Finovate Global

India Cracks Down on Consumer Lending; Razorpay and Pine Labs Score Payment Licenses

India Cracks Down on Consumer Lending; Razorpay and Pine Labs Score Payment Licenses
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

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

Has a “fintech reckoning” come to India? That’s the take shared by the Wall Street Journal recently, which suggested that many of the country’s fintech startups are facing new regulatory scrutiny. TechCrunch joined the alarm, looking specifically at the decision by the Reserve Bank of India to ban the practice of using credit cards to load and top up non-bank prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) such as prepaid cards.

The potential impact of the ruling is broad, with companies that specifically leverage PPI licenses to issue cards and then offer cardholders lines of credit, as well as Buy Now, Pay Later firms, that also use a similar approach to offer loans to consumers, being affected. The former group includes major Indian fintechs such as Slice, OneCard, Jupiter, Uni, and KreditBee.

The decision has drawn criticism from individuals in those businesses, some of whom have spoken to the press only on condition of anonymity to “avoid upsetting RBI officials” as TechCrunch described it. Some of those speaking against the policy have accused the RBI of issuing a ruling that is “very confusing and strange.” Others have hinted that lobbying from banks has played a role and reflects a common practice of incumbents using the system to stymie new entrants and slow innovation.

In fact, one option some of the potentially impacted companies may pursue – moving to PPIs through banks and offering their services inline with RBI guidelines –could actually bolster the position of the banks relative to fintechs.

“Not allowing loading of prepaid instruments through credit is aimed at protecting bank’s lazy credit card business from fintech’s potent BNPL business,” BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover tweeted after RBI’s decision was announced. “It’s a flex move by banks – rent seeking.”

In other fintech news from India, we learned this week that Razorpay and Pine Labs both secured approval from the RBI for payment aggregator licenses. The firms are among the first to receive the approvals, which come as the central bank prepares a list of fintechs that will be allowed to operate as payment aggregators in the country. Reportedly more than 185 fintechs have applied for the authorization, which requires companies to have a net worth of $1.9 million as of FY 2021 and a net worth of $3.1 million by the end of FY 2023.

Established in 2020, India’s payment aggregator framework enables only RBI-approved firms to offer payment services to merchants. Among the companies to have applied are major fintechs such as PayU, BharatPe, and FSS, as well as technology companies Google and Amazon.

Founded in 2013, Razorpay is a payment gateway that seeks to improve money management for online businesses by offering clean, developer-friendly APIs and easy integration. With more than 300 million end customers, Razorpay has raised more than $816 million in funding. Harshil Mathur is co-founder and CEO.

Pine Labs is an omnichannel merchant commerce platform that serves businesses in India and Southeast Asia. The company’s solutions offer frictionless online payments for businesses, provide closed-loop gift cards for businesses to boost customer acquisition, and a smart payment app. Founded in 1998, Pine Labs has raised $1.2 billion in funding. Amrish Rau is CEO.

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 ritesh arya

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Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria

Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Compass Plus, Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at two Finovate alums that are helping support fintech innovation in the Middle East and Africa.

First up is engagement banking platform provider Backbase. The four-time Finovate Best of Show award-winning company announced this week that it has forged a new partnership with Bahrain FinTech Bay (BFB). The partnership comes under the auspices of BFB’s Venture Acceleration Platform, which seeks to boost the adoption of digital banking technology in the MENA region.

Head of Partners at Backbase Middle East Mehmet Cakal said, “This new collaboration with Bahrain FinTech Bay aligns with our continuous efforts to help banks in the region with a long-term digital strategy and support them with a holistic approach towards digital transformation, to be able to meet the demands and expectations of their customers in today’s age.”

Backbase is no stranger to the MENA fintech and financial services industry. The company, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has established partnerships with a number of key players in the region. This includes the National Bank of Bahrain, Banque Saudi Fransi, and the Kuwait International Bank. In fact, Backbase Middle East was awarded “Digital Banking Provider Of the Year” honors at the MEA Finance Banking Technology Summit and Awards last month.

Bahrain FinTech Bay, a leading finech hub in the region, promotes fintech innovation by incubating fintech initiatives via innovation labs, acceleration programs, curated activities, and educational opportunities. Founded in 2017, BFB launched its Venture Acceleration Platform in order to give emerging fintechs “a launch pad and bespoke go-to-market strategies” to help them scale their businesses and take advantage of opportunities in the MENA region. The platform provides those companies selected to participate in the accelerator with market intelligence, exposure to partners, as well as assistance in implementation and regional expansion.

“Our new partnership with Backbase will strengthen our mandate to bring cutting-edge technology offerings to banks and financial institutions in MENA,” Bahrain FinTech Bay CEO Bader Sater said. “Bahrain FinTech Bay is committed to providing curated opportunities for enterprises and supporting startups in the sector to accelerate their growth and expansion efforts across the region.”

Meanwhile, several hundred miles to the south and west, fellow Europe-based fintech Compass Plus is engaged in its own outreach to markets in developing economies. The U.K.-based company, a Finovate alum since 2012, announced this week that it is teaming up with Nigerian fintech Interswitch to help it enhance its payment processing capability.

Interswitch will leverage Compass Plus’ token-based, cloud-native, API-first open development payments platform, TranzAxis, to process Verve, Visa, and Mastercard credit card transactions. Six African banks already have been onboarded onto the new platform, which has enabled Sterling Bank of Nigeria to launch the country’s first Verve credit card.

“We are delighted to partner with Interswitch, one of the biggest processors in Africa,” Compass Plus MEA VP and Deputy Managing Director Adil Ahmed said. “Interswitch has always strived to drive positive change in the region, and now that they have TranzAxis to support their ambitions, they will continue to revolutionize Africa’s payment space in the region, further strengthen the Verve payments network, and manage their Visa and Mastercard credit card business more efficiently.”

Founded in 1989, Compass Plus offers banks and financial services companies retail banking software and services to enable them to better respond to their customers’ banking needs. The company’s solutions address issues from card, account, and merchant management to card personalization, payment processing, and terminal driving to self-service channel management and both mobile and e-commerce. Compass Plus’ TranzAxis technology helps financial services companies develop and support cards, payments, transaction switching, and other retail banking activities.

Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, Interswitch began as a nationally-focused, transaction switching and processing firm. In the 20 years since then, the firm has grown into Africa’s leading integrated payments and digital commerce platform company with more than 900 full-time workers across Africa – 40% of whom are women. Named “Fintech of the Year” at the 2022 African Banker Awards last month, Interswitch also last month secured a strategic investment from LeapFrog Investments and Tana Africa Capital. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

“The evolution of fintech in Nigeria and the broader sub-Saharan region has been driven by the need to solve challenges and barriers that exist within the traditional financial system,” Interswitch founder and Group Chief Executive Mitchell Elegbe said. “Interswitch was born from the need to develop solutions that match the unique needs of local customers and merchants.”

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

Photo by Satheesh Cholakkal

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Indonesian Fintech Flip Raises $55 Million; Visa Launches Crypto-Back Cards in LATAM

Indonesian Fintech Flip Raises $55 Million; Visa Launches Crypto-Back Cards in LATAM
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, MasterCard, Nordigen

Courtesy of Tencent, Block (formerly known as Square), and existing investor Insight Partners, Indonesian consumer payments platform Flip has secured a $55 million addition to its Series B round. Also involved in the funding were a handful of individual investors including Checkout.com CEO Guillaume Pousaz, DoorDash executive Gokul Rajaram, and former Venmo COO Michael Vaughan.

No updated valuation information was included in the funding announcement. The company has raised a total of $120 million since inception three years ago. Flip raised $48 million in Series B funding in December 2021.

Flip enables millions of Indonesians to access P2P payments with interbank transfers to more than 100 Indonesian banks. The company also offers international remittances, e-wallet top-ups, and business solutions for employee payroll, customer refunds, invoice and supplier payments, as well as international transfers. More than $12 billion in transactions a year are processed on Flip’s platform.

“The growth opportunity of the Indonesian digital economy is vast with its massive population and favorable demographics, Flip co-founder and CEO Rafi Putra Arriyan said. “We are laser-focused on helping millions of Indonesians, both individuals and businesses, execute various money transactions at a low cost through our platform.”

Flip plans to use the new capital to increase headcount, especially with regard to engineering and product development. The company also will invest in new products and technology development to both enhance quality of service and power further expansion.

Crypto may be a fighting word in El Salvador these days, which has hitched its economy to the fate of digital assets like nowhere else. But the move to bring cryptocurrency-based solutions to Latin America is still going strong. Visa announced late this week that it is launching the first crypto cards in Latin America – targeting Brazil and Argentina for the debut of its new products.

As reported in Crypto News and other media outlets that picked up the story from Expansión, Visa has partnered with a number of fintech companies in the region to issue cards that will enable users to receive cashback in Bitcoin when they make payments. In Argentina, Visa’s partners include cryptocurrency exchange Lemon Cash, which will offer 2% Bitcoin cashback Visa cards. Visa also has teamed up with Argentinian cryptocurrency trading platform Satoshi Tango and Crypto.com. In Brazil, Visa is working with Alterbank and Zro Bank.

“The cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to gain momentum in the region with increased investment, more consumer adoption, and more crypto-enabled use cases,” Visa SVP of Products and Innovation for Latin America and the Caribbean Romina Seltzer said. “We will continue to build on our strong strategy to build the future of crypto and payments for our customers, clients, partners, and consumers.”

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 Artem Beliaikin

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Mexican Digital Bank Klar Raises $70 Million in Equity Funding; Argentina’s Ualá Earns Approval to Acquire Wilobank

Mexican Digital Bank Klar Raises $70 Million in Equity Funding; Argentina’s Ualá Earns Approval to Acquire Wilobank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dorsum, Finovate Global

Klar, arguably the largest digital bank in Mexico, secured $70 million in equity funding this week. The investment – led by existing investor General Atlantic and featuring participation from Prosus Ventures, Quona Capital, Mouro, IFC, Acrew, and Endeavor Catalyst – gives the company a valuation of $500 million. Klar has raised more than $150 million in equity funding since its founding in 2019. The sum represents the largest amount raised by a Mexican neobank to date.

“Since its inception, Klar has aimed to empower millions of consumers across Mexico with simple and transparent offerings that enable them to live better lives,” Klar CEO and co-founder Stefan Möller said. “We see an opportunity to provide bespoke solutions to Mexican consumers who are eager to adopt technology, and who are not adequately served by anachronistic institutions.”

In addition to the equity investment, Klar received $20 million in venture debt funding from WTI.

Klar offers financial services consumers a wide range of solutions, including credit, mobile payments, rewards programs, loans, early wage access, and BNPL. The largest digital finance platform in Mexico, Klar has added 1.4 million customers in the last 12 months, reported revenue gains of 7x and transaction volume increases of 4x year over year.

Klar plans to use the fresh capital to enhance its platform, explore strategic acquisitions, pursue new distribution channels, and “invest in its team and talent.”

In other Latin American fintech news, we learned that Argentina’s Ualá has won approval from the country’s central bank to acquire Wilobank, Argentina’s first digital bank.

The deal was first announced in 2021, and this week’s decision will enable the transaction to close as early as next week, according to Bloomberg. The deal will also make Wilobank founder Eduardo Eurnekian a minority stakeholder in Ualá.

“The acquisition of Wilobank will significantly expand the value proposition of the Ualá ecosystem, offering better credit and collection tools not only for individuals but also for entrepreneurs,” Ualá founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said. “It is a crucial step so that more and more people can access simpler, more accessible and transparent financial products.”

Ualá’s acquisition will enable the $2.5 billion Argentinian fintech to accelerate growth and reach more customers. Especially attractive as new potential clients are pensioners and government welfare recipients who receive government payments via savings accounts that can only be provided by banks. Ualá has five million accounts – four million in Argentina – on the region. Wilobank has more than 250,000 savings accounts and has issued more than 113,000 debit cards.

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 Genaro Servín

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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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Paymob Closes Egyptian Fintech’s Biggest Series B; South African’s Capitec Partners with Entersekt and nCino

Paymob Closes Egyptian Fintech’s Biggest Series B; South African’s Capitec Partners with Entersekt and nCino
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Entersekt, Finovate Global, nCino, NuData Security, Scalable Capital, VISA

A $50 million investment will help Egyptian digital payments company Paymob expand into new markets in both the Middle East and Africa. The round was led by Kora Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Clay Point, and represents the largest ever Series B round in Egyptian fintech history.

“Central Bank of Egypt initiatives that are continuously being introduced in the market to support fintech companies were key to Paymob’s growth,” company founder and CEO Islam Shawky said. “The Central Bank has created a regulatory framework to help fintech flourish and participate in making Egypt’s digital financial inclusion ambitions a reality.”

Processing more than 85% of the market share of transactions in Egypt with its mobile wallet technology, Paymob serves customers in five markets including Palestine, Pakistan, and Kenya. The investment comes as Paymob reports strong 2021 growth, including year-on-year growth in merchant partners and monthly volumes of 4x as of December. The company has onboarded more than 10,000 merchants in less than two years en route to a goal of onboarding one million SMEs.

This week’s funding brings Paymob’s total capital to more than $68.5 million.

South African bank Capitec announced that it was teaming up with two Finovate alums, Entersekt and nCino.

One of the fastest-growing digital banks in South Africa, Capitec has partnered with cloud banking and digital transformation solution provider nCino. The two companies will work together to build Capitec’s Business Banking loan management system to better serve the company 70,000+ business banking customers.

“Capitec has embraced an agile and innovative approach to growth,” nCino CEO Pierre Naudé said. “We’re glad Capitec saw a partner in nCino and look forward to providing the bank with industry-leading technology and a flexible platform that will help drive the sustainability and growth of its business banking operations.”

nCino made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateEurope. The company’s flagship offering, its cloud-based Bank Operating System, provides a complete end-to-end banking solution that combines CRM, loan origination, workflow, ECM, business intelligence, and reporting all in a single location. nCino’s technology replaces disparate point solutions and manual processes with a modern, digitally-optimized experience.

In addition to its collaboration with nCino, Capitec also announced this week that it was working with South African identity and authentication solution provider Entersekt. Capitec will implement the company’s EMV 3D Secure solution to enhance the security of its e-commerce transactions.

The technology will enable Capitec to spot high risk e-commerce transactions in real-time, enhancing security without interfering with the customer experience. Entersekt’s EMV 3D Secure solution is pre-integrated with NuDetect from NuData Security – also a Finovate alum – which leverages behavioral biometrics and machine learning to help tell the difference between authentic users and potential fraudsters.

“We are constantly looking for ways to offer the best security possible without impacting our customers’ experiences,” Capitec Bank Marketing and Communications Executive Francois Viviers said. “By implementing Entersekt’s EMV 3D Secure solution with behavioral analytics from NuData Security, we are able to provide an additional level of protection for our e-commerce transactions. This also allows our team to continue to innovate, keeping our customers secure and Capitec at the forefront of digital banking innovation in South Africa.”

Entersekt demonstrated its technology as part of our developers conference, FinDEVr, in San Francisco in 2014. The company, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, finished 2021 with a “significant investment” from Accel-KKR. This spring, Entersekt announced partnerships with edtech Mindjoy and the MiDO Foundation to promote financial literacy, as well as a collaboration with credit union service organization (CUSO) Bonifii to bring context-aware authentication solutions to credit unions.

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 Spencer Davis

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Fintech Innovation in Mexico: From Cross-Border Payments to Crypto Rewards

Fintech Innovation in Mexico: From Cross-Border Payments to Crypto Rewards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

There’s more to fintech innovation in Mexico than remittances. But this week’s fintech headlines from America’s nearest neighbor to the south have reminded of the major role that money transfer services play in the financial services landscape of nations like Mexico.

Late this week, Western Union announced that it was teaming up with Pagaphone SmartPay to offer its customers additional options when it comes to sending and receiving money from the U.S. to Mexico. Courtesy of the new arrangement, U.S. customers will be able to send money via a variety of Western Union channels, from WU.com to the company’s mobile app to any one of Western Union retail locations in Mexico. Recipients receive the funds on their phones by accessing their PagaPhone SmartPay accounts. Funds can then be transferred to bank accounts, withdrawn as cash from an ATM using their PagaPhone debit cards, or used to pay for products and services directly from the app.

“By teaming with Western Union, PagaPhone SmartPay users in Mexico have yet another way to receive money from friends and family cross-border, using a brand known and trusted for decades,” PagaPhone Smart Pay and Cloud Transfer Services CEO and founder Ulises Tellez said.

More than $51 billion was sent to Mexico in remittances last year, Head of Western Union Mexico and Central America Pablo Porro said, underscoring the major role of cross-border payments in the region. “With this surge in remittances, customers demand choice and added convenience for how and when money is sent and received,” Porro added.

Headquartered in Mexico City and founded in 2018, PagaPhone offers an e-Wallet that enables users to cash remittances directly from their smartphone – as well as conduct a number of other transactions ranging from payments to cash withdrawals.

Also this week, we learned that Mexican fintech Broxel has announced the availability of free remittances for Mexicans living in the U.S. As part of its commemoration of Cinco de Mayo on Thursday, Broxel will make it both easier and more affordable for more members of the Mexican-American community to send money to relatives in Mexico for free.

“Millions of families in Mexico depend on the hard work of people trying to achieve their dreams, sending money every week as an act of love, memory, and gratitude,” Brozel Client Services Supervisor Mario Lopez said. “So having a financial product that allows the Mexican community to send money for free, is proof that technology can change people’s lives.”

Available from the company’s website, the Broxell Pay App offers free remittances among a number of other features. These include a Mastercard debit card, the ability to have both a peso-denominated account issued in Mexico and a dollar-denominated account issued in the U.S. on the same app, and a travel discount service.

“Technology is erasing borders,” Broxel founder and President Gustavo Gutiérrez said. “The idea of having free remittances is an economical disruption for the North American region, and a game-changer for millions of potential users.”

What’s going in Mexican fintech other than cross-border payments? Why crypto, of course!

YoCripto, a Mexico-based bitcoin rewards credit card, is gearing up for a launch later this year. As reported in Fintech Futures this week, the company calls itself the first Latin American fintech to offer a credit card with bitcoin rewards. YoCripto plans to offer both a virtual and a physical Visa-powered credit card, with Bitcoin rewards of as much as 3% on all transactions. The card will also feature a low interest rate, no annual fees or commissions, and instant credit approvals.

Designed to serve the young and underbanked Latin Americans, Yo Cripto was founded by Julian Arber and Rafael Maya in January of this year. Both Arber and Maya have significant backgrounds in financial services; Arber at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, Maya at American Express. The company raised $4 million in seed funding in February in a round led by DILA Capital and, after launch, plans to expand to Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

“Our main goal is to promote financial inclusion across Latin America,” the founders said in an interview with LABS (Latin American Business Stories), “allowing users to obtain the benefits of the crypto ecosystem without its complexity.”

ICYMI … Check out our coverage of the $15 million in funding raised by Indian fintech Kaleidofin this week.

India-based financial services provider Kaleidofin announced it has raised an additional $5 million in funding, adding to the $10 million investment the company received in January of this year. The $15 million round brings Kaleidofin’s total funding to just shy of $23 million.

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 Ricardo Esquivel

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Oh Canada! OneVest Secures $3.9 Million; Square Loans Arrives; CBDCs Garner Political Opposition

Oh Canada! OneVest Secures $3.9 Million; Square Loans Arrives; CBDCs Garner Political Opposition
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week on Finovate Global we’re taking a look at some recent fintech developments in Canada.

On the fundraising front, embedded wealth management platform OneVest announced a $3.9 million (CAD $5 million) seed funding round this week. The investment was led by Luge Capital and takes the Canadian fintech’s total funding to $5.5 million (CAD $7.1 million).

The funding will help OneVest, which was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, to grow its team, expand sales, and support product development. The company offers digital wealth management services that can be embedded into consumer-facing products via APIs. The technology integrates well with multiple fintechs and financial institutions, empowering them to combine wealth management and investment functionality into their own financial solutions.

“People are increasingly demanding a more seamless and simple experience where financial products are integrated into their everyday lives,” OneVest co-founder and CEO Amar Ahluwalia said. “Our mission is to make investing more accessible to everyone, and available anytime, anywhere and through any channel.”

The first company to take advantage of the new offering is Neo Financial, which leveraged OneVest’s platform to launch its new actively managed wealth platform, Neo Invest.

Square announced this week that it is bringing its financing solution to business borrowers in Canada. Square Loans leverages transaction data to create and bring customized offers to eligible sellers, giving them a straightforward, paperwork-free application process. Funds are available the next business day and businesses are charged a single, upfront loan fee that is paid back automatically as a set percentage of daily card sales with Square. This arrangement enables borrowers to make larger repayments when sales are strong and smaller repayments when sales are weaker.

“From our earliest days, Square has focused on building easy-to-use tools and services to empower entrepreneurs to succeed on their own terms,” Head of Square Alyssa Henry said. Since Square Loans launched in the U.S. and Australia, the company has provided more than $9 billion in financing to more than 460,000 businesses with an average loan size of $6,750.

For all the interest – an even enthusiasm in some quarters – over CBDCs, not everyone is on board. This week we learned that Pierre Poilievre, leadership candidate for Canada’s Conservative Party is not only unimpressed by the opportunities provided by CBDCs, he also wants to enact a ban on the technology.

But don’t mistake Poilievre for a Luddite. The man considers himself a blockchain backer and has, in fact, pledged to make Canada “the blockchain capital of the world.”

“A Poilievre government would welcome this new, decentralized, bottom-up economy and allow people to take control of their money from bankers and politicians,” the Conservative Party politician said in March. He added that an embrace of blockchain would “expand choice” and “lower the costs of financial products” as well as providing a wealth of tech-oriented jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs in Canada.

As such, Poilievre’s CBDC skepticism seems to be more related to his attitude toward central banks than his opinion on blockchain technology. He has promised that, in addition to a CBDC ban, he would support an audit of the central bank’s balance sheet – a common commitment from conservative politicians in the post-Global Financial Crisis era. This would include a review of the central bank’s bond buying program during the pandemic. Poilievre has blamed the central bank economic response to COVID for the country’s currently high inflation rate.

Both a Canadian CBDC and a Poilievre mandate are some ways away, if that. The Canadian central bank has been working on a CBDC for year, with the project still in development stage. Poilievre, while the front runner to become the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, would nevertheless have to wait until 2025 at the earliest to challenge Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

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

Photo by Brett Sayles

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Scalable Capital Enters Italy, Moojo Secures Pre-Seed Funding; Commerzbank Seeks Crypto Custody License

Scalable Capital Enters Italy, Moojo Secures Pre-Seed Funding; Commerzbank Seeks Crypto Custody License
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Finovate Global

This week on Finovate Global we’re highlighting some of the fintech news from Germany.

Scalable Capital, a digital investment platform based in Germany, announced the launch of its neo-broker and new cryptocurrency offering Scalable Crypto in the Italian market. The new solution, introduced in December, will enable Italian investors to buy stock, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), popular cryptocurrencies, as well as set up savings plans for free. The company’s Scalable Broker offering will give investors access to more than 6,000 international stocks, with all trades routed through regulated European exchanges to avoid FX fees. Scalable Broker also provides access to more than 1,500 ETFs and more than 1,700 mutual funds. Additionally, Scalable Broker is available in different price configurations: a free version with commission-free savings plans and trading for stocks and ETFs that charges a fee of EUR 0.99 for transactions in other instruments, and a “Prime” version with an additional trading flat rate enabling unlimited trades for a monthly fee of EUR 2.99.

Scalable Crypto enables investors to buy and sell common cryptocurrencies, which are held as securities in the client’s brokerage account. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and XRP are among the cryptocurrencies available for trading, each of which is based on exchange-traded crypto products (ETPs) for easy and secure transactions on regulated exchanges.

“The online broker with savings plans and crypto is just the beginning,” Scalable Capital founder and co-CEO Erik Podzuweit said. “Our goal is to introduce our complete investment platform to the Italian market. We will make even more services available to our Italian clients, such as our leading robo-advisor.”

Scalable Capital made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2016 in London.

Moojo, a new startup that helps freelancers, creators, and gig economy workers improve their invoicing process and get paid faster, announced $2 million in seed funding this week. The round included participation from APX, Helvetia Venture Fund, MS&AD, neoteq Ventures, and Red Swan Ventures

In addition to its instant payments and invoicing solutions, Moojo plans to introduce insurance and lending products in the future. The company has partnered with Hiscox to facilitate the development of insurance products.

“The team and their approach to embed insurance into their offering has convinced us,” Markus Niederreiner, CEO of Hiscox Germany, said. “We are delighted to be Moojo’s insurance partner and co-create the next-gen of solutions for the creator and the freelancer economy. We strongly believe in the way Moojo tailors and builds solutions for the community: integrated into their customers’ lives.”

Moojo was founded in 2021 by Amir Djouadi, Christian Engnath, and Utena Treves. The company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

Germany’s second largest listed bank Commerzbank announced late this week that it is looking to enter the cryptocurrency space. The company is the country’s first major financial institution to seek a license that would enable it to offer cryptocurrency safekeeping services, as well as create its own cryptocurrency custody solution.

Germany’s new licensing policy for cryptocurrency services went into effect in 2020 and is designed to encourage more regulated financial firms to enter the cryptocurrency market. Commerzbank’s license application appears a year after the institution formed a partnership with Deutsche Börse and Fintech 360X to develop a digital asset trading platform.

Acknowledging the role of the partnership, Commerzbank spokesperson Bernd Reh added that the bank is “pursuing our own digital asset strategy and are also planning our own offerings for our customers in the coming years.” Reh noted that the planned offering is geared initially toward institutional customers.

BaFin, the Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, has so far approved four of the 25 applications it has received from institutions seeking crypto custodian status.

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 Ingo Joseph

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Berlin’s Solarisbank Launches Women’s Network; Hamburg’s Express Group Secures $27 Million Investment

Berlin’s Solarisbank Launches Women’s Network; Hamburg’s Express Group Secures $27 Million Investment
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, ThetaRay, Zeta

Solarisbank Launches Women’s Network to Fight Fintech’s Gender Gap

As part of an effort to close the gender gap in the fintech industry, Berlin, Germany-based banking-as-a-service platform Solarisbank has launched a new “women’s network” called Futura. Part of the company’s holistic Nature, People, Business (NPB) framework, Futura is currently organizing events such as discussion panels and training sessions for women looking to enter the fintech industry.

Futura also has a “heal thyself” component. The company has overhauled its recruitment process to be more inclusive, changing language and encouraging recruitment agencies to reach out to more female applicants. Solarisbank has pledged to reach at least 30% female representation by 2024.

“At Solarisbank, we decided to take a deliberate stand to improve gender equity in our industry,” Futura initiator and VP of Onboarding and Integration, Alex Gessner said. “We launched Futura to make fintech more inclusive for everyone – women, men, and non-binary people. It’s encouraging to see so much support for our initiative, and the market response to our first activities has shown the need for such a network.”

German fintech Express Group raises €25m in Series A funding

Express Group, a Hamburg, Germany-based startup dedicated to making tax preparation easier for working and middle class families, has secured $27 million (€25 million) in Series A funding. The investment round was led by Insight Partners and Project A Ventures. The funds will be used to help grow Express Group’s business internationally as well as to fuel future product launches.

ExpressSteur, the initial product from Express Group, leverages AI to enable accounting companies, tax consultants, and lawyers to process tax cases in minutes. The solution brings machine learning and automation to a process that is typically manually-dominated, making the tax preparation process easier, faster, and more accurate. The product helped the company grow to a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) run rate of more than $49 million (€45 million) in less than 12 months.

Express Group was founded in 2019 by Maximilian Lambsdorff, Dennis Konrad, Konstantin Loebner, Mehdi Afridi, and Andreas Santoro.

New partnership marries recurring payments and subscription management

Dutch payment processor Mollie has announced a collaboration with U.S.-based subscription management platform Recharge that will offer an end-to-end, one-stop solution for managing recurring payments and subscriptions. The partnership will make it easy for users to leverage Recharge’s APIs to integrate recurring payments into Magento, WooCommerce, or other standalone webshop. The integration will also support deploying and managing subscriptions, as well as offer a retention suite to automatically retry payments in the event of failure, an enhanced self-serve customer experience with personalized transactional notifications, and real-time insights into revenues, customers, and subscriptions.

“We’re really excited to be able to offer merchants the opportunity to implement fully powered subscriptions with Recharge easily,” Mollie CCO Ken Serdons said. “Seamless effortless payments brought to recurring ecommerce means an increase in lifetime value and average order value, and at a time of unprecedented ecommerce growth and ambition, we’re able to meet and surpass customer expectations.”

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Mollie is one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment service providers (PSPs). Founded in 2004, the company this year has forged partnerships with WooCommerce and carmaker Mazda. Mollie launched its SaaS payment platform in March.

Recharge was founded in 2014 by Oisin O’Connor (CEO) and Mike Flynn (CTO). Today, the company powers subscriptions for more than 15,000 merchants serving 50 million subscribers, and has processed more than $10 billion in transactions. In May of last year, the Santa Monica, California-based firm secured a Series B investment of $277 million in growth capital, giving the company a valuation of $2.1 billion.

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 Pixabay

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EU Toughens Crypto AML Rules; ADGM Academy and Singapore University Promote Fintech Literacy

EU Toughens Crypto AML Rules; ADGM Academy and Singapore University Promote Fintech Literacy
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, Mambu, ThetaRay

One of the many fascinating conversations I enjoyed at FinovateEurope last week was my chat with Trulioo Chief Technology Officer Hal Lonas. Among the topics we discussed was the way evolving regulations were impacting the business of keeping financial services companies compliant with regard to KYC and AML requirements.

This week we learned that the European parliament is moving closer to embracing another measure to tighten rules with regard to financial services – in this case, cryptocurrency transactions. Members of two parliamentary committees this week approved new rules to ban anonymous cryptocurrency transactions as part of an overall European Union-wide anti-money laundering campaign.

The new regulations will require all transfers of cryptocurrencies, regardless of size, to include information on the source and the beneficiary of the assets involved. This information, which will be made available to regulators, would cover transactions from wallet addresses that are held by private users (“unhosted wallets”). The new requirements, however, would not apply to P2P transfers made without an intervening provider.

“Illicit flows in crypto assets move largely undetected across Europe and the world,” Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs co-rapporteur Ernest Urtasun explained. “(This) makes them an ideal instrument for ensuring anonymity.”

The new policy has its critics. Supporters such as Urtasun have pointed to the disclosures of the Panama and Pandora Papers as good reasons for bringing additional scrutiny to cryptocurrency transactions. But critics such as Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer with Coinbase, suggest that the new regulations are based on a false premise: that cryptocurrencies represent a significant vehicle for illegal activity.

“The truth is that digital assets are in generally a markedly inferior way for criminals to hide their illicit financial activity,” Grewal wrote in a blog post earlier this week. “That’s why, according to the best research available, by far the most popular way to hide illicit financial activity remains cash.”

By contrast, Grewal noted “digital assets and the immutable nature of their blockchain technology actually enhances the ability to detect and deter illicit activity.”

The proposed legislation will now be voted on by the full parliament and national ministers.

April is Financial Literacy Month. Be sure to check out our themed coverage of financial literacy both on the Finovate blog in general and here in Finovate Global in specific all month long.

To this end, we found news of the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed by the Abu Dhabi Global Market Academy (ADGMA) and the National University of Singapore’s Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF) to be especially noteworthy.

The goal of the pact is to help bring thought leadership to the fintech community and bolster the fintech ecosystem in Abu Dhabi “and beyond.” There are three main pillars to the agreement: research and publication, technology development, and knowledge dissemination – each of which contributes differently toward the goal of facilitating knowledge exchange across regions and encouraging research collaboration.

What’s interesting about this initiative is the way it supports financial literacy and education among professionals already in the field of financial services. “We, at AIDF, look forward to the close collaborations with ADGMA in research advancements, the education of skilled professionals, and nurturing of FinTech entrepreneurs,” Duan Jin-Chuan, Executive Director of the Asian Institute of Digital Finance at the National University of Singapore, said. “We see these activities as a vital component in pursing a better future for our countries.”

The ADGM Academy, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE, was established in 2018 to build expertise, financial education, and literacy in the region. The Academy is part of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), an international financial center, and features coursework areas including banking and finance, digital and fintech, and entrepreneurship, as well as national, personal, and professional development.

FinovateEurope ended just a few days ago. Of all our events, our London conference often provides the best showcase for international fintech innovation – especially from developing economies and parts of the world not always considered to be fintech hubs in spite of their economies.

Below is a quick run-down of companies in this category that demoed their latest solutions at FinovateEurope last month.

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 ArtHouse Studio

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Ukraine Legalizes Crypto; Nordigen and Efigence Announce New Partnerships

Ukraine Legalizes Crypto; Nordigen and Efigence Announce New Partnerships
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Efigence, Finovate Global, Nordigen, Revolut, Scalable Capital

As more and more fintechs add their support to the people of Ukraine and create new pathways for individuals and organizations to contribute financially, the Ukrainian government has had to adapt in order to make some of these contributions not just possible, but legal.

This week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed month-old legislation to provide a legal framework for the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies in the country. Per the new legislation, cryptocurrency exchanges and other companies dealing in digital assets will be able to register with the Ukrainian government in order to operate in the country. Additionally, the new law will allow banks to open accounts for cryptocurrency companies.

Going forward, Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission will set the country’s policies on cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, issue licenses, and serve as a regulatory watchdog over the fledgling industry. The law is the second bite of the apple for Ukraine’s cryptocurrency advocates; the Ukrainian parliament voted to legalize cryptocurrencies last fall, but the legislation was vetoed by Zelenskyy, who cited the cost of creating a new regulatory entity to govern cryptocurrencies.

Ukrainian interest in cryptocurrencies certainly predates the Russian invasion of the country; a New York Times feature in November 2021 ran the headline “The Crypto Capital of the World” with the subhead “It has to be somewhere. Why not Ukraine?” But that interest has spiked since then as the country reportedly has received “tens of millions of dollars” in cryptocurrency donations to help Ukrainians cope with the devastation of their country at the hands of the Russian military.

Nordigen partners with French fintech Saveengs, U.K. lender Mallard Finance

Latvian open banking platform Nordigen has announced a pair of new partnerships this week. Saveengs, a French startup that specializes in helping people with little or no savings build a strong financial foundation, will work with Nordigen to help users find ways to save better. Nordigen’s technology will enable the Saveengs app to analyze the user’s finances to find opportunities to save in small amount, typically in increments of 20 euros.

“While the amount of money saved seems small at first, it definitely adds up,” Saveengs CEO Mourad Ketir said. “Open banking enables the app to perform financial analysis on our users’ existing funds and transactions quickly and easily, allowing the process of saving to start as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile across the channel, U.K.-based independent lender Mallard Finance has chosen Nordigen as its Account Information Service Provider (AISP). A specialist in providing financing for automobile purchases, Mallard Finance will leverage its new partnership with Nordigen to access financial data directly from borrower bank accounts during the application process. This will give the lender, which serves both individuals and businesses across the credit risk spectrum, a more exacting and accurate view of the applicant’s financial status.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Mallard Finance,” Nordigen CEO and co-founder Rolands Mesters said. He praised both the company’s professional team and its success in serving its customers since 1995. “We are happy to see companies continuing to choose open banking to further enhance their already existing services and internal assessment procedures,” Mesters added.

Nordigen most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2019 in London. At the conference, the company demoed its Nordigen Report, which enables banks and lenders to access loan applicant account histories and verify income and other important insights.

Efigence teams up with Polish bank Getin Noble

Getin Noble, a Warsaw, Poland-based banking and financial services company, has partnered with Polish digital banking solutions provider Efigence to help it launch new online banking services. The enhancements, to be introduced modularly, include new functionalities as well as modernization of its online presence.

“Today’s online banking is much more than a financial tool,” Director of Getin Noble Bank’s Electronic Banking Department Marta Dałkiewicz said. “Customers often have contact with it many times a day, so the solutions we propose must be affordable and easy to use.”

Efigence President and CTO Marek Lesiak said that increasing the accessibility of online banking was a major goal for the collaboration. This included design elements for both the web and mobile apps to make banking more convenient for the customer regardless of which channel they used. “Today, finance is connected with almost every sphere of our life,” Lesiak said, “and the use of online banking should be as easy, intuitive and pleasant as if it were part of our DNA.”

A two-time Best of Show winner, earning the honor in both its Finovate debut as well as at our second Dubai-based event in 2019, FinovateMiddle East, Efigence demonstrated the latest improvements to its digital banking platform at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin.

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 Kostiantyn Stupak from Pexels

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