Finovate alums have joined forces to help a leading financial platform in Asia launch a lending solution as part of its planned expansion in the region.
German cloud banking platform provider Mambu and alternative credit score provider CredoLab have announced a partnership with GoBear, a financial services platform based in Singapore. The company, founded in 2015 as a metasearch engine and now operating as a financial services platform that has served more than 55 million consumers, plans to expand into the Philippines later this year. Technology from Mambu will power the core system in GoBear’s lending architecture, with CredoLab’s credit scoring helping ensure the company is able to bring financing to those communities that need it most – and often struggle to secure it.
“Having access to responsible credit should be a financial right for all,” GoBear Chief Lending Officer Mike Singh said. “Tapping into fintech solutions like Mambu’s and CredoLab’s brings us one step closer to making this a reality for the region’s 296 million unbanked or underbanked.”
The tripartite partnership was the result of a pair of relationships; Mambu and CredoLab have been long-time partners, while CredoLab and GoBear collaborated as recently as November 2018, when the two companies worked together on a credit solution for the underbanked.
“In less than five years of operation, GoBear has built a stellar reputation as a leading financial services platform and we envisage great things for the company as it continues to build its lending business,” Mambu Managing Director for APAC Myles Bertrand said. He pointed out that the company’s technology would enable GoBear to readily add new products while maintaining a high level of customer service.
CredoLab CEO Peter Barcak pointed to his company’s SDK, API, and alternative credit score – which leverages metadata from smartphone usage – as powerful tools for companies like GoBear that are trying to serve a broader array of customers. “Our ability to generate a credit score for customers who cannot prove their creditworthiness in the conventional financial system makes us uniquely positioned to support GoBear as they diversify their business and move into lending in a controlled way.”
Finovate alums since 2013 and 2018 respectively, both Mambu and CredoLab made their Finovate debuts at FinovateAsia events. Mambu demonstrated its technology the year we held our Asian conference in Singapore. CredoLab unveiled its CredoScore the year we held FinovateAsia in Hong Kong.
Speaking of FinovateAsia, remember that our new, all-digital FinovateAsia conference begins next week. Check out our FinovateAsia hub for more details!
Mambu, the cloud-based banking platform based in Germany, is partnering with U.K. business banking platform Tide to power the company’s revolving credit facilities and overdrafts for small businesses.
“There is a need to be flexible, agile, and customer-centric in the design of financial products,” Managing Director of Mambu EMEA Eelco-Jan Boonstra explained. “Legacy technology constraints can undermine even the best innovation strategy.”
The collaboration will enable Tide to overhaul its product suite in order to better serve customers in a number of locations around the world. This includes offering larger overdrafts, credit cards, and invoice financing, as well as enabling Tide members to lend to each other leveraging solutions managed by Mambu.
“When today’s customers evaluate financial institutions, they no longer compare different banks, they compare experiences,” Boonstra said. “We see this partnership approach as the future of banking technology.”
Regtech is all the rage in fintech these days. From helping businesses negotiate a wave of new regulation – from GDPR to PSD2 – to empowering firms to combat fraud, companies involved in developing technologies to ensure that businesses are getting and staying compliant are enjoying rare attention from the rest of the industry.
A recent review of top regtech startups in Europe in Fintech News was an example of the light increasingly shining on these companies and their vital role in supporting a fintech industry that a growing number of financial services customers – and other businesses – are relying on.
The review cited research from KPMG that anticipates regtech spending in 2022 climbing to $76 billion. Analysis from XAnge, a European VC firm, finds approximately 140 regtech startups in the E.U., divided fairly equally between compliance management, KYC/AML, and risk management solutions.
We were especially please to see that, of the ten regtech startups highlighted in the feature, four of the companies are Finovate alums. Apiax and NetGuardians, which most recently demoed at FinovateEurope and at FinovateAsia respectively, both hail from Switzerland. Apiax, recently profiled here on the Finovate blog, offers a comprehensive compliance solution that leverages APIs to integrate its compliance rules into digital processes. NetGuardians focuses on Big Data and uses it to help banks fight fraud and automate compliance.
Also earning recognition on the top European regtech list was Ireland’s Fenergo. The company, founded in 2009 and having made its Finovate debut back in 2012, specializes in client onboarding and account opening solutions for banks and financial services companies. Just this week, Fenergo announced that it was launching a new remote account opening solution in both the EMEA and APAC regions.
Half of the companies on Fintech News’ regtech roster are from the U.K. The Finovate alum among this group, Onfido, leverages automated machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), and other technologies to provide identity verification to combat fraud. Demoing its technology at both FinovateEurope and FinovateFall in 2018, the company earlier this month announced a major $100 million fundraising that brought the company’s total capital to more than $182 million.
“We’ve naturally chosen the grow-fast path because we strongly feel that the time to solve the digital access problem is overdue, and urgently needs to be solved, for good,” Onfido CEO and co-founder Husayn Kassai said. “We didn’t fundraise to just get to the next milestone, we need the funding as we’re changing the world.”
The Buy Now Pay Later Revolution is sweeping the world. Check out Finovate Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn’s coverage of Tencent’s $300 million investment in Australia-based Afterpay this week:
Tencent’s move comes shortly after its rival Ant Financial took a minority stake in Afterpay competitor Klarna. Afterpay has 3x the web traffic of Klarna and 1.5x the traffic of its other major competitor Affirm.
The buy-now-pay-later segment of fintech has been heating up this year, despite– or perhaps because of– the current economic and health crises.
Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Asia-Pacific
V Capital, and advisory firm based in Malaysia, and U.S.-based Cross River Bank partner to apply for a digital banking license in the country.
Hong Kong-based Oriente, a fintech that provides digital infrastructure for financial services, secures $50 million in its still-open Series B round.
South Korean cryptocurrency startup Childly teams up with blockchain analysis company Chainalysis.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian fintech startup Okra, which facilitates the exchange of real-time financial between banks, customers, and apps, locks in $1 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by TLcom Capital.
Flutterwave, based in San Francisco, California and Lagos, Nigeria, introduces new portal for African e-commerce merchants.
Visa and Kenya’s Pesapal team up to support connected digital payments.
Central and Eastern Europe
Resistant AI, a cybersecurity startup based in the Czech Republic, raises $2.75 million in funding.
Azer Turk Bank (ATB), based in Azerbaijan, deploys technology from Lithuania’s Ashburn to manage EFTPOS networks.
Germany’s Celonis leverages its process mining platform to develop new AI-powered accounts payable solution.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Egypt’s Commercial International Bank acquires 51% stake in Kenya’s Mayfair Bank.
BenefitPay, Bahrain’s national electronic wallet, announces 1257% increase in remittance volume in March.
Tata Consultancy Services to launch a digital only bank in Israel.
Central and Southern Asia
Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX announces trading availability of two native tokens from Crypto.com, MCO and CRO, on its platform.
Amazon launches new credit service, AmazonPay Later, in India.
India-based ecommerce firm Paytm unveils contactless dining solution for restaurants in the coronavirus era.
Latin America and the Caribbean
paysafecard brings its payments platform, Paysafe, to Paraguay.
Latin Post looks at the use of fintech apps in Mexico.
The combination of cloud banking platform Mambu and international money transfer firm TransferWise will enable Mambu customers to offer fast, inexpensive, and transparent international money transfers at the real exchange rate. Mambu will leverage TransferWise’s TransferWise for Banks solution via API, giving its clients an out-of-the-box solution that allows them to focus on building a quality user experience and expanding their offerings.
“By plugging into our API, Mambu just became the world’s number one cloud banking provider to use for international payments,” TransferWise co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann said. “From their first day in business, banks gain significant advantages over their competitors, benefiting from the speed and convenience of TransferWise’s services.”
Mambu CTO/CPO Ben Goldin praised TransferWise’s innovations in global money transfer and highlighted the way the partnership will enable Mambu’s customers to take advantage of opportunities around the world. “We were impressed how TransferWise has established itself around the globe spanning infrastructure platform in a highly complex regulatory environment which aligns with our aims,” Goldin said. “We aim to offer best-in-class banking services through our cloud platform and are pleased that international banking is no longer of any concern for our customers.”
A Finovate alum since 2013, TransferWise has forged partnerships with companies like Alipay to enable fund transfers to China, and brought its TransferWise for Banks technology to Canada courtesy of a partnership with EQ Bank. Founded in 2010, the U.K.-based company moves more than $5 billion every month, has more than seven million customers, and estimates that it saves its users $1.5 billion in money that would otherwise be paid in hidden fees every year.
Transferwise has raised more than $772 million in total funding. BlackRock, Lone Pine Capital, LHV Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz are among the company’s investors.
Germany’s Mambu offers a cloud banking platform that enables users to quickly build, launch, and service loan, deposit, and other financial products. Since its inception in 2011, the company has partnered with challenger banks like N26 and, more recently, teamed up with digital consultancy Mobiquity to provide its digital banking solutions to more financial institutions and fintechs.
“Our partnership with Mambu allows us to extend our service offering to the core banking layer, next to our existing solutions and serve our clients full circle on all layers,” Mobiquity Client Strategy Partner Paul van Dommelenn said. He referred to Mambu as having “a reputation as the most successful next-generation core banking provider.”
Mambu has raised $45.4 million (€42 million) in funding. The company is an alum of both our primary Finovate conference as well as our developers conference, FinDEVr.
Splititforges new strategic partnerships with Malaysian payment solution provider iPay88 and global payments company BlueSnap.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Cloud banking platform provider Mambu and lending-as-a-service platform TradeLedger joined together recently to create an offering for online commercial lenders.
This client group, which the companies cite as an underserved $1.6 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity, will offer commercial lenders a cloud-based solution to design, configure, and implement new lending products.
“Mambu’s composable banking approach blends perfectly with our vision for a brand-new mid-market transactional banking and trade infrastructure,” said Roger Vincent, Chief Innovation Officer at Trade Ledger. “Through an API-driven architecture, the Trade Ledger and Mambu platforms come together with Mambu Process Orchestrator allowing our customers to significantly reduce the cost of loan origination and servicing, improve customer experiences (internal and external), and rapidly increase the volume of their loan book – all without significant investment in more staff or resources.”
Mambu launched its composable banking concept to help financial services companies “compose the bank they want to be.” This approach enables banks to choose the best third party vendor for each process by facilitating as many integrations as the bank wants. And because technology is continuously evolving, Mambu allows banks to swap out integrations independently when they want to switch providers.
Mambu has raised almost $47 million in funding (€42 million) from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Acton Capital Partners, and CommerzVentures. The Berlin-based companymade its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013 in Singapore. Last month, Mambu signed UK-based SME challenger bank Recognise.
UK-based SME challenger bank Recognise has selected Mambu and its cloud-based Core banking platform, reports Alex Hamilton of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
Recognise, which is still in the process of obtaining a banking license, originally planned to launch trading under restriction in mid-2019, and is aiming for a 2020 full launch. It was founded by Jason Oakley, former managing director of Metro Bank’s commercial and mortgage lending business.
The challenger will be implementing Mambu’s platform on the cloud, and will be pairing it with nCino’s Bank Operating System, which Recognise opted for earlier this month.
“We know that speed and flexibility is critical for SMEs and the current SME banking providers are no longer fit for purpose,” said Oakley. “This is why we have decided to select a cloud-based solution that is modern and open early on our journey.”
Recognise isn’t the first time the two vendors have collaborated. In September start-up B-North selected both companies to aid in the building out of its banking services. Like Recognie, B-North is also awaiting a licence.
Monica Velaquez, CTO of Recognise, said, “We are really excited to work with Mambu and explore the ways in which we can enhance the overall customer experience through a composable architecture. With Mambu we will be able to apply innovation initiatives to build the new foundations of SME banking through the Mambu Core and Mambu Process Orchestrator.”
Ben Goldin, CTO of Mambu, added, “It’s been a great opportunity for us to work with Recognise and once again prove the value and power of our composable banking approach. We are enabling Recognise to provide remarkable customer experience to their end-client by combining Mambu with other best-for-purpose partners like nCino and bring the composable architecture to life using Mambu Process Orchestrator.”
In its eight-year history, Mambu has garnered almost $47 million in funding (€42 million) from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Acton Capital Partners, and CommerzVentures.
The Berlin-based company, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013 in Singapore, has recently formed a host of new partnerships, including Swiss online lender bob Finance, U.K.-based neobank B-North, and software development provider ABC TECH Group.
Experianlaunches a new Open Data solution: Experian Commercial Acumen.
Mambu’s composable banking solution to help new SME bank Recognise enhance the customer experience.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Swedish neobank Personal Finance Co (PFC) has gone live on Mambu’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) banking engine 10 months after launch, reports Alex Hamilton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication.)
PFC offers a personal finance app with an accompanying debit card. Customer are encouraged to reach their financial goals through “automation and data-driven insights.”
The bank plans to launch personalized savings and credit products in the near future and aims to accrue 100,000 users by the end of the year. It operates under a payments institution license, rather than a full banking license.
PFC is backed by Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordics region of Europe, itself going through a core banking transformation with Temenos. It invested €5 million in PFC in July.
Eli Daniel Keren, founder and CEO of PFC, said the neobank selected Mambu as the two firms shared common traits in flexibility and scalability.
He added: “In just nine months we were able to deploy a feature-rich mobile-first neobank and can now focus on international expansion and innovations to enhance the customer experience and deliver more value.”
Eelco-Jan Boonstra, managing director of Mambu EMEA, noted that the partnership will open up unique opportunities for both firms.
“Progressive digital banks have found a new way of doing business and tend to attract young, information-hungry customers that are comfortable with technology. When it comes to user experience, this target audience has high expectations, and also continuously changing needs,” said Boonstra.
“Powered by Mambu, PFC is able to meet these needs, at the same time accelerating the development of new products and features, quickly becoming a one-stop-shop for personal finance.”
Founded in 2011, Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013 in Singapore. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, leading a discussion and presentation titled Smart Consumer Lending: Platform and Scoring Architecture at FinDEVrNewYork 2016.
With more than $45 million in funding (€42 million) from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Acton Capital Partners, and CommerzVentures, Mambu is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. In recent months, company has forged partnerships with companies like Swiss online lender bob Finance, U.K.-based neobank B-North, and software development provider ABC TECH Group.
Clinc’s Conversational AI Gives Voice to New App from Singapore’s OCBC Bank.
Finovate Global: ThetaRay Opens Mexico City Office; Dubai’s Foloosi Turns to KSA for Expansion.
Around the web
Meniga to enable consumers to donate cashback from their Meniga Rewards app to help combat climate change.
Mambuforges partnership with Swiss online lender bob Finance.
We Write Code joinsDwolla’s Partnership Ecosystem.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
U.K.-based start-up B-North has chosen a German Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, Mambu, to provide its core banking technology, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The Manchester neobank, which is still awaiting a license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is the first client to experience a co-created solution by Mambu and a U.S.-based cloud banking tech provider, nCino.
The cloud provider will deliver its loan and deposit origination platform, enabling the challenger to speed up its processes and deliver a highly efficient, “minimum hassle” service to its SME customers.
“The advantage of creating a new bank without legacy systems or legacy business processes is we can design the solution around our customer’s needs and leverage the very best cloud-based technology,” said B-North CTO, Ewan Hutton.
He added: “Mambu has already proved its engineering capabilities with its core banking solution in the marketplace and for B-North it is a perfect fit vs traditional solutions that are over-engineered legacy designs with recent front-end face-lifts.”
B-North’s new localised technology will make loans available to SMEs in just ten working days, rather than the standard three to four months.
Currently, SMEs make up 99% of U.K. businesses and employ more than 16 million people.
nCino’s area vice-president, Jacqui Morcombe, said: “B-North is taking a progressive approach to its technology strategy. By building a foundational cloud-based architecture it is establishing itself as a customer-centric institution without the constraints of inflexible systems as market pressures shift.”
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Berlin, Germany-based Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013, and returned to participate in our developers conference FinDEVr New York in 2016. Mambu was founded in 2011.
