Bold has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by existing investor General Atlantic, a leading global growth investor, with participation from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. Existing investors InQLab and Amador also participated in the round. With this new funding, Bold plans to bolster its product roadmap and offerings, as well as continue its focus on business expansion while deepening its position as a leading merchant acquirer in Colombia.

Bold was founded in 2019 to serve small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with a mission of fostering financial inclusion through the democratization of Colombia’s digital economy. Bold currently offers low-cost payment terminals that enable businesses to accept card-present and card-not-present payments and also support other local payment methods. The seamless enrollment process allows merchants to enroll in just minutes, providing immediate access.

This latest investment follows Bold’s February 2022 $55M Series B round. Since then, Bold has scaled from 380 to more than 800 employees and currently boasts more than 150,000 monthly active merchants.

José Vélez, Co-Founder and CEO of Bold, said, “Our work continues to empower small businesses by breaking payment barriers in Colombia. Now, thousands of merchants have access to digital financial services and can focus on the growth and success of their businesses. We’re thrilled to continue our work with General Atlantic and proud to partner with the IFC as we seek to transform and simplify how businesses accept payments in the digital era. We are also excited by our forthcoming product offering that will deliver even greater value to merchants, following Bold’s recent regulatory approval as a financial institution in Colombia.”

“We believe Bold is positioned at the forefront of Colombia’s emerging economy and playing a key role in bringing widespread accessibility to digital financial services,” added Luiz Ribeiro, Managing Director and Co-Head of the Brazil Office at General Atlantic. “Since our initial investment in 2022, we’ve seen Bold provide significant value to Colombian merchants, and we look forward to continuing our efforts with José and his team to further scale Bold’s offerings.”

“Bold’s commitment to the prosperity of entrepreneurs and their businesses through reliable and affordable financial tools aligns with our strategy of boosting inclusion and productivity in Latin America,” said Elizabeth Martínez de Marcano, IFC’s Regional director for Colombia, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. “We are pleased to support Bold as they advance their mission to bring economic flexibility to small businesses.”

General Atlantic’s investment in Bold is subject to regulatory approval by the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia.

Rasa, the leading generative conversational AI platform today announced the completion of its $30 million Series C funding round, co-led by StepStone Group and PayPal Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Accel, and Basis Set Ventures.

“This investment accelerates our lead in the market, and fuels our drive to redefine what is possible for businesses using generative AI-powered chat and voice platforms at scale,” said Melissa Gordon, Rasa CEO. “With our technology, we’re well-positioned to transform how businesses interact with their customers, making every conversation impactful and personal. We will use the funding to advance our technological leadership and strengthen our market presence.”

Dr. Alan Nichol, Rasa Co-Founder and CTO, added, “At Rasa we’ve reinvented how conversational AI works. While many in the industry claim to incorporate generative AI, often it’s merely an addition of LLMs onto their existing platforms.”

Rasa continues to deliver on its mission to empower the world’s largest brands to address people’s needs with open and extensible conversation⁠al AI. Rasa powers sophisticated and robust AI assistants aligned with customers’ business logic that provide meaningful and practical user engagement. The recent launches of Rasa Pro and Rasa Studio with CALM (Conversational AI with Language Models) deliver a major innovation that combines the flexibility, nuanced understanding, and fast time-to-value of Large Language Models (LLMs) with the control and certainty of traditional (NLU-based) chatbots. With out-of-the-box conversation handling, CALM ensures user interactions remain coherent and natural. Rasa Studio adds an intuitive UI that's built from the ground up for CALM, saving significant development time and reducing costs by reducing the reliance on specialist teams.

“We believe Rasa delivers unparalleled value to its clients by automating or eliminating the most expensive and time-consuming aspects of delivering excellent customer service,” said Hunter Somerville, Partner at StepStone Group. “Rasa has proven time and again that security-conscious enterprise customers can safely deploy the latest conversational AI, with an elegant low-code platform that offers robust functionality, data privacy, and scale.”

PayPal Ventures joins this round as the venture firm’s first AI investment, marking the launch of its new AI Fund to invest in early stage AI startups across all industries and verticals. “We are thrilled to mark the launch of our AI Fund with our investment in Rasa,” said Alan Du, PayPal Ventures partner. “We believe Rasa offers a best-in-class platform for enterprises to develop robust, conversational AI, and we have seen how its concierge solutions improve customer engagement and business performance.”

Rasa powers two of the world’s three top banks, major insurers, and global travel and hospitality companies, among others. Rasa has been downloaded more than 50 million times by developers.

“Rasa’s latest platform marks a revolutionary advancement in the realm of conversational AI. It effortlessly combines ease of use with advanced capabilities and will enable us to securely leverage the potential of Large Language Models to create an even more intuitive conversational experience for our customers,” remarked Andreas Bohmann, VP IT Enterprise and Integration Architecture at Deutsche Telekom.

The new funding will also allow Rasa to continue growing its team, which is dedicated to reshaping the future of AI assistants. Rasa is currently hiring several exciting roles across North America and Europe in Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Customer Success, and more.

Alkami Technology, Inc., a leading cloud-based digital banking solutions provider for financial institutions in the U.S., today launched the Alkami Digital Sales & Service Maturity Model, based on research conducted across 215 US financial institutions with at least $200 million in assets and completed December of 2023. The study, developed by Alkami in partnership with financial services influencer Jim Marous and Emerald Research Group, paints a picture of the spectrum of maturity by categorizing banks and credit unions into distinct segments based on their readiness and implementation of digital strategies. 

Some of the study’s key highlights include: 

• Digital maturity is linked to revenue growth, with the most advanced institutions reporting up to twice the annual revenue growth as the least advanced. These digitally mature institutions have fully deployed modern data technology, are more likely to source talent from outside the financial services sector, and prioritize investments to improve the account holder experience.
• Organization size does not solely determine digital maturity. One-quarter of financial institutions excelling digitally have less than $500 million in assets. In contrast, more than one in seven of the least digitally mature institutions have more than $5 billion in assets. The differences between those outperforming or underperforming peers in their asset class center around cultural identity, attention to platform feedback, and data modernization progress, among others.
• Even among the most digitally mature in the study, there is room to raise the bar. For instance, while digital account opening is offered by the majority of the most advanced institutions, only one quarter of them provide a 5-minute online account opening experience for new account holders and half are struggling to automate critical back-office processes. 

“The banking sector faces a transformative challenge: to adapt, innovate and thrive in an increasingly digital landscape,” said Jim Marous, owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report. “Digital experience is now closely tied to a bank or credit union’s brand. Our hope is that the insights in this report spur productive conversations in the industry and enable financial institutions to not only react more quickly to digital change but also proactively leapfrog account holder expectations.”

“US financial institutions are currently operating in the most competitive market they have faced in years, forcing banks and credit unions to raise their game to drive deposits and account holder engagement. This means that the preferred way consumers choose to bank, the digital banking channel, must evolve from the service channel it primarily is today to the digital sales and service channel that account holders and financial institutions need and deserve,” said Allison Cerra, chief marketing officer at Alkami. “We are proud to offer the market this comprehensive benchmark to understand the key differences separating segments when it comes to prioritizing and implementing digital strategies.”

Trulioo, an industry-leading identity platform with proven global coverage for person and business verification, today announced it has partnered with EQ Bank, the digital platform of Canada’s Challenger Bank™ and rated as the top bank in Canada on Forbes’ World’s Best Banks list. EQ Bank chose Trulioo Identity Document Verification, Workflow Studio, and Business Verification to streamline customer and business onboarding.

After a thorough market assessment, EQ Bank selected Trulioo Identity Document Verification to capture and verify an ID document and selfie when customers open accounts online – a critical exercise for a seamless digital banking experience. With advanced AI checks, face comparison, and liveness detection, EQ Bank benefits from cutting-edge fraud defenses in an evolving threat landscape.

EQ Bank leveraged Trulioo Workflow Studio – a no-code, drag-and-drop workflow builder – for fast, flexible Identity Document Verification integration. Workflow Studio allows the bank to easily add verification steps and configure onboarding processes based on results at each stage.

Workflow Studio also allowed EQ Bank to quickly configure a customized list of document types it would accept for verification to comply with Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) regulations. Trulioo SDKs then adapted to those predetermined rules and gave EQ Bank customers options based on where their documents were issued.

“Partnering with Trulioo allows us to continue meeting our regulatory requirements while providing tailored, best-in-class customer onboarding experiences with the least friction and the highest chance of verification,” said Mahima Poddar, EQ Bank SVP and group head of personal banking. “As many Canadians turn to EQ Bank for their everyday banking needs, collaborating with Trulioo and its always-available support team enables us to better serve our rapidly growing customer base with the speed, security and experience they deserve.”

Customized onboarding experiences, combined with Trulioo expertise working with major banks and fintechs across the globe, provide a key advantage for EQ Bank to stay ahead of evolving industry best practices.

“EQ Bank is at the forefront of the digital banking experience, and our partnership ensures it continues to deliver the security, compliance and convenience customers expect,” said Steve Munford, Trulioo CEO. “The customizable, integrated Trulioo platform reduces onboarding friction with flexible workflows that deliver the highest verification assurance. We look forward to our ongoing collaboration as EQ Bank drives change in Canadian banking.”

Airbase, a leader in procure-to-pay solutions, is thrilled to announce a significant step in its mission to transform procurement with the appointment of Mathew Schulz from Forrester as the new Vice President of Procurement Strategy. Schulz brings extensive experience and a track record of driving procurement excellence and technological advancement. This critical addition is accompanied by the launch of new innovative upgrades to Airbase’s Guided Procurement module.

With over two decades of experience in procurement and technology, Schulz's prior roles include Head of Global Procurement at Forrester, the renowned research and advisory firm, and the Head of Global Procurement and Corporate Services at SS&C Eze, a leading investment technology solution. He also served as a Managing Consultant and former technology lead for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Schulz is an important voice and thought leader in a procurement landscape undergoing widespread technological transformation.

Thejo Kote, Founder and CEO of Airbase, commented, “I’m thrilled to welcome Mathew to Airbase. His technological and domain expertise are exactly what we need to continue to build groundbreaking solutions. We're setting new standards in procurement, and with Mathew, we look forward to accelerating our journey."

For Schulz, the move to Airbase was a natural next step. "Airbase is uniquely situated to help the next generation of procurement. They're building technology that meets the demands of an evolving business landscape and empowering procurement and finance professionals. It's rare to see a solution that understands the needs of the profession. Airbase is creating a competitive advantage for companies by equipping their procurement teams with tech that drives value and saves money and time."

Commendations for Airbase's Innovations in Procurement:

Patrick Reymann, Research Director, Procurement and Enterprise Applications at IDC, says, “Since the introduction of Guided Procurement, Airbase has emerged as an attractive and beneficial option for procurement practitioners. With its compelling suite of features, including AI-driven insights and streamlined vendor management, Airbase clearly demonstrates a commitment to leveraging technology to enhance process efficiency and data accuracy. These features further cement Airbase's position as an innovator in the procurement solutions space."

"Airbase has transformed our approach to procurement," says Alex Schlick Sr. Director of Accounting at Doximity. "Now all employees have an easy way to request a purchase and stakeholders have the oversight they need to do their jobs. Everyone can collaborate to provide and review the details and documentation they need for approval. As a result, we’ve seen notable improvements in adoption, cycle times, and overall cost savings."

Airbase elevates the procurement experience.

• Unprecedented levels of efficiency are now achievable with Airbase’s AI Prediction & Insights.
• Effortless Vendor Renewal Management that yields time and cost savings precipitates a shift to strategic work by procurement professionals.
• Collaborative software that provides complete and shared visibility for all stakeholders.
• Automated Vendor Tax Compliance for domestic and international vendors that ensures accuracy and timely reporting.
• Procurement is a fully connected experience with native integrations and our open API into key financial and stakeholder tools.

The Airbase platform provides robust capabilities in spend management, with many customers achieving over 90% spend under management.

As Airbase continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in procurement, the addition of Schulz and the latest Guided Procurement features mark a new chapter in the company’s journey towards procurement excellence.

Sinch, which powers meaningful conversations between businesses and their customers through its Customer Communications Cloud, today announced its messaging APIs and solutions are available on Temenos Exchange, the partner ecosystem of integrated fintech solutions.

Sinch provides high-quality, high-volume messaging services to banks and financial institutions through its global super network, which is the most secure and reliable network for conversations on SMS, email, voice, and messaging apps. Additionally, Sinch enhances security for banking customers with scalable multi-factor authentication solutions built to increase the security and conversions of every transaction. These solutions are now accessible via the Temenos Exchange ecosystem giving financial services clients' access to solutions that work with its core banking platform. This helps improve the customer experience; and deliver enriching and scalable communications for retail banking customers on any channel. Sinch already delivers this for some of the largest financial institutions in the world and is excited to partner with Temenos to scale their impact on the banking customer experience globally.

The ecosystem offers pre-integrated and approved fintech solutions that can be easily deployed on top of Temenos’ open platform for composable banking, enabling banks to accelerate the creation of new financial services, while reducing the costs of development.

Martin Bailey, Director of Innovation and Ecosystems, Temenos, said, “Temenos Exchange acts as an accelerator for fintechs and software developers, helping them develop, validate and monetize new banking solutions. The integration with Temenos and joining Temenos Exchange means Sinch can write once and be readily available to the thousands of banks globally that run on our platform.”

“Core banking platforms are key partners for Sinch in delivering customer communications at scale. Working together, we can accelerate the transformation towards truly omnichannel banking communication on a global scale,” Petter Bengtsson, Global SVP Partners and Platforms at Sinch explained. “Sinch’s availability on Temenos Exchange further extends our commitment to the banking community and enables Temenos customers to easily reap the benefits of the Conversation and Verification APIs. We look forward to leveraging the power of the Temenos platform to help us achieve our business goals.”

NMI, a global leader in embedded payments, unveils NMI Payments, the comprehensive embedded payments solution for software companies, independent sales organizations (ISOs), and payment professionals. The NMI Payments platform easily integrates with existing applications and payment solutions, offering a flexible, modular approach that expedites and streamlines payments. The solution allows partners to manage the full merchant and client payment life cycle.

NMI Payments provides unparalleled merchant management and processing, allowing software vendors and ISOs to focus on their business. By optimizing and automating payment processes, underwriting, and workflows, merchants can be onboarded quickly, and ready to start accepting payments in minutes.

By making multiple services available in a single integrated payment platform, NMI Payments creates more value for software companies, ISOs, and their merchants, supporting everything from sign-up, through underwriting, to payment processing. NMI partners have the flexibility to choose from a variety of processors and shopping cart options that are embedded directly into their applications and can adjust these capabilities based on their merchants’ needs. The modular design quickly scales as business needs evolve, and the ability to white label or embed payments gives partners full control over their brand and their product throughout the payment process.

Designed for frictionless payments, NMI Payments allows consumers to pay wherever and however, they want – online, in-store, in-app, mobile, and unattended – securely, easily, and reliably, leveraging NMI’s feature-rich payment gateway.

NMI Payments was created with the developer in mind. The simple, flexible set of APIs and SDKs make for easy integration into any software platform or payment solution. NMI’s new developer portal offers code samples and reference materials together with ‘Try It’ functionality, to provide everything a developer needs to quickly and easily integrate payments into their application. Now software companies can generate additional revenue streams by leveraging NMI Payments to monetize every transaction. Integrating and embedding payments also makes for a superior and more confident consumer experience, providing a seamless way to pay.

Vijay Sondhi, Chief Executive Officer at NMI said:
“Our company mission is to provide our partners with payment capabilities from sign-up to pay-out in minutes. By managing risk, optimizing monetization, and offering revenue-sharing models, we can support our partners wherever they are on their payment journey, no matter the size or expertise of the business. The launch of NMI Payments reaffirms our promise to deliver unparalleled value through flexibility, modularity, and choice, ensuring our partners are equipped with the tools to thrive and expand in the ever-evolving world of payments.”

Jared Drieling, Chief Innovation Officer, TSG (The Strawhecker Group) said:
“Embedded payment solutions built directly into a software platform increasingly centralizes these services and provide merchants with a more streamlined, integrated offering. Software organizations offering payment processing directly to their merchants open up a huge revenue opportunity and significantly boosts convenience. Going forward, expect more merchants to find their payment partner through these relationships.”

This news comes on the heels of consecutive acquisitions by NMI to enhance its suite of enablement solutions and simplify the payment process for partners and their merchants, most recently through the Sphere Commercial Division acquisition.

Personal loans can be an effective way for some people to consolidate debt, pay for home improvements or cover other large, unexpected bills. But for some borrowers, meeting traditional lending requirements for a personal loan can be a challenge.

Unlike a mortgage loan that uses the house as collateral or an auto loan that uses the vehicle as collateral, personal loans are considered unsecured loans because they don’t require collateral. To qualify borrowers, lenders look at a variety of common factors, including credit score, debt-to-income ratio and credit history.

Seeing an opportunity to help more clients access personal loans, U.S. Bank recently established a partnership with Pagaya Technologies, a global technology company delivering AI-powered product solutions to lenders nationwide. With Pagaya, U.S. Bank can offer a wider range of clients the financial products they need, expanding access to credit and delivering more financial opportunity to more people. 

Now, when a U.S. Bank client applies for a personal loan that doesn’t meet its traditional requirements, Pagaya will complete a secondary review via its AI-powered credit decisioning capabilities. If the borrower is approved, U.S. Bank will originate the loan and service the clients over the life of the loan.

“We know that we have many clients who don’t fall within our traditional credit parameters,” said Mike Shepard, head of consumer lending partnerships at U.S. Bank. “By expanding access to responsible credit solutions, we are giving clients access to funds when they need it the most, through their existing and trusted banking relationship with us.”

In just a few short months, more than 2,000 U.S. Bank clients have been approved for personal loans using this technology and credit intelligence network.  

“We share U.S. Bank’s commitment to increasing access to life-changing financial products and services," said Leslie Gillin, Pagaya's chief growth officer. "With Pagaya’s integrated and seamlessly embedded lending technology, our lending partners can expand and deepen their client relationships to a more diverse group of borrowers.”

In addition to helping clients access capital with personal loans, the U.S. Bank Simple Loan helps clients meet short-term cash needs from $100 to $1,000 with a transparent, easy-to-understand installment loan. Since its launch in 2018, the U.S. Bank Simple Loan has saved borrowers nearly a combined $40 million (vs. borrowing from a typical payday lender)

Velmie proudly announces the launch of its Business Banking Platform, an advanced solution crafted to address the challenges of financial services providers and fintechs.
The Platform is strategically designed to extend the IT infrastructure of banks and fintechs, enabling them to broaden their product offerings and increase their revenues.

According to the World Bank report, 65 million firms, or 40% of formal micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries, have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year. In this landscape, where 60% of small businesses are still struggling to pay business-related expenses, Velmie Business Banking Platform emerges as a strategic solution to empower banks and fintechs. 

Moreover, the fact that 87% of business owners use the same financial services provider for their business and personal accounts presents an exceptional opportunity for banks and fintechs that offer personal financial services to expand their solutions to business customers and, simultaneously, boost their revenue for the years ahead. 

In a landscape where businesses demand more than just financial transactions, Velmie Business Banking Software emerges as the catalyst for transformation. This Platform is a one-stop-shop, sophisticated, efficient, and customizable solution built for modern businesses.

Among the key features:

1. Modular Approach: Velmie Platform’s microservices architecture ensures greater flexibility, allowing for customization and configuration of modules independently for each customer, catering to specific business needs.

2. Integrations of Financial Services via Global Partner Ecosystem: augment business banking services with payments, cards, accounts, lending, FX, digital assets, KYC/AML, and more. Built-in integrations expand the product offering seamlessly.

3. White-Label Solution: All essential components, from back office to apps with superior UX and performance, are integrated into one place, providing an exceptional digital customer experience.

4. End-to-End Delivery: Velmie handles the integration and support, sparing customers from needing additional expertise and resources.

5. Scalability: Built to adapt and scale on the go, the flexible architecture allows for tailored solutions, aligning with specific goals and business customer needs.

6. Security: Compliant with industry regulations, Velmie Business Banking Platform prioritizes security and ensures the protection of sensitive financial data.

From facilitating corporate payroll, automatization of payments, and invoice factoring to venturing into crypto payments and business deposits, with Velmie Business Banking Platform you can cater to a broad spectrum of business clients needs.

Velmie invites fintech businesses to embark on a transformative journey in financial services with its Business Banking Platform.

“The introduction of the Business Banking Platform is a significant milestone for the industry. Committed to addressing the financial challenges businesses face, our platform offers a seamless and customized solution. It empowers fintechs and banks to extend their reach with a comprehensive business banking solution, tailored for businesses of all sizes globally. This launch underscores our dedication to simplifying financial experiences and transforming the landscape of modern banking.” - commented Slava Ivashkin, CEO of Velmie.

With Velmie digital banking solutions, banks and fintech providers can revolutionize their offerings to businesses, delivering an exceptional business user experience.
Velmie empowers them to design top-notch customer journeys with ready-to-go apps that can be customized to meet business customers’ needs and foster loyalty.