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Avaloq Implements OpenWealth at LGT Private Banking

Avaloq Implements OpenWealth at LGT Private Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Avaloq, Daily news
  • In partnership with Avaloq, Liechtenstein-based international private bank LGT has implemented a new standard to give financial intermediaries real-time access to investment positions and transaction data.
  • The new standard, OpenWealth API, was implemented in collaboration with Synpulse8, the integration specialist of Synpulse.
  • Based in Switzerland, Avaloq won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2018.

In collaboration with Avaloq and Synpulse8, Liechtenstein-based private bank LGT has implemented a new standard that will make it easier to provide financial intermediaries with real-time access to LGT’s investment positions and transaction data. The new standard is called OpenWealth API and will help the custodian bank better serve its customer base of independent asset managers, multi-family offices, and fund companies with customized investment solutions, personal advice, and fast order processing.

“With this latest joint innovation, LGT is taking a leading role in helping to create a more interconnected financial marketplace while enhancing the value that financial intermediaries deliver for their investors,” Avaloq Chief Technology Officer Martin Büchi explained.

The partnership between Avaloq and LGT extends back nearly 20 years, when the bank first adopted Avaloq’s core banking solution, Avaloq Core. The OpenWealth implementation was conducted in partnership with technology and integration specialist Synpulse8, a division of Synpulse. Synpulse is the founder and orchestrator of the OpenWealth Association, the standardization body for OpenWealth. The standardized connectivity made possible by OpenWealth will lower operational risks for financials and empowers intermediaries to keep their platforms updated with more timely and accurate data than can be provided via daily batch processing.

“The standardized solution will ensure that our partners have access to the latest data to better serve their clients,” LGT Bank AG Executive Board member Markus Werner said. “We look forward to strengthening our long-term partnership with Avaloq in the coming years and to continuing our joint development activities for enhanced connectivity with financial intermediaries globally.”

Founded in 1985, Avaloq provides technology solutions to private banks and wealth managers, investment managers, retail and commercial banks, as well as challenger and neobanks. The Switzerland-based company won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2018, and has since grown into an international financial services solutions provider with more than 160 clients in 35 countries and $4.4 trillion (CHF 4 trillion) in client assets managed by Avaloq software.

The company’s signature solution is Avaloq Core, a core banking solution for private banks and wealth managers. Avaloq also offers three standalone digital products lines: Avaloq Engage, Avaloq Wealth, and Avaloq Insight. Avaloq Engage helps institutions boost client engagement. Avaloq Wealth supports the entire client journey in wealth management from prospect to trusted relationship. Avaloq Insight offers technical and business users access to insightful data from their banking systems. Avaloq was acquired by Japan-based NEC Corporation in the fall of 2020.

This spring, Avaloq announced the retirement of Co-CEO Thomas Beck, with Martin Greweldinger taking over the role of Avaloq Group CEO. Beck had served as Co-CEO with Greweldinger since the spring of 2021, having joined the company in 2012.

Photo by Ondrej Bocek on Unsplash

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The Finovate Podcast: Best of Show Conversations with Bloom Credit and Kobalt Labs

The Finovate Podcast: Best of Show Conversations with Bloom Credit and Kobalt Labs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bloom Credit, Kobalt Labs, Podcasting

What better way to celebrate the start of summer than with some of the latest conversations from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast!

The podcast has just kicked off its series of interviews with Best of Show winners from FinovateSpring. First, Greg Palmer talked with Christian Widhalm, CEO of Bloom Credit, about building credit and creating new lending opportunities. Episode 217.

“We are an infrastructure platform that’s really leading the modernization of credit data and credit data transmission,” Widhalm said in his Finovate Podcast conversation earlier this month. “There’s a significant amount of value to be uncovered within the ecosystem right now, specifically around credit data, and that’s what Bloom has set out to do.”

Headquartered in New York City and founded in 2016, Bloom Credit is a B2B credit data infrastructure platform. The company is building the next generation of rails for “all things credit data,” including transmission and compliant storage. Bloom’s technology helps facilitate the extension of affordable credit to the millions of consumers who are either subprime borrowers or have thin/no file with major credit agencies.

Watch Bloom Credit’s Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.

Most recently, Greg Palmer sat down with Kalyani Ramadurgam, CEO of Kobalt Labs, to discuss third-party regulations, the rise of AI, and the broader regulatory environment for fintechs, banks, and financial services companies. Episode 219.

“We automate all things third party diligence,” Ramadurgam explained. “When I say third party diligence that usually includes everything from vendor risk assessment all the way to monitoring, as well as partner and merchant risk assessment – whether you’re a partner bank or a fintech that’s looking to do business with new entities.”

New York City-based Kobalt Labs enables FIs to accelerate and fortify compliance operations. The company’s technology also provides automatic alignment with the latest regulations in privacy, lending, money movement, BSA/AML, ACH, and more. At FinovateSpring this year, Kobalt Labs demoed its AI-powered co-pilot that streamlines this process. The company was founded in 2023.

Watch Kobalt Labs’ Best of Show winning demo from FinovateSpring 2024.

Photo by cottonbro studio

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BlueVine, Daily news, Finastra, Fintech Rundown, Finzly, Klarna, MasterCard, Salt Edge, Trustly, Tyro, Weekly Alumni News, Weekly News

As 2024 works its way toward halftime, we’re seeing an uptick in partnership and collaboration activity from crypto to regtech. Check back all week long for updates on the latest in fintech news.

Payments

Payment orchestration platform Gr4vy extends its partnership with open banking payments company Trustly.

Tyro Payments teams up with StoreConnect to enable integrated payments for a Salesforce-based POS solution.

Intelligent verified payouts solutions provider Verituity closes $18.8 million funding round.

MENA and Africa-based consumer fintech Pyypl to issue prepaid Visa cards from its UAE headquarters as part of a new partnership with Visa.

Clair partners with Check to seamlessly offer on-demand pay. 

Tribe Payments appoints Andrew Hocking as CEO.

Frost Bank taps Finzly to provide FedNow and RTP instant payments to its business clients and consumers.

Digital banking

Mahalo Banking introduces its latest partner: Industrial Credit Union.

Bluevine teams up with Mastercard to launch its new Small Business Cashback Mastercard.

Bank Midwest partners with Finastra to launch its new digital bank, OnePlace.bank.

Tuum expands its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver its next generation core banking platform through the AWS Marketplace.

Quail Creek Bank chooses Jack Henry to stay competitive and enhance customer experience.

MoneyLion appoints Jon Kaplan as Chief Revenue Officer.

Avidia Bank partners with Q2 and Personetics to modernize its digital banking experience and strengthen engagement.

Eltropy announces key enhancements to unified conversations platform.

Fraud and Identity management

Risk-decisioning software provider Provenir launches onboarding fraud solution.

Email address intelligence firm AtData forges strategic partnership with unified identity platform Dodgeball.

DataVisor enhances multi-tenancy capabilities for scalable, secure, and flexible fraud and AML solutions.

E-Commerce

Klarna divests its Klarna Checkout (KCO) division for $520 million.

Regtech

E-document management platform A-Cube API announces collaboration with Salt Edge to facilitate compliant document digitization.

DeFi

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform 1inch partners with Web3 security provider Blockaid.

Embedded finance

Cotribute, an embedded fintech platform serving credit unions, partners with APCU and Center Parc Credit Union to launch an automated digital account opening solution.

Embedded finance platform for technology purchases Gynger raises $20 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures.

Banking-as-a-Service

Payments and financial solutions provider Finzly partners with Frost Bank to bring FedNow and RTP Instant Payments to business and retail customers.

Egyptian Banking-as-a-Service startup Connect Money secures $8 million.

Lending

USMI names Enact MI President and CEO Rohit Gupta as Chair of the Board.

Conotoxia makes loan applications and processing available in its mobile app.

Small business finance

Airwallex integrates with Intuit QuickBooks to provide seamless multicurrency reporting.

Photo by Nubia Navarro (nubikini)

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Finovate Global Mexico: A Fundraising Unicorn and Open Finance’s Contribution to Financial Inclusion

Finovate Global Mexico: A Fundraising Unicorn and Open Finance’s Contribution to Financial Inclusion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Finovate Global, Refine Intelligence

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech developments in Mexico.

Mexican digital payments and commerce enablement platform Clip announced a major investment this week. The company, which offers a suite of payments and other financial services solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in Mexico, has raised $100 million in new funding. The capital came courtesy of investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Tactical Value and an unnamed West Coast mutual fund manager.

In a statement, the company noted that the funds raised value the company “in line” with the company’s Series D round from 2021. That round, led by SoftBank Latin America Fund and Viking Global Investors, added $250 million to Clip’s coffers and gave the Mexican fintech a valuation of “nearly $2 billion.”

Clip Founder and CEO Adolfo Babatz praised this week’s investment as “a testament to Clip’s opportunity to continue to lead the digital transformation of Mexico’s commerce ecosystem.” Babatz continued, “More broadly, (the investment) provides even further validation of our mission to open access to digital payments, financial services, and technology solutions to SMBs in the country. We are excited to leverage this financing round to continue to expand and strengthen our offerings to empower more stakeholders across Mexico’s economy.”

With offices in both Mexico City and Buenos Aires, Argentina, Clip offers a range of solutions to enable SMBs to accept digital payments, sell goods and services online, secure financing, and streamline their operations. The company will use the new capital to accelerate product development and support its efforts to leverage technology to enhance financial inclusion in Mexico. Clip was founded in 2012.

Speaking of financial inclusion in Mexico, Latin American open finance platform Belvo and Citibanamex, the second largest bank in the country, have forged a new partnership designed to put open finance to work in bringing credit access to the unbanked.

Via the collaboration, Citibanamex will extend credit and credit card options to applicants without credit histories. Instead of traditional underwriting, the bank will review factors such as outstanding debt levels and the number of credit applications outstanding, as well as leverage Belvo’s open finance technology to secure income verification for applicants whose data is otherwise difficult to retrieve.

“At Citibanamex, we are continuously seeking financial inclusion solutions to facilitate access to banking products for individuals who have not been able to benefit from current solutions,” Citibanamex Director of Digital Business Development Miguel Lavalle said. “With this new functionality, it will be easier for our customers to verify their income, making credit opening processes more agile.”

Belvo’s open finance and payments platform helps financial institutions and their customers benefit from user-permissioned, secure data sharing. The platform validates employment histories, as recorded by employers, to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). This enables banks, fintechs, and financial services companies to process financial data and initiate payments directly from users’s accounts.

“This is pioneering and exciting work, aligned with our mission to help financial innovators create new, more efficient, and inclusive experiences for their users,” Belvo General Director, Mexico, Federica Gregorini said. “We are excited to see how financial entities in Mexico are betting on open finance models due to their positive impact on reducing the gap in access to financial services.”

Headquartered in Mexico City, Belvo was founded in 2019. Last month, the company launched its employment data aggregation solution in Colombia. The launch followed Belvo’s partnership with Colombian digital wallet Nequi, a move considered to be a significant advance for the cause of user-permissioned, secure data sharing.

“This connection via API is just the first of many other integrations that will come soon, which portends a promising future in the development of Open Finance in Colombia and in the region,” Belvo’s General Director in Colombia, David Ballesteros, said.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Uruguayan cross-border payment platform dLocal forged a partnership with Lithuanian gaming marketplace Eneba.
  • Brazil-based fintech Celcoin raised $125 million in funding in a round led by Summit Partners.
  • PayGoal, a fintech based in Argentina, teamed up with Paraguayan acquirer Bancard to launch contactless payments solution Tokefon in Paraguay.

Asia-Pacific

  • Open finance technology provider Brankas and Global Finteq forged a strategic partnership to launch Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS) platforms in the Philippines.
  • South Korean fintech Travel Wallet secured $10 million in funding from U.S.-based VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners.
  • Japan’s Softbank entered a strategic partnership with Gen AI search startup Perplexity.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African paytech Flutterwave announced plans to build a cyber crime research center in Nigeria.
  • South African fintech Ukheshe rebranded as EFT Corporation.
  • Ethiopia’s cabinet approved a legal framework for CBDCs.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German corporate card platform Pliant inked a partnership with Commerzbank
  • Lithuanian regtech iDenfy launched its AI-enabled Customer Risk Assessment solution.
  • Tietoevry Banking expanded its card personalization services in Riga, Latvia.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Courtesy of a partnership with Revolut, UAE-based fintech GTN will offer bond trading to EEA customers via the Revolut app.
  • Israel-based Refine Intelligence unveiled its new check fraud prevention solution.
  • Innovation Village profiled Egyptian wealth management fintech Bokra.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s Pine Labs is considering a $1 billion IPO.
  • The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) profiled women-founded Nepal-based fintech Aloi.
  • TBC Bank Uzbekistan announces a $10 million line of credit from Switzerland’s responsAbility Investments AG.

Photo by Pixabay

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Adyen Brings Near-Instant Settlements to SumUp Clients

Adyen Brings Near-Instant Settlements to SumUp Clients
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SumUp
  • SumUp and Adyen have joined forces to bring faster payouts to small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
  • The partnership will help SumUp offer more of its SME clients access to funds within minutes of a sale.
  • Faster access to funds will help reduce SMEs’ reliance on large working capital reserves and will improve their cash flow.

Payment acceptance company SumUp and payments technology company Adyen have joined forces this week to offer near-instant settlements to more small and micro merchants in Europe and the U.K.

The partnership will help SumUp bring same day settlements to even more of SumUp’s small-to-medium sized enterprise (SME) clients, offering them the access to funds within minutes of a sale. The companies anticipate that the faster access to funds will help reduce SMEs’ reliance on large working capital reserves and will improve their cash flow.

“This partnership is one of a kind as we join forces as major payments players to give SMEs the ability to settle at incredible speeds,” said Adyen President EMEA Alexa von Bismarck. “Cash flow is of the utmost importance for small business owners, and we are proud of being selected by SumUp as their partner on this mission.”

Adyen was founded in 2006 and brings end-to-end payment capabilities, data enhancements, and financial products in a single solution. The company, which processed $820 billion (€767.5 billion) in volume in 2022, serves a range of businesses across the globe, including Facebook, Uber, H&M, eBay, and Microsoft.

SumUp’s platform includes many of the business financial management tools and services that small businesses need to manage and run their businesses, including in-person and remote payment acceptance, card terminals, point-of-sale registers, a business account and card, online store hosting, and invoicing tools. Founded in 2012, SumUp serves 4 million merchants in 36 markets.

“Over the last 10 years, we established the de facto market standard for card acceptance and financial technology for merchants in 36 markets,” said SumUp Co-founder and COO Marc-Alexander Christ. “This partnership will allow us to keep pushing boundaries and continue providing our merchants with the best solutions to manage their business, be it payments, software or financial services. We are excited to amplify our ecosystem of tools and services for small, medium and even enterprise merchants.”

Photo by Djim Loic on Unsplash

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Can LLMs Do the Heavy Lifting When it Comes to Compliance?

Can LLMs Do the Heavy Lifting When it Comes to Compliance?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Speaker series

The rapid evolution of technology turned regulatory compliance into a daunting frontier. Firms are not only required to keep up with changing technologies, but they also need to stay on top of increasingly complex requirements. Priya V. Misra, who sits at the forefront of this arena, is a pioneer in using LLMs to do the heavy lifting when it comes to compliance.

We recently spoke with Misra about his latest venture, the current regulatory environment, the landscape of LLMs, and advice for leveraging GenAI tools.

Tell us about EKAI and the problem you are trying to solve.

Priya V Misra: EKAI is the first AI compliance ‘co-worker’ for risk and finance professionals. The newer regulations are more complex and reporting on them is more frequent. Compliance platforms of the past are not able to cope with these new kind of reporting requirements. As a private SaaS platform, our proprietary AI software addresses the newer compliance requirements with ease. Our platform is designed to support the compliance plan development and sit at the holistic level for the Chief Compliance Officer and managers to digitally manage their compliance and prepare for regulation engagements and compliance submissions to the regulator. We are currently focusing on newer regulations like Operational Resilience, Consumer Duty, and ESG.

EKAI provides a natural language chat interface to make it easy to use. We believe that as the nature of data has evolved, compliance professionals in financial services also need enhanced systems and tools for this new normal to enable them to support the business and meet the requirements of regulators in a cost effective way. We tested the model with the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority as part of their sandbox and found regulator alignment for a tool such as our own to aid the industry in meeting their compliance requirements.  

Banks and fintechs have always faced regulatory challenges. Why have concerns around regulation been so heightened in the past few months?

Misra: The concerns around regulation have been heightened in the past few months due to a fundamental shift in different kinds of regulations. The newer regulations are moving from ‘what’ to ‘how’. This basically means that organizations need to show the evidence of compliance, the ‘how’ they are meeting the compliance and not just ‘what’ their compliance approach is. The regulation horizon we see is placing consumer protection at the heart. This could be multi-jurisdictional with the advent of the Consumer Duty regulation in the U.K., to follow similar types of regulations in Europe. For the industry, we see the impacts on costs from being able to handle the multiple and, at times, competing priorities between regulations and maintaining business-as-usual in an environment still competitive for talent. Tools like EKAI offer compliance professionals in financial services better oversight on how they are performing from a delivery perspective against the compliance requirements across multiple programs. 

How have you seen the conversation around GenAI and LLMs evolve in the financial services industry in the last year-and-a-half?

Misra: The conversation around GenAI and LLMs in the financial services industry has evolved in the right direction. The initial trepidation has now been met with wider adoption, with at least of ChatGPT opening the doorway for productivity enhancements from more business intelligence software like EKAI sitting at the intersection of compliance. EKAI has pioneered the use of the Small Language Model (SLM) for AI in corporate usage. SLMs de-risk AI implementation and provide a way to progressively deploy features. SLMs are eco-friendly as they require lower GPU usage and are quicker to train.

Apart from EKAI’s application of GenAI, what is the most powerful application of GenAI for financial services you have seen?

Misra: One of the most widely implemented GenAI applications within financial services that I have seen is in customer support. The power of GenAI lies in its ability to use company-specific information for answering customer queries and intelligently switch to a human counterpart for sensitive queries.

How do LLMs compare to traditional methods of regulatory compliance and risk assessment in terms of efficiency and accuracy?

Misra: The traditional methods of regulatory compliance work for traditional regulations. The data for these regulations was structured and mainly consisted of numbers. LLMs and GenAI are critical in compliance moving forward. They can handle unstructured data of documents, messages, and transcripts. This gives the organizations a strong foundation to build and use compliance platforms.

What advice would you offer firms who are avoiding GenAI tools because of regulatory and compliance concerns?

Misra: Every industry will be impacted by GenAI and/or LLMs eventually. I would advise them to embrace it selectively because it is coming anyway. The GenAI Act coming into force in Europe in the upcoming months will transform the landscape from a sort of ‘wild west’ into one with the types of benchmarks and controls that will ensure its wider and confident adoption across industries in a way that an industrial revolution is supposed to, transforming skillsets and producing efficiency gains future generations should benefit from.

Photo by Markus Winkler

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Commerzbank Adds Commercial Card Capabilities from Pliant

Commerzbank Adds Commercial Card Capabilities from Pliant
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Commerzbank is leveraging Pliant to offer physical and virtual cards to its corporate banking suite.
  • Corporate-card-as-a-service company Pliant allows banks to issue virtual and physical corporate cards with backend controls and a management and visibility platform.
  • Pliant has raised $180 million, including a recent $19 million Series A round led by PayPal Ventures.

German bank Commerzbank has expanded its card portfolio to include corporate cards. The bank has tapped corporate-card-as-a-service provider Pliant for technology that will offer its small-to-medium-sized business clients a corporate credit card solution.

Commerzbank’s business customers will be able to digitally manage both physical and virtual credit cards and employee-issued credit cards. Customers will be able to integrate the new cards into their billing processes starting in the third quarter of 2024.

“The expansion of our product portfolio in the card sector underlines our claim to be the first point of contact for business customers in Germany. With our new digital credit card solution, we enable our customers to make their billing processes more efficient and thus save costs and time,” said Commerzbank Head of Value Stream Accounts and Payment Methods in Private and Small-Business Customers segment Tobias Knoll.

Pliant allows banks to issue virtual and physical corporate cards that allow customers to restrict card usage based on time range or purposes, set individual limits for their employees, track card expenditures in real-time, and manage receipt capture and accounting tasks.

“Our hypothesis at Pliant has always been that long-term success is only possible in cooperation with banks,” said Pliant CEO Malte Rau. “That is why we are pleased to support Commerzbank as a strong partner of small- and medium-sized business customers in Germany with an innovative credit card solution.”

Berlin-based Pliant was founded in 2020 and has since raised $180 million, including a recent $19 million Series A round led by PayPal Ventures. Last year, Pliant acquired business financial management platform Friday Finance for an undisclosed amount.

Photo by April Pethybridge on Unsplash

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Refine Intelligence Unveils New Check Fraud Prevention Solution

Refine Intelligence Unveils New Check Fraud Prevention Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Refine Intelligence
  • Refine Intelligence has introduced its Digital Customer Outreach for Check Fraud Prevention solution.
  • The technology automatically contacts customers whose checks have been flagged as suspicious, and provides a user-friendly digital inquiry process to help customers resolve issues in seconds.
  • Refine Intelligence made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023 in London.

Refine Intelligence launched its Digital Customer Outreach for Check Fraud Prevention solution this week. The technology, which works with all existing check fraud detection systems, will help banks and other financial institutions deal with an increase in check fraud due to both mail theft and the development of advanced counterfeiting techniques.

Digital Customer Outreach for Check Fraud Prevention automatically contacts customers whose checks have been deemed suspicious. A user-friendly digital inquiry process that takes a few seconds to complete enables customers to review the flagged check and immediately verify key issues such as the amount and the payeee.

“Fraud teams are under time pressure to deal with a tidal wave of alerts about potentially fraudulent checks,” Refine Intelligence CEO and co-founder Uri Rivner said. “In an ideal world, they’d ask the customer about each alerted check, but chasing customers over the phone is expensive and irritating for everyone involved. This new solution closes the gap between detection and prevention by enabling customers to resolve alerts themselves. It works with any detection system, maximizing the current workflow and reducing fraud losses and operational costs for dealing with fraud claims.”

Refine Intelligence’s Digital Customer Outreach platform helps financial crime and compliance teams tackle a range of fraud and financial crime issues. The platform gives banks the ability to automatically contact customers to resolve both AML and check fraud alerts, as well as to automate enhanced due diligence (EDD). The technology leverages proprietary AI to glean insights into anomalous transactions, enabling fraud and compliance teams to learn the context in which the anomaly occurred and to determine whether the transaction is legitimate or not.

Refine Intelligence made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. With headquarters in both Israel and New York, the company this year has been named to the FinCrimeTech 50 for 2024 by AML & FinCrime TechForum, and Chartis Research’s Financial Crime and Compliance 50 for 2024. Refine Intelligence has raised $13 million in funding courtesy of an investment from Glilot Capital Partners and Fin Capital.

Learn more about Refine Intelligence in our spring 2023 Finovate Global interview with Uri Rivner!

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Glia Brings Interactive Technology to NCR Voyix’s Mobile Solution

Glia Brings Interactive Technology to NCR Voyix’s Mobile Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Glia, NCR Corporation
  • NCR Voyix has teamed up with customer interactive technology company Glia.
  • Glia will integrate its unified interaction capabilities into the mobile version of NCR Voyix’s digital banking platform.
  • Glia has won Finovate’s Best of Show award 10 times, including in the company’s debut (as SaleMove) at FinovateFall 2015.

NCR Voyix’s mobile banking app just got a lot more interactive.

Courtesy of a partnership with Glia, NCR Voyix will enhance the mobile version of its Digital Banking platform with unified interaction capabilities. Glia’s ChannelLess Architecture enables seamless transitions between multiple interaction channels: from phone calls and digital messaging to chatbots, video chats, and SMS. Now a part of NCR Voyix’s mobile solution, the technology will help banks and credit unions boost customer and member engagement and loyalty.

Glia Chief Product Officer Jay Choi talked about the importance of the mobile channel for a younger, generation of financial services customers. “Forcing customers to exit the mobile app experience to receive guidance or support results in inefficiencies, delays in resolutions, and frustration for all involved,” Choi explained. “With the integration of our digital-first tools into the NCR Voyix mobile app, we are empowering banks and credit unions to overcome this challenge, instead providing instant, personalized and seamless engagement where customers and members already are.”

Among the FIs to deploy the technology are Texas-based 5 Point Credit Union, which has credited Glia’s solution for increasing staff efficiency, simplifying processes, and reducing fraud. The credit union also underscored how the technology enhanced its ability to communicate and engage with its members, improving in-app support.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York, Glia won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2015 (as SaleMove). The company has gone on to win a total of 10 Finovate Best of Show awards, including in its most recent appearance on Finovate’s digital stage in 2021.

Last month, Glia unveiled its responsible AI platform purpose-built for financial services companies called Glia Cortex. The technology provides personalized self-service experiences at scale, helps agents become more productive, and gives managers new insights into agent/customer interactions. Among the solution’s early adopters is Service 1st Federal Credit Union, a Danville, Pennsylvania-based institution founded in 1975.

NCR Voyix was formed in October 2023 when NCR Corporation split into two entities. The company’s ATM business was spun-off as NCR Atleos. NCR Voyix is the successor to NCR Corporation, which demoed its technology at FinovateSpring in 2016 and again in 2017.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

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Apple Says, “See Ya Later” to Pay Later

Apple Says, “See Ya Later” to Pay Later
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later, its BNPL offering, just 15 months after launching the tool.
  • Apple said that the decision will help the company launch a BNPL offering to cardholders across the globe.
  • Apple may have also wanted to avoid the consequences of the CFBP’s recent interpretive rule, which classifies BNPL providers as credit card issuers under the Truth in Lending Act. 

March 28, 2023 to June 17, 2024. That is the lifespan of Apple Pay Later, Apple’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) tool.

Apple launched the tool last year to allow Apple cardholders to pay for their purchases under $1,000 in four separate installments over the course of six weeks. The service was free, and did not charge users interest or any other fees. Consumers benefitted from a six week float on their purchase amount, while Apple benefitted by attracting new cardholders and potentially enticing consumers to spend more money using their Apple card. This week, Apple announced it has shut down the Apple Pay Later service.

But even though Apple Pay Later is shutting down, the company is replacing the BNPL method with another BNPL option. In a statement to 9to5Mac, an Apple spokesperson said, “Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay. With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the U.S. Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.”

According to this statement, the major reason Apple is switching to a new BNPL tool is that the new offering will make installment purchases available to cardholders across the globe. Additionally, Apple will no longer hold the paper on the short-term loan. The company’s new BNPL tool will leverage Citi to furnish the short-term loan.

There is another, unspoken reason Apple may have decided to change its role in the BNPL game, however. The move may have to do with the CFPB’s recent interpretive rule for the BNPL industry, which classifies BNPL providers as credit card issuers under the Truth in Lending Act. This would subject Apple to a range of new obligations, including having to investigate customer disputes, pause payments, provide refunds, and issue credits when applicable.

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash

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Kani Payments Teams Up with CLOWD9

Kani Payments Teams Up with CLOWD9
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Kani Payments
  • Reconciliation and reporting services provider Kani Payments has partnered with issuer processor CLOWD9.
  • CLOWD9 will leverage Kani Payments’ platform to power its data reporting and reconciliation capabilities.
  • Kani Payments made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023.

Reconciliation and reporting services provider Kani Payments has inked a partnership with CLOWD9. The cloud-native issuer processor selected Kani Payments to power its data reporting and reconciliation capabilities and help the company manage the unique data standardization requirements faced by banks and fintechs alike.

CLOWD9 will use Kani Payments’ SaaS platform to collect and standardize transaction data, including both authorization and settlement data from payment schemes. The platform will enable CLOWD9 to report to clients across the payment value chain faster, as well as provide enhanced and easy-to-understand data customization and visualization via the Kani Payments’ portal dashboard. This will empower clients with the flexibility to configure data as they choose.

“The sweet spot is taking standard data, formatting it for the individual needs of our mutual clients, and accelerating reconciliations with it,” CLOWD9 Chief Product Officer Richard Wray explained. “Kani Payments are the experts in that area and their understanding of the depth, detail, and specializations within the payment data value chain is unsurpassed.”

Headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K., Kani Payments made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demoed how its automated reconciliation and reporting platform provides fully automated reconciliations, as well as automated legal, regulatory, and scheme reporting. Kani CCO Marc McCarthy used the example of a simple transaction at a coffee shop to explain the myriad actors – issuing bank, network, processor – that play a role in managing the data of even an everyday purchase. “Each one of those organizations has a different version of that event,” McCarthy said. “We here at Kani Payments provide a reconciliation and reporting platform that helps each one of those actors to have compliance, to have validation of their data, and to have insightful reports of what they can see with their information.”

Earlier this year, Kani Payments announced a partnership with core banking platform Pismo. The collaboration makes Kani’s platform available to Pismo’s bank, marketplace, and fintech clients. Vishal Dalal, Pismo CEO for North America, EMEA, and APAC said that the partnership “will unlock useful insights to help (financial institutions) make better, more informed decisions, shaping a new era for banking and payments.”

Kani Payments was founded in 2018. Aaron Holmes is CEO. Holmes co-founded the company following tenures at Flex-e-card, Global Processing Services, and NBS Card Solutions (now Wirecard).

Photo by Daniel Smyth

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Accenture’s AI Report Unveils the Key to Unlocking AI

Accenture’s AI Report Unveils the Key to Unlocking AI
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Report series

AI may be one of the most misunderstood concepts in financial services at the moment. Not only is the technology complex, it also suffers from hype, bias, lack of transparency, lack of standardization, regulatory ambiguity, and it is constantly evolving. Accenture’s AI report helps demystify a bit of the AI enigma.

The firm spent multiple years surveying executives in a range of industries to compile a report detailing how to harness the power of AI. The firm surveyed more than 3,000 executives across 19 industries and 10 countries from November 2022 to November 2023 to compare how organizations leveraged AI.

Reinventing the enterprise

The main emphasis of Accenture’s AI report centered around reinvention. Accenture highlighted that reinvention is the key to unlocking the potential of AI for firms. Companies need to embrace reinvention as a deliberate strategy to fully leverage the powers of both AI and generative AI.

What it means to reinvent

Reinvention is more than just a buzz word. It involves firms transforming their entire organization by involving the whole C-suite in a collective decision-making process. Instead of simply adopting new technologies that fit into a bank’s existing approach, the entire firm must adopt a holistic approach that takes on four main attributes:

  • Encompass talent strategy
    Organizations must invest in training their entire workforce to understand and effectively use AI technologies. They must also attract new AI-skilled talent into their workforce by creating an attractive working environment and offering opportunities for growth and development. Additionally, firms must develop their leaders to understand AI’s potential and how to strategically implement it.
  • Break down organizational silos
    Because AI initiatives often require collaboration among different departments, breaking down silos ensures that all teams work together effectively. This also means that each silo needs to offer transparent access to its data (in a secure way, of course). By making data accessible across the entire organization, AI systems can leverage more comprehensive datasets for more accurate and helpful outputs. And, perhaps most importantly, aligning AI projects with broader business objectives helps ensure that the entire organization is working towards that same goal.
  • Embrace new ways of working
    To reinvent their current way of working, organizations need to embrace new ways of working and be open to change. Specifically, firms must adopt agile practices that allow them to iterate quickly, respond to changing markets, and continuously improve their AI systems. They also must create a culture of innovation that encourages experimentation, and offer flexible working arrangements that can improve employees’ productivity as well as their job satisfaction.
  • Continuously seek reinvention
    The final piece of the puzzle is that organizations must not stand still. Even after taking initial steps, firms must regularly evaluate and refine their AI strategy to keep pace with advancements in technology as well as changing business needs and shifting consumer demand. Additionally, organizations must continuously invest in research and development to explore not only new AI technologies, but also new applications of existing technology.

Benefits of reinventing

Those willing to reinvent their enterprise stand to reap multiple benefits. In addition to driving growth, productivity, and outperforming their competitors, firms that reinvent their enterprise to unlock the key to leveraging AI will enhance the user experience for their end customers, tap into data-driven decision making, accelerate innovation, manage risk, scale their business, empower their employees, and optimize resources.

By integrating these benefits into their reinvention strategy, firms can fully exploit the transformative potential of AI and generative AI, ensuring long-term success and resilience.

To learn more about what it means to reinvent your enterprise, including the seven components of the digital core outlined in Accenture’s AI findings, check out the free report.

Photo by Nick on Unsplash

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