SparkLabs Global Ventures is a venture capital firm that offers seed-stage investment services to firms in the SaaS, healthcare, education, IoT, fintech, mobile, commerce, HR, gaming, security, and VR industries. It was founded in Dec 2013 and is based in California. Exceptional entrepreneurs, that are building strong, category defining companies at highly advantageous valuations – can be found anywhere. The company has a team that is highly experienced in finding such talent and helping our entrepreneurs to develop, grow, network, and scale into other markets throughout the world.

SparkLabs Global Ventures

Aspect Ventures partners with entrepreneurs who want to create important and successful businesses for the long term. They focus on the emerging mobile marketplace, bringing the benefit of their track records and fresh perspective to partner with companies across the long arc of their growth – from inception to standalone, sustainable businesses.

Aspect Ventures

FSV provides insights and capital to entrepreneurs re-inventing the multi-trillion dollar financial services industry and building innovative companies, strong brands, and world-class teams. FSV primarily makes early stage investments but will also consider promising growth stage investments.

Fenway Summer Ventures

Accel is an early and growth-stage venture capital firm that powers a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel backs entrepreneurs who have what it takes to build a business.  Accel’s vision for entrepreneurship and business enables it to identify and invest in the companies that will be responsible for the growth of next-generation industries. Accel-backed companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, DJI, Dropbox, Dropcam, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Lookout Security, MoPub, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Vox Media, and others.

Accel

Pelion Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs and invests in early-stage B2B software-based companies. Since 1986, Pelion Venture Partners has been helping entrepreneurs turn early-stage concepts into tomorrow's industry-leading companies. Pelion invests in early-stage B2B software across the US. With 7 investment team members, Pelion has deep and diverse industry and investment experience. They are hands-on in their approach and work collaboratively with each portfolio company.

Pelion Venture Partners

GDP Venture is a venture builder for digital communities, media, commerce, and solution companies in the consumer internet industry.

GDP Venture

Mission Holdings (MH) is the strategic investment vehicle of self made billionaire entrepreneur and investor, Saurabh Mittal.

Mission Holdings

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

205 Capital is a venture fund that invests in the information technology sectors.  205 Capital is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

205 Capital

Green D Ventures is a community of accredited Dartmouth alums who pool money into a VC fund to invest in Dartmouth-connected companies. Simply put, they believe they can invest better together than they can alone. They create a diverse portfolio for their investors, co-investing with leading VC funds across industry, stage, and geography. Their goal is to raise a new fund each year that benefits entrepreneurs, the school's ecosystem, and their investors.

Green D Ventures

Blue Ivy Ventures is a community of Yale alumni: investors, executives, entrepreneurs, and innovation enthusiasts with a connection to Yale University.   Blue Ivy Ventures was founded in 2016 and is led by Managing Partner David Shapiro (Yale '91). Its Investment Committee and investors include experienced investors and entrepreneurs from around the country and across multiple generations.

Blue Ivy Ventures

Sallie Mae is an American corporation that originates, services, and collects student loans. The company’s service portfolio includes government guaranteed student loans, private student loans, K-12 loans, money market accounts, high yield savings accounts, insurance services, and college saving plans.    Sallie Mae operates servicing centers in Gilbert, Arizona; Indianapolis, Indiana; Muncie, Indiana; Mount Laurel, New Jersey; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Killeen, Texas, Baguio, Philippines, and Whitewater, Wisconsin, as well as 71 other offices around the United States, and employs over 6600 individuals. The corporation is listed on both the Fortune 500 and the Forbes Global 2000.   Sallie Mae has also made numerous acquisitions that include Academic Management Corp, First Trust Financial, General Revenue Corporation, Student Assistance Corporation, Upromise, Nellie Mae, and more.   Sallie Mae was established in 1972 and is headquartered in Newark, Delaware, United States.

Sallie Mae

Founded in 2019, Parkway operates at the intersection of vision and execution with a focus on cutting-edge technologies and business models. The firm is largely focused on the trend of digital transformation of businesses, products and systems with software and hardware technologies in data science, artificial intelligence (AI), simulation, automation, spatial computing, internet of things (IOT), augmented reality (AR), generative design and optimization technologies.  Parkway primarily targets investments in the Climate Tech, Construction Tech (Contech), Property Tech (Proptech), Generative Design, Business Intelligence, Health Tech, Metaverse and Direct-to-Consumer sectors. Companies in which Parkway investments typically have a software as a service, unique technology, valuable patents and intellectual property that make them highly competitive in the market, valuable to potential strategic acquirers and/or display the potential for high growth annual recurring revenue.

Parkway Venture Capital

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. provides investment banking, securities, and investment management services, as well as financial services to corporations, financial institutions, governments, and high-net-worth individuals worldwide. Its Investment Banking segment offers financial advisory services, including advisory assignments concerning mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, corporate defense, risk management, and restructurings and spin-offs; and underwriting services comprising public offerings and private placements of a range of securities, loans, and other financial instruments, and derivative transactions. The company’s Institutional Client Services segment provides client execution services, such as fixed income, currency, and commodities client execution related to making markets in interest rate products, credit products, mortgages, currencies, and commodities; and equities related to making markets in equity products, as well as executes and clears institutional client transactions on stock, options, and futures exchanges. This segment also engages in the securities services business providing financing, securities lending, and other brokerage services to institutional clients, including hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and foundations. Its Investing and Lending segment originates longer-term loans; and invests in debt securities, loans, public and private equity securities, real estate, consolidated investment entities, distressed assets, currencies, commodities, and power generation facilities. The company’s investment management segment provides investment products and services, as well as offers wealth advisory services, including portfolio management and financial counseling, and brokerage and other transaction services.

Goldman Sachs

Castor Ventures is an investment firm. Castor Ventures invests in a broad range of venture-backed companies to build diversified venture portfolios invested alongside established venture firms.

Castor Ventures

Mastercard is a payments and technology company that connects consumers, businesses, merchants, and governments. They provide data services and marketing center. Their marketing materials help card portfolios and businesses. They also provide fraud prevention solutions and payment ecosystem security.

Mastercard

Ally Ventures looks for opportunities to work with businesses that align with Ally's strategic objectives. We help them grow through investment, a commercial relationship and mentorship with access to a broad range of resources. We collaborate throughout the entire process to ensure a win-win for their business and ours. Our team also works with three accelerator programs — FinTech Innovation Lab, Plug and Play, and Queen City Fintech — to identify commercial opportunities and investments at earlier stages of development. Ally is a leading digital financial services company and a top 25 U.S. financial holding company offering financial products for consumers, businesses, automotive dealers and corporate clients. We have an award-winning online bank, rewarding credit and lending experiences and a growing wealth management and brokerage platform. Ally is one of the largest full service auto finance operations in the country with a complementary auto-focused insurance business. Our corporate finance division provides senior secured loans to private equity-owned, U.S.-based middle market companies. For nearly 100 years, we've been committed to creating innovative experiences that make life easier, products that are never status quo and diverse thinking that inspires new ideas. Our headquarters are in Detroit, MI and have additional locations across the US.

Ally Ventures

Goldman Sachs Asset Management provides institutional and individual investors with investment and advisory solutions, with strategies spanning asset classes, industries, and geographies.  They seek to build long-term relationships based on conviction, sustainable outcomes, and shared success over time. It was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in New York, United States.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Deserve Inc.

Deserve Inc. is a leading mobile-first credit card platform built on a cloud-native and API-enabled architecture, which allows partners to offer superior personalized experiences for cardholders. We partner with financial institutions, fintechs, lenders, and merchant co-brands.

Deserve provides a platform for universities, associations, financial institutions, FinTechs, and consumer brands to develop credit card programs using application programming interfaces (APIs). Its platform covers a range of solutions including issuance, marketing, customer experience, and portfolio analytics, among others.

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Deserve

Amount, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s, Deserve, H&R Block, i2c, Lithic, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sutton Bank and Walgreens join the wide array of partners already working with Mastercard on the BNPL program. They are the latest brands to embrace the benefits of adopting Mastercard Installments’ innovative open loop model.

Buy Now, Pay Later

These companies offer merchants and financial institutions a white-label product to provide in-house BNPL solutions.

Deserve provides a platform for universities, associations, financial institutions, FinTechs, and consumer brands to develop credit card programs using application programming interfaces (APIs). Its platform covers a range of solutions including issuance, marketing, customer experience, and portfolio analytics, among others.Deserve’s offering includes multiple types of cards including white-label (users customize the cards), co-branded (users only focus on key differentiators of rewards and marketing), and affinity (specialized university programs) cards. The company also partners with leading credit card platforms, including Mastercard, Visa, and Marqeta.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2020, its customers included large enterprises such as Sallie Mae and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and leading universities such as Berkeley and UCLA. The company intends to expand to more industries in the future, including wine, travel, cryptocurrency, and fashion.Deserve&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6195">partnered with Zero Hash in October 2021</a>, to enable its partners to offer crypto rewards on credit card purchases through several digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.In May 2022, Deserve partnered with BlockFi, M1 Finance, OppFi, Seneca Women, Notre Dame Global Partnerships, and KrowdFit to launch<a href="https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2022/deserve-adds-250m-to-support-growth-of-digital-credit-card-platform/partial/"> credit card programs</a>.

Cross River Bank provides a white-label banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for enterprises, combining banking services, payments, and marketplace lending infrastructure to build fintechs. Its solutions comprise demand deposits, savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and payment clearing services, including automated clearing house (ACH) and real-time payments. The company also provides banking and payment infrastructure for the crypto industry, including risk management services for its crypto clients.Cross River Bank has expanded its operations by acquiring Betterfin, a platform offering lending-as-a-service (LaaS) solutions, in November 2021. Through the acquisition, Cross River Bank leveraged Betterfin’s software to digitize parts of the small-business lending process (such as origination and underwriting).&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp; As of November 2024, Cross River had over 80 clients, including lenders such as Affirm, Best Egg, and Upstart, neobanks such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/220119">Revolut</a>, and blockchain-based payment processing platform GreenBox. The platform reportedly originated over USD 24 billion in loans per annum, around 10x the value of loans it originated in 2015.As of November 2024, the company had over 500 employees and had entered more than 80 partnerships.&nbsp;In September 2024, Cross River Bank partnered with Forward, an embedded payments company, to offer payouts-as-service solutions featuring same-day automated clearing house (ACH) payouts through Forward's proprietary API technology.&nbsp;Cross River Bank also teamed up with UK-based BaaS provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/421515">Railsr</a> in January 2019 to launch a common API for their platforms to be used globally.The company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1643">American Express</a> (Amex) to enable FinTechs to issue credit cards through Cross River Bank, on the Amex network, while also providing select Amex benefits to the FinTechs.&nbsp;

Cross River Bank

Synctera was co-founded in 2020 by Peter Hazlehurst, the former head of Uber Money, who previously led the development of Google Wallet. The company offers an API-based infrastructure platform for community and regional banks to find and partner with FinTechs. This enables FinTechs to leverage the former’s licenses to embed FDIC-insured mobile checking, debit cards, savings accounts, and payment innovations, among other features. The API platform offered to the banks will then be sold to the FinTechs to code on. Although the end customers interact with the FinTechs, they legally belong to the bank.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8117">Synctera mainly charges the banks </a>based on the interchange fees they earn (half of the interchange fees, as of January 2022) from the services provided. It does not charge them an initial amount to use the platform. Moreover, the platform also embeds fraud-as-a-service and charges FinTechs on a per transaction basis (4 cents per transaction) should they choose to use it. It subsequently shares that revenue 50/50 with the banks.The company launched the “t-minus10” project in January 2022, which offers a live sandbox for FinTechs to build apps, test, and go to market, enhancing their access to banking partners. It subsequently launched a “Smart Charge Card” (APIs to build, launch, and issue charge cards) and “White-label Banking App” (a codebase for developers to build embedded banking products or neobank apps) infrastructure in October 2022.Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2022, Lineage Bank (a community bank in Tennessee) and GoGetr (FinTech aiming to promote health and wealth management) became the first companies to launch a banking solution using the Synctera platform. As of March 2023, the platform was working with around 50 fintechs, of which 14 were live (including Wayapay and Float). Synctera reportedly had over 20 implementations set for launch in the following two months.Synctera announced a new card issuing and management infrastructure offering (Card-as-a-Service), in July 2021, which it developed in partnership with Mastercard and leading card issuing infrastructure disruptor, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/64287">Marqeta</a>.In August 2024, Synctera partnered with<a href="https://thepaypers.com/payments-general/synctera-partners-marqeta-to-introduce-fleet-cards--1269833"> Marqeta&nbsp;</a>to develop a fleet card solution that helps companies create and manage their own fleet card and banking products.

Synctera

Based in the UK, Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, was spun out of payment provider Ixaris in 2019. Weavr offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking services across various industries, including education, fitness, logistics, etc. Weavr’s “Meta” platform combines multiple banking and payments partners in one platform through application programming interfaces (APIs). Using the APIs, enterprises can embed virtual banking services such as card payments, fund transfers, and international banking accounts.Weavr expanded its operations to Singapore in November 2022, as part of its global expansion plans.In March 2023, the company acquired Comma Payments in a primarily equity-based transaction to integrate the latter’s technology. The integration will allow customers to transition from making payments via existing bank accounts to using Weavr-provided accounts with enhanced controls and payment options.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2023, Weavr had served over 1,500 enterprises, including Wectory, AllGravy, Corplife, Finway, Thanks Ben, and MySkillCamp.&nbsp;In October 2019, Weavr partnered with payment service providers Global Processing Services (GPS), Paynetics, and iDenfy to enable developers to create and run sophisticated and streamlined payment experiences for their European customers through Weavr.In June 2023, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.weavr.io/blog/weavr-and-visa-to-deliver-embedded-finance-to-the-global-stage/">partnered with Visa</a> to integrate its financial plug-ins with Visa's payment capabilities to create embedded finance solutions that are easy to deploy and cost-effective.

Weavr

MX offers an open finance portal, data connectivity application programming interface (API), and MX platform API for banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The company’s solutions allow its clients to utilize financial data to reduce fraud, approve loans faster, and improve their customer experiences. In addition to APIs and connections, MX also offers a range of capabilities, including data aggregation, analytics, financial feed insights, wealth and investment services, and verification services.MX looks to enable banks and financial institutions to launch next-generation services and apps that automate and personalize financial experiences.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2021, the company noted that it worked with more than 1800 banks, credit unions, and FinTech companies, and its platform reached over 200 million end-users. Moreover, it also powered 43 of the top 50 digital banks as of the same period.&nbsp;As of November 2024, the company maintained connections with more than 13,000 financial institutions and FinTechs. Moreover, the company had processed transactions worth USD 170 billion, averaging around USD 150 million per day.In November 2024, the company partnered with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pymnts.com/news/banking/2024/american-express-forms-data-sharing-partnership-with-mx/">American Express</a> to enable the latter’s customers to securely connect their accounts with third-party financial institutions and FinTech apps through MX's platform.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8753?industryIds=53">February 2022, MX partnered</a> with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/361160">Rize</a>, to enable users to access Rize’s banking infrastructure to build, launch, and scale financial products through a single API, thereby reducing the development time and cost.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Bankable is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) infrastructure provider allowing financial institutions and corporations to utilize its API to integrate banking services. It provides a platform for its enterprise customers to offer modular banking services, including ledger management (process data from multiple banks to support cash management for global corporate affairs), digital banking, payment cards, and e-wallets. The company expanded its platform by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19662">acquiring Arex Markets </a>in June 2023, to embed working capital solutions (such as flexible invoice financing, corporate credit cards, lodged cars, and revolving credit).The company has a global presence, with operations spanning from the US to the Middle East as of January 2021. Bankable noted that the expansion of its global footprint also helps its European and US FinTech clients expand their operations internationally.Key customers and partnershipsIn January 2020, the company partnered with the diversified FinTech infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/85350">Plaid </a>, which enabled Bankable’s customers to use Plaid’s tech to connect to more than 15,000 banks in the US and Europe.

Bankable

Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate banking services such as opening and maintaining accounts, facilitating card payments, etc.


Platforms that enable FinTechs to integrate a range of payment-related services such as one-time payments, subscriptions, and receipt management for domestic and cross-border transactions.


Companies that enable organizations to embed anti-money laundering (AML), identity verification, and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions.


Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate lending services,  by typically applying AI/ML technology to a spending analysis to analyze creditworthiness.

Companies providing APIs and integrations for FinTechs to access securities markets, facilitate transactions and clearing, and provide insights to help end-users manage their finances.

May specialize in promoting inclusiveness in financial services, primarily in the investment and lending spaces

AI/ML can improve the quality of their offerings, such as using AI/ML to reduce biases

Used for payment completions, accessing banking and transaction data, and providing financial insights, among others

Deserve

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