Fintech Fringe, an official London Tech Week Fringe Event, today launches its inaugural programme that aims to accelerate the growth of homegrown and overseas fintech scaleups in the UK. The event takes place from June 12^th-15^th in London in partnership with Department for Business and Trade, Barclays Rise, Fintech Alliance, Innovate Finance, Level39, London & Partners, and Tech Passport, as well as a host of fintech giants and luminaries.

With recent turbulence in the market from the SVB shakeout and the tremor effects from Brexit still rippling through the UK economy, it has been a challenging time for the UK fintech sector with increased competition globally to attract the best fintech businesses. Despite these challenges the UK remains the nucleus of European fintech, with British fintechs attracting more funding than all their EMEA counterparts combined in 2022 (KPMG, 2023).

To showcase the UK as the best place for global fintech investment, Fintech Fringe is uniquely focused on providing solutions for high-growth fintech scaleups looking to expand in the UK. This includes overseas scaleups looking to assess the UK as their next key market for international expansion and UK-based fintech scaleups looking to access the expertise and support they need to fuel their next phase of growth.

The four-day programme in collaboration with event partners CCgroup, co:cubed, Fintech B2B Marketing, Harrington Starr, Streets Consulting and Women of Fintech will cover:

• UK market insight – The inside track on the UK as a global hub and why companies choose to set-up and scale here.
• Scale and growth – Fintech scaleup successes and failures, sales and partnership tactics, growth hacks from practitioners and customer insights from banks and financial institutions.
• Regulation – Expert insight into the challenges and opportunities around emerging regulations and policies in the UK.
• Showcase – Scale-ups can meet leading investors and potential customers, with one of 20 fintechs selected to showcase their business.

Designed to be pragmatic in focus, fintech scale-ups will be able to meet leading investors and potential customers, gather insights from the successes and failures of industry peers, and learn from leading industry experts.

“The UK and London has long held the reputation as the best place in the world to start and scale a FinTech business, and we’re delighted to be bringing the FinTech Fringe to life during London Tech Week,” said Janine Hirt, CEO of Innovate Finance. “Connecting the ecosystem and offering further support to scaling FinTech businesses at a time when the spotlight is on the tech sector at large. FinTech Fringe will bring together industry, government and regulatory voices to support the scaling journey of some of our most promising businesses and encourage global innovative companies to expand their presence in the UK.”

“London is renowned for its thriving culture of innovation and its fintech sector is no exception. In 2022 alone, London-based fintech companies attracted more investment than any other global fintech hub,” said Janet Coyle, Managing Director for Business Growth, London & Partners. “I am thrilled that alongside an exciting programme of events at London Tech Week, scaling fintech companies now have the opportunity to join Fintech Fringe to meet investors, customers and gather valuable insights. I’m looking forward to welcoming scaling fintechs throughout the week as we celebrate one of London’s most promising sectors.”

"The UK is regarded as a global leader in fintech, but recently that position has come under threat,” said Calypso Harland, Founder, Fintech Fringe. “Critical to maintaining leadership is ensuring the UK remains the best place to scale your fintech business. This is why we’ve created this unique event that has a dedicated focus on pragmatic ways to scale fintech businesses to the next level. With some of the biggest names in the industry alongside the right blend of knowledge, connections, and advice, I believe we’ve created a programme that will deliver real value to fintechs in high-growth mode.”

USDToch provides a lending solution for DeFi 2.0. Building on the existing enhanced capital utilization enabled by over-collateralized lending, it further enhances the investment returns on the staking side. It also plans to introduce traditional assets into the DeFi lending system in the form of RWA soon.

Lending is one of the oldest economic activities in human society. Ancient loans took the form of pawnshops where loans were granted against collateral deemed valuable. Early forms of credit arose when resource owners lent production materials to laborers with an expectation of repayment in goods. If the borrower failed to repay, their family could be enslaved.

Today, credit is essential to businesses and the entire economy as it allows economic units to raise operational capital without diluting equity. This leverage effect leads to increased investment, capital expenditure, and consumption, and eventually rapid economic growth.

In TradFi, credit is typically divided into secured and unsecured credit. A mortgage is a secured loan since the loan is secured by property. Credit cards are an unsecured loan, or can be thought of as collateralized by the creditworthiness of the borrower. Credit creation results in balance sheet expansion.

In DeFi, most existing lending protocols are based on over-collateralization. They are similar to pawnshop lending, and do not involve credit creation. Over-collateralized loans offer many trading and hedging strategies for the financial sector. However, their use cases are limited in other businesses because only asset owners can borrow, and the poor cannot increase their leverage. Even for asset owners, there are more efficient ways to leverage than participating in DeFi lending. For example, a person with $10 million in crypto assets may be able to borrow $20 million from a CeFi institution that undergoes KYC and credit checks (although with the collapse of FTX, the world's top three CeFi lending platforms are all struggling). Essentially, the "core DeFi principle" of permissionless blocks the growth of the DeFi lending market.

The logic of DeFi lending

DeFi over-collateralized lending is essentially a way to increase capital utilization. For example, if user holds an ETH (worth $2000), he/she is bullish on its subsequent market and don't want to sell it, and want to gain from the potential market, then DeFi over-collateralized lending is a good option, the user can stake this ETH to a lending protocol and get 1400 USDT (based on the staking ratio of 0.7) for other investments for further profit. At some point in the future (supposing without triggering liquidation), user can redeem it. Of course, many lending protocols also support staking stablecoins, lending crypto assets such as ETH at the staking rate.

Over-collateralization prevents borrowers from defaulting while the excess also provides insurance space for the platform to resist market fluctuations. In the current DeFi lending system, howevers, investors do not hold the initiative.

For example, when user stakes ETH to a lending protocol, it usually does not generate considerable profits (although many lending protocols provide small incentives). Alternatively, the lending protocol may use these user-pledged assets for other "farming" activities, and the profits are usually not distributed to the pledger.

Leverage

Smart players usually prefer to use lending platforms to engage in circular lending with leverage to gain higher profits.

Suppose the user currently holds an ETH worth $2000 and stake it to borrow 1400 USDT based on a 0.7 loan-to-value ratio. The investor then uses the 1400 USDT to purchase 0.7 ETH from another DEX and continues to borrow on the same platform.

At this point, the investor will have a total of 1.7 ETH (two ETHs staked on the platform), and the debt owed to the platform is 2380 USDT. When ETH rises from $2000 to $4000, the investor will have a total of $6800 worth of ETH.

Then, the investor can redeem the second staked 0.7 ETH and trade it into USDT (get 2800 USDT), and take out 1400 USDT to redeem the first staked 1 ETH. The investor will then have a total of 1 ETH + 1400 USDT, and the extra USDT is the profit earned through revolving lending.

This means that the investor only uses $2000 of capital to leverage $3400, and when the investor engages in multiple lending transactions, their cumulative staked assets and debt increase simultaneously, as shown below:

Users see that when an investor borrows and repays for the third time, their cumulative staking assets increase from 1 ETH to 2.19 ETH while its debt increases from 1400 USDT to 3,066 USDT accordingly. Following this trend, the investor can continuously increase their leverage through repeated cycles.

Therefore, the main factor determining the profitability of this investor at this point is the price of ETH (since their debt is calculated based on the value of USDT and remains constant). The higher the value of ETH, the higher their profit will be.

Liquidation

Of course, there is a risk of liquidation in borrowing and lending itself. When the health of the borrowing user falls below a certain threshold, it will trigger a liquidation

Health = Collateral Value / Loaned Asset Value

Assuming the platform's health threshold is 1.2

When 1 ETH = 2000u, health = 2000/1400 = 1.42

When 1 ETH = 1900u, health = 1900/1400 = 1.357

When 1 ETH = 1680u, health = 1680/1400 = 1.2, triggering liquidation.

That is, the platform will forcibly sell the ETH staked by the investor to pay off their debt to avoid losses when liquidation occurs. Therefore, when the ETH price is 1680 USD, the platform will be liquidated. The investor will only hold 1400 USDT borrowed from the platform, which is equivalent to the price of ETH at 1680 USDT. However, due to liquidation, they only receive 1400 USDT and lose 280 USDT.

When users borrow and lend repeatedly and trigger liquidation, their losses will accumulate. Many investment institutions leverage up wildly in the bull market, but are liquidated in the market downturn and go bankrupt, which has a huge impact on the crypto industry.

The loan protocol cannot provide investors with a better or more substantial way of earning profits other than leverage. Its limited application scenario makes it difficult to bring incremental benefits to the cryptocurrency industry from external markets.

USDToch: a new lending form for DeFi 2.0

USDToch is a leading investment ecosystem in the industry. As an AI strategy investment platform based on Web3 assets, USDToch offers a variety of assets and lending products such as cryptocurrencies and US stocks. The platform uses verified liquidity strategies executed by an AI system to achieve stable and low-risk returns, and ensure the safety of investors' assets.

USDToch product makes big improvements on DeFi 1.0. Lending is one of its main forms of investment available to investors by allowing them to achieve collateralized loans through a non-permissioned approach.

Users can stake and borrow digital assets, and the platform will issue loans USDT or other digital currencies based on the assets users stake. The platform also offers a number of loan products, including short-term loans and long-term loans, so that users can choose different lending products according to their needs. This allows users to obtain funds quickly while ensuring the safety of their assets and improving the utilization of their funds at the same time. The difference, however, is that when users stake assets to USDToch, they can receive a substantial staking interest from USDToch.

In terms of business logic, USDToch has built a stable business revenue model. By generating a large fund pool through lending and partnering with top market makers worldwide, USDToch will use the funds in the pool to participate in the liquidity market of Web3 assets.

This efficient value circulation of funds is a unique feature of the platform. The platform brings together leading quant funds and institutional investors worldwide who possess advanced investment strategies and technologies (including AI) to effectively control risks and increase returns. Users can also enjoy quality asset allocation and investment management services through these strategies.

USDToch, through a decentralized approach, helps more long-tail investors regain competitiveness in the financial market competition by aggregating user assets, gaining access to a large number of income opportunities by technological means, institutional partners, etc., and distributing these income to users through smart contracts (far higher than the current returns in the DeFi market).

Therefore, USDToch's advantage in lending products is that it can generate stable and super high returns without taking the high risks featured revolving and leveraging loans.

USDToch's investment targets are not limited to crypto assets. Currently, USDToch is also tokenizing traditional investment targets such as stocks, bonds, and commodities based on blockchain technology in the form of RWA (Real-World Assets). This makes it more widely available to users in a decentralized way and compensates for the development bottleneck of the DeFi sector's overall investment returns. This means that in the near future, USDToch may enable users to lend traditional assets on the chain, driving the cryptocurrency industry towards a new direction of value discovery.

As the hotspot of the crypto world continues to evolve, the form of DeFi products is also undergoing iterations. USDToch is innovatively and extensively laying out the lending sector, promoting deep changes in DeFi 2.0, and driving the DeFi world from 1.0 to 2.0.

ABHI, a growing embedded finance platform in the MENAP region, announces it has made history by issuing Islamic bonds worth PKR 2 billion (US$7.1 million). 

The bond issue is a significant milestone for both ABHI, and the region, as no other Fintech in the region has successfully achieved this before. 

In 2022, ABHI was assigned a long-term instrument rating of ‘AA’ and a short-term rating of ‘A1+’ by PACRA - a first for a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) in Pakistan. These ratings enabled ABHI to issue the Islamic bonds. 

Demand for the Sukuk exceeded expectations, with subscriptions reaching twice the anticipated amount due to ABHI’s strong credit ratings, creditworthiness and profitability. 

Sukuk, or Islamic bond, is a financial instrument complying with Islamic law. They are structured in a way ensuring Shariah compliance - meaning they are based on Islamic principles. This makes them attractive to investors who want to support businesses align with their Islamic values. 

ABHI's successful issuance of Sukuk is a significant achievement for the company, and the broader financial industry in Pakistan. It represents a new era of financial innovation in the country and is expected to have a positive impact on the economy. 

The bond issuance immediately follows ABHI’s qualification for the international selection panel (ISP) by Endeavor, and its selection by Hub71 to boost expansion into the Middle East, where it is partnering with companies to financially empower them and their employees. 

Omair Ansari, CEO and co-founder of ABHI, said: 

“We are honored to have the support of PACRA and all the investors to launch this first-of-a-kind Sukuk. This is a testament to our team's hard work and dedication, and our commitment to supporting businesses and their employees in Pakistan. With this new funding, we can help ease the financial burden on struggling companies and provide much-needed relief through working capital financing during these challenging times." 

Temenos today announced its 2023 Customer Awards winners at the Temenos Community Forum (TCF) in Vienna, celebrating the global pioneers, innovators and visionaries in banking.

Andreas Andreades, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, said: “Temenos enables banks from the largest to the smallest to engage and grow in a cloud world. We are delighted to recognize some of our clients who’ve successfully used our cloud-native, robust and scalable platform to drive innovation, deliver outstanding customer experiences and grow sustainably.” 

Customer Experience Award – Bank SinoPac

SinoPac is one of the most successful banks in Taiwan for digital account acquisition, having attracted 1.2 to 1.4 million users to its DAWHO account, which combines multiple product types in one app. Adding the Temenos digital banking solution in 2022, on top of the existing core platform, is delivering a complete end-to-end retail banking solution, which will enable an even more personalized, seamless experience for customers.

Digital Transformation Award - APAP 

In 2022, APAP successfully launched 100% digital products, most notably Digital Mortgage Credit. These have earned it recognition as one of the most innovative banks in Latin America and helped the bank to achieve a customer satisfaction level of 94% for its products and channels. They have also had a positive impact on financial inclusion in the Dominican Republic by providing over 12,000 young people with access to savings and helping over 8,000 people gain access to credit for the first time.

Core Transformation Award – Nordea 

Nordea, one of the biggest banks in Europe, is building a new core banking platform that will enable it to develop digital solutions, improve efficiency and better meet the needs of its customers. The platform will host multiple product types, as well as administration of collateral, all in a common Nordic setup that meets the needs of four different countries, currencies and regulators.

Banking Innovation Award - Komerční banka 

Komerční banka (KB) is undertaking a multi-year strategic growth plan, targeting a client base of two million. Migrating to Temenos gives KB an agile platform, available 24x7, which provides a seamless digital experience and enables the development of innovative new services, such as multi-currency accounts. KB has also worked with Temenos to develop a General Ledger to the Accounting Module of Transact, allowing it to be used across all of the bank’s transactions.Sustainability Banking Award – EQ Bank  

EQ Bank has been named the best bank in Canada on Forbes' 2023 list of the World’s Best Banks for three years in a row. EQ Bank is the digital platform of Equitable Bank, the only Schedule I Canadian bank to have reported all applicable categories of Scope 3 emissions from the entire portfolio (excluding Concentra) for the second year. By migrating onto the Temenos Banking Cloud in 2022, EQ Bank became the first bank in Canada to use a core infrastructure fully hosted in a public cloud environment. This energy-efficient solution has helped EQ Bank deliver an annual saving of 93-97% in CO2 emissions compared to on-premise infrastructure and achieve carbon neutral status for Scope 1 and 2 emissions.Visionary Leadership Award – Abdullah Alomari from Al Rajhi Bank 

Abdullah Alomari is recognized for leading the multimillion-dollar transformation program to bring all lines of Al Rajhi’s business (Retail, Corporate, and SME) onto the Temenos Core Banking platform. As well as driving cost savings, this has improved customer satisfaction thanks to a personalized, omnichannel experience. It also enables faster innovation, with a brand new SME business being launched by the bank in just six months.

Additionally, three clients were chosen for an Innovation Hero Award for their successful deployment of an innovative product in 2022. Voting was conducted by a jury, as well as peers on social media.

Innovation Hero Award (Jury Choice) – Flowe 

Flowe, an environmentally-friendly Italian challenger bank, used the flexibility and efficiency of the Temenos platform to launch a new Instant Payments solution. This allows customers to transfer money instantly and securely in under three seconds, with the CO2 generated by each payment being offset by supporting a high social impact reforestation project in Guatemala.

Innovation Hero Award (Jury Choice) – Bank of Abyssinia 

Bank of Abyssinia launched Ethiopia’s first digital banking app with a complete banking experience in just four months using Temenos Infinity. The new app, Apollo, allows complete Digital Onboarding, Accounts, Transfers, P2P and bill payments, making it a one-stop banking solution for customers. The initiative aims to encourage moves towards a cash-lite economy, thereby reducing the environmental impact of transactions, while also reducing costs and improving the customer onboarding process.

Innovation Hero Award (Online Vote) – Sinapi Aba 

Ghanaian savings and loans company Sinapi Aba used Temenos Transact APIs to design a mobile banking platform for underserved groups, mainly female entrepreneurs. This offers a convenient, transparent, affordable and secure way of performing banking transactions, while also integrating with financial education components. The solution now sees an average of 65,000 individual transactions monthly, worth over $2.3m.

The SaaS industry faces a unique mismatch in return on investment: SaaS companies pay high upfront costs in research and development and sales and marketing which they need to recover as quickly as possible, while their customers typically want to pay monthly. Saas companies incentivise upfront payments with large discounts, which hurts their revenue and impacts retention after the first year.

Over the past year, Capchase found more than 50% of SaaS companies experienced an increase in sales cycle length and in customer payment delays, and almost 40% of companies increased their collection times as a result. Capchase Pay’s flexible payment terms allow SaaS companies to get paid upfront while making products and services more accessible and easier to pay for, which can drive sales, increase revenue, and shorten sales cycles.

Miguel Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Capchase, said: “Every buyer wants to pay as late as possible, while every SaaS company wants to get paid as early as possible so they can recover their customer acquisition costs.

“In any of the payment options, one party is playing bank, which creates friction and hurts conversion. With Capchase Pay, we’ve created a B2B version of a buy now, pay later product that aligns with everybody’s interests.” 

August Keating, COO of CIENCE, said: “Within one month of implementing Capchase Pay, we grew our pipeline from low, single-digit prospects for our 12-month SaaS contracts to 50 with an average deal size of $100,000.

“Not only has it enabled us to close deals in half the amount of time, but our customers are happy knowing they have the ability to choose flexible payment options that work for them.”

OneSpan™, the digital agreements security company, today announced the launch of new Customer Success Packages, providing modern centralized success service offerings with tiered subscription models for flexible, ongoing customer success with OneSpan solutions. OneSpan Customer Success Packages combine the “traditional” value-added services of Professional Services, Customer Success Management, and Customer Support into one cohesive customer unit to deliver a simple and rewarding experience throughout the entire customer journey helping organizations accelerate value realization. 

The complexity involved in most enterprise implementations goes beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to deploying technology. Tailoring a solution within an organization’s business process, especially those that are customer-facing and revenue-generating, is critical. OneSpan’s innovative Customer Success Packages help mitigate the increasing complexity of tech stacks as organizations look to streamline their business and accelerate their digital transformation journey. 

The OneSpan customer success team is a trusted partner that provides expertise across markets and the entire transaction journey. The new Customer Success Packages offer three tiers of support, with eligibility tied to the customer’s pricing tier.    

Features across the new packages enable:  

• Faster Time to Value: Onboarding and go-live assistance supported by solution experts with mature expertise across a full range of industry verticals. 
• Mission-Critical Support: Ongoing access to technical consultants and mission-critical support for continuous availability of the solutions. 
• Increased User Adoption: Use-case best practices, proactive guidance, and industry benchmarking maximize the adoption, use, and growth of the solution. 

“At OneSpan, we are an extension of our customer’s teams,” said Stuti Bhargava, Chief Customer Experience Officer at OneSpan. “As a mission-critical ally, we are constantly innovating to meet their changing needs as they embark on their digital transformation journeys. These new offerings are just one more example of how OneSpan is committed to being a strategic partner for our customers.” 

More than 120 experts, thought leaders and key decision-makers from  25 countries met in Miami from April 24 to 26, 2023 in order to discuss the current and future trends in electronic invoicing, procurement and continuous transaction controls (CTCs). It has been three jam-packed and exciting days full of valuable insights from global experts sharing interesting developments in the world of E-Invoicing for the Americas and globally. 

Two very well-attended interactive workshops kicked off the event. The first one was run by  Christiaan van der Valk and Michel Gilis from the European E-Invoicing Service Provider  Association (EESPA), demystifying E-Invoicing and its abbreviations and was followed by the  Business Payment Coalition discussing the next steps for the E-Invoice Exchange Framework for the U.S. and the future possibilities for organizations to join. 

One of the many highlights was the celebration of the launch of the Digital Business Networks  Alliance (DBNA) in the U.S. The wide acceptance and embrace of the four-corner model were evident in the numerous presentations. Leading corporate case studies gave insights into their current E-Invoicing implementations as well as into the future trends of automation and artificial intelligence. Further subjects of debate included the harmonization towards a truly global interoperability framework (GIF), which was also the topic of a high-level expert panel. 

Once again, the E-Invoicing Exchange Summit has been a great space where the E-Invoicing and E-Reporting community exchanged ideas and benefitted from great networking opportunities. Numerous excellent discussions and face-to-face talks took place with customers, partners, and policy drivers on the convergence of the different E-Invoicing and  E-Reporting models and how all can help reduce complexity and manage the transition to  E-Invoicing and Continuous Transaction Controls. 

The very positive feedback from all parties proves the need for a dedicated platform for  E-Invoicing for the Americas to share best practices and ideas. The E-Invoicing Exchange  Summit is glad to take over this role and establish itself as the key event for the community.  We say thank you to all participants, speakers and partners that made the 6th edition of the  Exchange Summit a huge success and look very much forward to seeing you next year, April 22  to 24, 2024 in Miami. 

SKUx, an innovative payments technology and consumer engagement platform, today announced the launch of a new card program with Highnote, the embedded finance company setting a new standard in modern card platform management. The partnership, which comes on the heels of SKUx’s $11 million Series A, further empowers SKUx to continue transforming how rewards, refunds, emergency disbursements, and other payments are delivered, redeemed, and reported. The new card product eliminates longstanding challenges facing brands and merchants managing rewards programs and potentially unlocks significant global incremental retail value.

The digitization of consumer retail is ubiquitous except in the realm of merchant rewards and payments – discounts, rebates, refunds, promotions, etc. – where little has changed in decades. This lack of digitization results in millions of dollars lost every year in poor customer experience, manual financial reconciliation, and fragmented processes. Now, SKUx’s solutions enable consumer brands, merchants, emergency and charitable organizations, and others to deliver precision payments instantly and seamlessly, saving brands and merchants money while delighting their customers.

“It’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of money that flows between merchants and their customers, in light of just how outdated and clunky the systems to move that money are,” says Bobby Tinsley, Co-founder and President of SKUx. “SKUx saw an industry that was beyond ripe for disruption, and we built a digitally transformative solution for it. We are obsessed with powering the best experiences by providing payments at the speed of today’s consumer – designing products optimized for digital wallets, mobile payments, and QR codes. Our partnership with Highnote enables us to continue this vision at both the quality and service our clients demand.”

SKUx’s new solution powered by Highnote enhances value and experience for both the merchants and the consumers.

• Access to Co-Branded, Digital Cards: Consumers receive instant access to digital cards that can be stored in a mobile wallet. The cards can feature customer branding, and consumers can use them to quickly and easily take advantage of rewards, refunds, and other payments.
• Enhanced Relationship Management: Brands and merchants can transform a single payments experience into the catalyst of a long-term relationship unlocking value and increasing brand affinity.
• Flexibility: Each card program can be configured with features and functionality specific to each brand’s desired customer experience, leading to greater brand affinity, stronger financial and risk controls, and improved return on investment.

SKUx offers a range of breakthrough products and solutions using Highnote’s card platform technology—from SKUx Customer Care and Recovery, a trailblazing new way for companies to streamline and digitize their response to product recalls and individual customer complaints, to SKUx Crisis Disbursements, which streamline emergency payments to individuals in a crisis emergency. The new offerings serve as a complement to SKUPay®, SKUx’s patented solution for product-based payments that are redeemed at the point of purchase.

“The average consumer has become more digitally savvy, and their expectations around ease of use and instant access to funds have risen,” says John MacIlwaine, CEO of Highnote. “SKUx has tapped into this trend by providing more elegant and modern solutions to consumer needs, and we couldn’t be more proud to be their enabler in driving this digital transformation. We look forward to jointly using our technologies to empower some of the most well-known brands on the planet by taking their financial relationships with consumers to the next level.”

Allied Payment Network, Inc. (Allied), the industry leader in real-time, open-network payments solutions to banks and credit unions, today announced an integration with Q2's Digital Banking Platform, via the Q2 Partner Accelerator Program. Q2 Holdings, Inc. is a leading provider of digital transformation solutions for banking and lending. As part of the Q2 Partner Accelerator Program, financial institutions can now purchase Allied's real-time money movement solutions and offer them to account holders through their digital banking applications.

The Q2 Partner Accelerator is a program through the Q2 Innovation Studio that allows in-demand financial services companies who are leveraging the Q2 SDK to pre-integrate their technology into the Q2 Digital Banking Platform. This enables financial institutions to work with these partners, purchase their solutions and rapidly deploy their standardized integrations to their customers.

"We couldn't be more excited to become a part of the Q2 Innovation Studio and all the opportunities that integrating with such a highly respected digital banking platform offers us," said Geoff Knapp, Allied's CEO. "Q2 has a stellar reputation in the banking industry, and we can't wait to expand Allied's reach through this partnership."

Petal, a US credit card startup that is ditching traditional credit scores in an effort to sign up young people and the underbanked, has raised $35 million in funding and spun off is B2B-focused subsidiary Prism Data.

Erin Allard, GM, Prism, says: "Prism Data was founded on the belief that open banking, and access to consumer-permission bank account transactional data, will change the way consumer finance works—in credit, payments, banking, insurance, real estate, financial advising, and more.

"With open banking’s arrival in the U.S., that is becoming a reality. And as an independent company, Prism is well-positioned to partner with financial providers and give them the tools and infrastructure they need to create next-generation products and capabilities."