FIS Impact Ventures

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

London-based Modulr provides infrastructure for lending, banking, FinTech, travel, etc. websites and apps to embed a range of solutions. The company primarily offers a full-stack payment-as-a-service platform and white-label infrastructure to use APIs to create payment products and services. Modulr’s infrastructure platform enables a range of payment services including payment accounts, cards, direct debits, and payments via open banking, and others. It supports several payment rails including SWIFT, CHAPS, Faster Payments, and SEPA.In addition to payment services, Modulr also offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking, lending, and wealth management services. In May 2024, Modulr launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29864">travel payment solution</a> targeted at online travel agents and travel industry intermediaries to enhance operational efficiency, streamline reconciliation, improve cash flow processes, and increase margins by ensuring timely payments within the travel industry. Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2022, the platform was used by over 200 businesses (and millions of end customers), including Revolut, Wagestream, Sage, and BrightPay. Modulr also enables faster payments through its direct access to the Bank of England, Visa, Mastercard, and its possession of an electronic money license from the Central Bank of Ireland.Funding and financialsThe platform reportedly processed more than USD 100 billion in annualized transactions as of May 2022. In the same month, Modulr <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10527">raised USD 108 million (GBP 83 million) in Series C </a>funding led by General Atlantic, to invest in expanding its geographic footprint and in product developments.

Founded by Revolut veterans, Soups Ranjan, Aditya Goel, and Zahid Shaikh, Sardine offers a fraud prevention-as-a-service and compliance API and SDK-based solution for financial institutions, primarily targeting neobanks and digital wallets, to detect financial crimes in account opening, funding, and payments. Sardine assigns a risk score to the card or bank accounts when customers move money into their digital wallets (including crypto, DeFi, and NFT wallets) from their credit and debit cards, or through ACH transfers. Users can reportedly build fraud prevention solutions in less than two weeks using the platform.Sardine looks to combat fraud by analyzing user behaviors and combining the behavior with several data sources (ranging from phone and email to social media and blockchain analytics), in place of shopping cart or shipping address analytics, commonly used by ecommerce fraud prevention platforms. Accordingly, it also claims that the platform has been proven to prevent 3x more fraud than legacy ecommerce products. Sardine offers a range of fraud prevention solutions, including foundational fraud scores, KYC, account takeover prevention, and continuous transaction monitoring, among others. In February 2022, the company expanded its platform to include an instant bank ACH transfer for crypto on-ramps, which removes the waiting period (typically 3 to 7 days) for consumers to access their funds. Key customers and partnershipsThe platform was used by over 130 firms as of September 2022, including neobanks (Brex and Chipper Cash), crypto exchanges (FTX, Luno, and Bakkt, as well as NFT and crypto platforms (Abra, Transak, and MoonPay). Sardine’s users are reportedly based across the globe, including in the US, Japan, and Russia. In September 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21957">Sardine partnered </a>with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/527396">Incode Technologies </a>to offer face and behavioral biometric authentication solutions for FinTech firm Marygold &amp; Co. Together, they aim to offer solutions for the know-your-customer (KYC) onboarding process, and Marygold customers will also gain access to Sardine's behavioral biometrics technology, along with its fraud prevention and anti-money laundering (AML) capabilities.Funding and financialsSardine raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates?industryIds=53">USD 51.5 million in Series B </a>funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, in September 2022, to invest in product development, marketing, and sales. This was the company’s second funding round for the year, after it raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8432">USD 19.5 million </a>in Series A funding in February.

Banyan offers a cloud-based API-driven platform for financial institutions, FinTechs, and consumer apps and services by working with merchants to access data from end customers’ receipts. By gaining insights from retail level data, the platform is mostly used for personal finance management, digital receipt management, card-linked offers, rewards, and rebates as well as healthcare and wellness services. Merchants benefit from the platform in two main ways; 1) monetizing the data of its customers, and 2) unlocking insights from customer data. As of October 2022, Banyan reported that its platform had signed up over 35,000 merchants with banks and unnamed leading consumer apps as clients. Customer data is provided to FinTechs only once they gain consent from consumers and merchants, and the financial service partners (FinTechs) agree to comply with Banyan’s consumer privacy standards. Banyan also offers a proprietary anonymization technology. Funding and financialsBanyan raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13968?industryIds=53">USD 43 million in Series A funding </a>in October 2022 - USD 28 million in equity and USD 15 million in debt - to invest in product research, development, and recruitment.

Flutterwave, based in Nigeria and the USA, offers payment infrastructure for enterprises across the globe to enable cross-border transactions with Africa through payment applications created via a single API. Its solutions include a range of payment services such as checkout, card issuing and management (including “Flutterwave Barter”), stores, and invoices for websites and apps. The platform enables transactions in over 150 currencies, and a range of payment methods, including cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers. Flutterwave subsequently added Google Pay as a payment method for its merchants in Africa, in September 2022. The company expanded its platform beyond payments in March 2022, by rolling out a series of new products, including BNPL, merchant lending, and business incorporation infrastructure. As of February 2022, the company’s infrastructure catered to 34 African countries (excluding North Africa), including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Subsequently, in February 2023, Flutterwave received its payment services provider (PSP) and payment facilitator <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16372">licenses in Egypt </a>and expanded its operations in North Africa. The company also received the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12805?industryIds=53">Switching and Processing License </a>from the Central Bank of Nigeria in September 2022; however, in July 2022 Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) directed all financial institutions to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11968?industryIds=53">cease doing business </a>with Flutterwave stating the company is not licensed to operate in the country.Flutterwave also entered into a five year strategic technology agreement with Microsoft in June 2023, to build its next-gen platform on Microsoft Azure cloud. This supports scaling the transactions processed through Flutterwave. Key customers and partnershipsFlutterwave noted that its platform is used by over 900,000 businesses, including Uber, Bookings.com, and Facebook.The company has expanded its operations and products through partnerships, including one with cross-border payment infrastructure company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/76548">Currencycloud </a>in September 2021, to accelerate the launch of its payment network in Europe and the US. During the year, it also partnered with ecommerce fraud prevention company Forter (in April), and connected African businesses with over 377 million PayPal users globally (in March). In June 2023, it chose open banking infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/305032">Token </a>to power Flutterwave’s “Pay by Bank” transfer capabilities. In 2019, the company collaborated with Visa to launch “Flutterwave Barter” as well as with Alipay to offer digital payment between Africa and China. Funding and financials Flutterwave had processed over 200 million transactions worth over USD 16 billion from its 2016 inception through February 2022. The company noted that its revenue rose at a CAGR of 225% over 2018-20, and was supported by the pandemic-led heightened demand for online payments. <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8510">In February 2022, </a>Flutterwave raised USD 250 million in Series D funding, at a USD 3 billion valuation. The company intends to utilize the funds to accelerate customer acquisition in its existing markets, enter into M&amp;A deals, and for further product development including developing complementary products.

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

Tapcheck is an earned wage access platform that provides employees with 24/7/365 access to on-demand pay. Tapcheck integrates with more than 200 existing payroll systems including ADP, Paychex, and Paylocity, using the latest payroll profile information to estimate an employee’s net earnings. The company provides a mobile app (iOS and Android) and an online platform that allows employees to control their finances at no cost to their employers.Tapcheck does not perform any credit checks on employees to provide them with on-demand access to their earnings since transfers are based on the money that they have already earned. It transfers the requested earnings directly to the employee’s bank account or paycard and deducts the advance from the employee’s next paycheck. Tapcheck also offers both instant and next-day transfer options. It also offers a Tapcheck debit card that is linked to an employee’s Tapcheck account and allows them to transfer their on-demand earnings to the card and make in-store purchases, online payments, and ATM withdrawals. It also allows employees to use the card outside the US. Tapcheck only charges a flat fee per transaction.Tapcheck also provides free online education tools via its Learn feature, which provides employees with 24/7 access to blogs, insights, calculators, and educational courses on financial topics such as budgeting and credit scores.Tapcheck’s dashboard allows employers to monitor all their enrolled employees in real time.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Tapcheck served more than 1,000 companies including McDonald’s (nearly 10% of its franchised locations), Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Planet Fitness, Little Caesars, Jack in the Box, and Home Instead. In December 2023, the company also <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/empeon-partners-with-tapcheck-to-empower-employees-with-on-demand-pay-302005102.html?tc=eml_cleartime">partnered</a> with Empeon, a human capital management platform for health systems to offer Tapcheck’s solutions to Empeon’s customers.

Buy Now, Pay Later

equipifi provides an API-driven white-label BNPL solution for banks and credit unions, enabling them to provide customers with staggered payment options by directly integrating with their checking accounts or debit cards. Users who pay through debit cards receive push notifications from their bank, alerting them to BNPL offers, which have been pre-approved (based on the eligibility) by the platform’s decision engine. Customers can view and manage their BNPL transactions through the existing banking portal. equipifi generates revenue through subscriptions. As of November 2021, the company was working with 20 clients and expects to launch solutions with three of them in Q1 2022.Key customers and partnershipsIn April 2023, equipifi announced a partnership with SWBC, an insurance, mortgage and investment services provider. Through this partnership, equipifi intended to leverage SWBC’s client data and increase its product reach by embedding its BNPL offering with SWBC’s debit cardholders.Funding and financialsequipifi raised USD 12 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Curql Fund and PHX Ventures in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10642">May 2022 </a>. The round follows its USD 3 million <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6460">seed funding round </a>in November 2021.

Banyan is the receipt data infrastructure platform powering innovation in commerce.  Our first-of-its-kind platform makes it easy for merchants, banks, and fintechs to securely collaborate with each other to realize value from item-level receipt data intelligence, controls, and personalization.   As an infrastructure layer fintech, we help our platform partners unlock and activate item-level receipt data to power their commercial and consumer applications at scale.  Our partners utilize our infrastructure to deliver products, marketing, and servicing experiences that unlock operating efficiencies, revenue growth, and better customer experiences.   Uses for our platform include: Customizing Card Rewards & Benefits: Precision receipt data powered personalization of card rewards, benefits, marketing, and servicing for general purpose rewards cards and cobrand partnership cards. Enhancing Card-Linked Shopping Offers: Using SKU-level data to enable offer customization (category, exclusions, brand, or product-level), improve revenue attribution, and grow engagement. Fraud Management: Providing item-level receipt data clarity in banking apps for cardholders, and enabling servicing agent efficiency for card disputes and chargebacks. Expense Management: Enabling business card receipt data directly into expense platforms to reduce manual reporting, speed reconciliations, and improve spend controls & out of policy reimbursements. Item-level Payment Reconciliation: Going beyond the 'total amount' and reconciling cardholder and virtual payments transactions at the item level for improved spread management.

Nickels assist consumers of banks and credit unions in managing their money using behavioral science.

For customers and companies to move money confidently, Sardine is on a mission to make payments quick and risk-free. Slow payments and high fraud rates hinder corporate growth and put the economy at systemic risk, making fraud a cost to society. Because Sardine has access to the best API for financial services fraud detection and compliance, any business—large or small—can enhance its risk management. Additionally, for NFT and cryptocurrency transactions, the organization provides instant settlement.

Fighting financial crime isn’t fair. Both your hands are tied. Criminals keep changing the game, while you have to play by the rules. Lots of rules. Meanwhile your business keeps accelerating.  To keep up and comply at the same time means adding layer upon layer of complexity. Leading to higher costs and ever more cumbersome processes, burdening your clients. Clearly, this way of thinking isn’t working, so shouldn’t we rethink the problem? Here’s what we think. Financial criminals are always looking for loopholes to stay ahead of being detected. Normal people aren’t. So why base your approach on exceptions and not on the rule? When you focus on regular customer behavior, the anomalies clearly stick out. This may sound simple. It is also very effective. You drastically reduce false positives and increase true positives as previously undetected patterns now become visible. So you can identify the right cases faster, at lower cost. This is how it works. Our automated machine learning technology generates detection models. Based on your own raw data and regulatory requirements. It deploys these models in your transaction monitoring system of choice. Because the value isn’t in the system, it’s in the detection models running on it. They enhance the monitoring system to better identify known and yet unknown financial crime.  This makes everyone’s lives so much easier. Your case analysts can now spend their time on meaningful investigations. Your data scientists can get rid of their backlog and focus on other, more bank-specific risks. Your compliance team can explain these transparent models to regulators. Think white box, not black box. At Sygno we approach financial crime from a clear-cut premise: most of your customers are not criminals. By looking at it this way, we make transaction monitoring more manageable and effective. So you can catch crooks, comply and be in full control.  Why lose any more sleep over it? Sygno Know good, catch bad

Themis is the first platform that allows banks, fintech, and cryptos to create a strong compliance environment instantly while enabling collaboration so industries can create standards together and push innovation forward. This technology will solve long-standing industry communication issues.

Neural Payments provides payment services to assist financial institutions in adopting change. Its services include digital adoption, lower transaction costs, limit exposure to fraud, and simplify technology integrations. The company was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Mason, Ohio.

Redactable helps companies permanently redact their confidential documents. You can automate your redaction processes easily using our AI workflow.

equipifi is a fintech SaaS powering banks and credit unions with Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) solutions that align with their cardholders’ financial goals. The equipifi platform seamlessly integrates with financial institutions to help them deepen engagement, grow market share, increase revenue, and provide consumers a single place to view, accept, and manage their BNPL plans on their existing banking app.

Founded in 2021, Connect Earth is a London-based environmental data company that democratises easy access to sustainability data. With its carbon tracking API technology, Connect Earth is on a mission to empower people to make sustainable choices and bridge the gap between intent, knowledge and action. Connect Earth supports financial institutions in offering their customers transparent insight into the climate impact of their daily spending and drives sustainable finance.

Tapcheck is the highest precision earned wage access platform on the market, enabling employees access to their wages on-demand at no cost to the employer. Tens of thousands of employers have added Tapcheck to their benefits package, and have found that offering on-demand pay significantly increases employee satisfaction, reduces turnover, and is something that distinguishes them from competitors.  Employees with on-demand pay and financial wellness tools are more likely to stay with a company that empowers their financial freedom.

Penta Privacy Lock protects the business and customers. They assist them in keeping track of the information they have collected from their customers. They tag and track consumer information in the databases using proprietary data mapping software without interfering with business operations.

Modulr is on a mission to unlock the embedded payment opportunity for every business. Through software-driven account and payment creation, Modulr enable incremental revenue, operational efficiencies and way smoother customer experiences. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in London, England.

Flutterwave provides a payment infrastructure for merchants and payment service providers. They offer an online marketplace for businesses to list their products and services for sale.  They provide payment tools, including a smart payment ordering system for businesses to accept payments.

Top 250k Enrichment Emp Range Q12024 - Not Found FIS Ventures is the corporate venture arm of the global financial technology company FIS.

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