This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.
Autobooks’Tap to Pay on iPhone enables businesses and non-profits to accept contactless payments, directly from the financial institutions’ existing mobile banking apps.
Features
Contactless payment acceptance
Available directly from financial institutions’ mobile banking apps
Payments deposited directly into customers’ existing accounts at FIs
Why it’s great
To lock in customer deposits and relationships, financial institutions need to offer easy ways for businesses and non-profits to accept online and in-app payments.
Presenters
Steve Robert, CEO & Co-Founder Robert helped found Billhighway, a financial platform for organizations, in 2003. After Billhighway was acquired in 2016, Steve founded Autobooks. LinkedIn
Derik Sutton, CMO Sutton is a product and marketing executive with a track record of helping to build, market, and sell products in the financial industry. Sutton joined Autobooks in 2018. LinkedIn
These nine fintechs wowed our FinovateFall audiences last year with their innovations in embedded finance, payments, wealth management, and more. To whet your appetite for FinovateFall next month, September 12 through 14, here’s a look at what our FinovateFall 2021 Best of Show companies have been up to since taking home Finovate’s top prize last fall.
Launched docuseries, Behind the Robo. Named a major player in the robo-advisory market by The Business Research Company. Worked with Standard Chartered Bank Kenya to help them launch their new money market fund offering.
Dreams
Won Best of Show for its engagement banking platform that offers a unique way to engage customers and responsibly expand revenues. Awarded Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2021. Founded in 2014. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
Partnered with fellow Finovate alum ebankIT to support financial institutions undergoing digital transformation. Powered the new digital learning platform launched by Pacific Western Bank. Awarded Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2022.
Infocorp
Won Best of Show for its Mobile Native app that brings hyper-personalized experiences for every user in one single bank app. Founded in 1994. Headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Partnered with TESOBE to help banks in Latin America leverage open banking to build better, more customer-centric apps and services.
Long Game
Won Best of Show for its gamified finance app that helps banks acquire new customers and increase engagement with their Millennial and Gen Z customers. Headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2015.
Won Best of Show for its intelligent automation technology that transforms documents into data analytics, helping lenders make timely, high quality credit decisions. Founded in 2014. Headquartered in New York City.
Raised $80 million at a valuation of $500 million. Partnered with fellow Finovate alum Blend to bring automation to the mortgage process.
PwC
Won Best of Show for its Customer Link solution that turns customer data into smarter action and provides a 360 degree view of your customers. Founded in 1845. Headquartered in New York City.
Who will take home the trophies this year at FinovateFall 2022? Join us in New York next month as we showcase upwards of 60 innovative fintech companies – all vying for the title of Best of Show.
We may have missed an alum or two. But with the second quarter of 2022 in the books, here’s a look at our Finovate alumni funding for April, May, and June of this year.
As of our current count, eight Finovate alums have raised more than $984 million in Q2 of 2022. Of the eight alums that received funding in the quarter just ended, two – Allied Payment Network and Chekk – did not disclose the total amount of their investments.
Two of the quarter’s biggest investments were received in June, giving that month the lion’s share of capital raised by Finovate alums in the second quarter of the year.
Previous quarterly comparisons
Q2 2021: More than $2.8 billion raised by 14 alums
Q2 2020: More than $975 million raised by 15 alums
Q2 2019: More than $1.8 billion raised by 29 alums
Q2 2018: More than $1.5 billion raised by 25 alums
Q2 2017: More than $726 million raised by 25 alums
As we noted last year around this time, it is not unusual for second quarters to produce more moderate funding numbers compared to other quarters. And, as with last year, April proved to be an especially “cruel” month for fintech funding – at least as measured by our alums – with only FinovateEurope alum and relative newcomer Crowdz reporting funding that month.
That said, this year’s Q2 haul surpassed that of two of the previous five second quarters – and with significantly fewer alums participating.
Top Equity Investments
SumUp: $624 million
ThoughtMachine: $160 million
Backbase: $122 million
The top equity investment for the quarter was far and away the $624 million raised by London-based e-commerce innovator SumUp. In fact, all three of the top equity investments in Q2 of 2022 were greater than the largest investment in the previous quarter. SumUp’s massive capital infusion rivals all Finovate alum investments since NuBank raised $750 million in the second quarter of 2021.
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2022 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
Payment and accounting platform Autobooksraked in $50 million in a Series C round led by Macquarie Capital with additional support from new and existing investors Baird Capital, Commerce Ventures, Draper Triangle, MissionOG, and TD Bank. The investment more than doubles the Michigan-based company’s total raised, boosting that figure to $98 million.
Autobooks plans to use today’s funding to accelerate distribution into the U.S. banking market.
Autobooks serves more than 60,000 small businesses with a range of tools including digital payment acceptance, online invoicing, online enrollment, accounting, bookkeeping, financial reporting, billpay, and more. The company’s embedded receivables platform for small businesses enables digital invoices, payment acceptance, and automated accounting directly within their mobile banking suite.
To facilitate this, Autobooks integrates its tools with a range of digital banking providers, making its services available to over one third of the U.S. market. Companies that offer Autobooks’ invoicing and payment acceptance tools to their small business clients include Alkami, Bottomline, CSI, FIS, JackHenry, NCR, and Q2.
In addition to helping small businesses, Autobooks also has the potential to benefit banks. TD Online Accounting, which is a whitelabeled version of Autobooks’ technology, has seen deposits from its 700+ small business clients increase 65%. Simultaneously, the firm has experienced a 2x increase in product usage.
“Businesses are increasingly looking for simple, bundled solutions to get paid and automate their back-office. If the bank can’t offer these services quickly, businesses will (and have) gone elsewhere,” said Autobooks Cofounder and CEO Steve Robert. “To maintain primacy, banks must optimize legacy merchant service programs to include digital payment acceptance tools that feature self-service onboarding. Autobooks makes this possible through our payment facilitation (payfac) model, which can be enabled within days by industry leading partners.”
Autobooks averages more than 10,000 monthly enrollments and has surpassed $40 billion in transaction volume. From 2021 to 2022, the company has experienced 5x revenue growth, 3x employee growth, and 6.5x bank partner growth. Autobooks won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateFall 2021.
Sometimes at Finovate, the first time is the charm.
Detroit, Michigan-based fintech Autobooks, which helps small businesses send digital invoices and accept online payments via their financial institution partner, took home Best of Show honors in its Finovate debut in September. The company, co-founded by Steve Robert (CEO) and Aaron Schmid (CIO), impressed our audiences with its embedded solution that gives small businesses an e-commerce platform that is fully integrated into their current digital banking system.
Autobooks shared the stage with partner TD Bank, which offers Autobooks’ suite of tools as part of its TD Online Banking solution. TD Bank Head of Corporate Products and Services Jo Jagadish noted that the partnership has “increased relationship depth with our SMBs by 26%” and represented what Jagadish referred to as a complete reimagining of the bank’s small business checking experience.
“Small businesses are an enormous and diverse group with one thing in common,” Robert explained, “how they get paid is in a state of transition. Financial institutions must invest in digital-first experiences to meet SMBs where they, and their customers, are.” One advantage Autobooks provides is the fact that its technology is embedded into the customer’s existing banking channels, helping financial institutions build and fortify their relationships with their small and micro-business customers.
In the weeks since Autobooks’ Best of Show winning demo at FinovateFall, the company has announced a partnership with Central Trust Bank. Headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, the $20 billion state-chartered trust company will embed Autobooks’ technology into its digital banking platform. In addition to giving the bank’s business customers the ability to send digital invoices and accept online payments, the integration will also provide cash flow management, accounting, and financial reporting tools.
“We’re dedicated to providing innovative solutions to our customers, and the tools to make banking as easy as possible,” Central Trust Bank SVP of Commercial Banking Services Arlene Vogel said. “We believe partnering with Autobooks will allow for business customers to optimize payments for their business, ultimately helping their business succeed.”
Central Trust Bank has more than 250 locations in 78 communities in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, Colorado, and Iowa. The bank was founded in 1902.
Also last month, Autobooks announced that it had expanded its partnership with TD Bank to add invoicing to TD Bank’s TD Business Simple Checking offering. The bank’s business customers will now be able to accept credit card and electronic payments that settle directly into their TD account. This will enhance cash flow and liquidity, and will make it that much easier for small and micro-businesses to get paid faster. The collaboration marks TD Bank as one of the first major financial institutions to offer integrated invoicing as part of its digital banking solution.
“Probably the greatest pain point for small businesses is actually getting paid for the services they provide,” Jagadish said. “The new tool will make things easier, faster, and enable our small business customers to get paid, almost immediately in most instances, when the process previously could take up to a week or longer.”
Previous to co-founding Autobooks, both Robert and Schmid were executives with another Finovate alum, Billhighway. Robert served as Chief Information Officer, while Schmid was Chief Product Officer. The company was acquired by BluePay in 2016.
The Best of Show winners of FinovateFall this year featured both veterans and newcomers, established companies and bold, Millennial-led startups, fintech innovators from as far away as Europe and Latin America, as well as home-grown talent from right here in the U.S.A.
To be honest, we could not imagine a better way to celebrate Finovate’s return to New York!
So please join us in offering a hearty congratulations to the companies selected by our attendees as the FinovateFall 2021 Best of Show.
Array for its personalized consumer credit, identity, and financial wellness tools available via both API as well as embeddable components. Video.
AutoBooks for its small business digital invoicing and online payment acceptance tools for FIs. Video.
Bambu for its B2B robo-advisory platform for financial institutions and fintech disruptors. Video.
Dreams for its banking platform that leverages behavioral science to boost customer engagement and financial well-being. Video.
Horizn for its platform that helps banks accelerate digital banking knowledge, fluency, and adoption. Video.
Infocorp for its Mobile Native App, that brings hyper-personalized experiences for every user in one single bank app. Video.
Long Game for its gamified finance app that helps banks acquire new customers and increase engagement with their Millennial and Gen Z customers. Video.
Ocrolus for its intelligent automation technology that transforms documents into data analytics, helping lenders make timely, high quality credit decisions. Video.
PwC for its Customer Link solution that turns customer data into smarter action and provides a 360 degree view of your customers. Video.
Thanks to all the demoing companies, our sponsors and speakers, and our attendees for making our return to live fintech conferencing such a resounding success. Keep in touch with us via the Finovate blog for updates on our upcoming events next year in London for FinovateEurope, in San Francisco for FinovateSpring, and beyond!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The nine companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2021 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 13-15, 2021. Register today and save your spot.
Autobooks‘s embedded modules for small businesses allows them to send digital invoices and accept online payments directly from a financial institution’s mobile or online banking application.
Features
Digital Invoicing
Online payment acceptance
In-app payment acceptance
Why it’s great This new innovation directly integrates within the banking channel.
Presenters
Steve Robert, CEO & Founder Robert is an accredited investor, adviser, and board member, who actively coaches, speaks, and blogs about start-ups, technology and entrepreneurship. LinkedIn
Jo Jagadish, Head of Corporate Products, Services, & Innovation Jagadish is the Head of Commercial Products and Innovation for TD Bank including Deposits, Cash Management, Global Trade Finance, Revenue Management, Product Sales Support, Servicing, and Implementations. LinkedIn
