S&P Global Market Intelligence rounds up financial technology companies' recent product launches, partnership announcements and fundraising activity, as well as regulatory developments in the financial technology space. For more fintech news, click here.
Top news
Toronto-based Equitable Bank will become Canada's first cloud-only bank by 2026 with Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform. Azure powers a majority of Equitable Bank's core business functions and empowers the creation of solutions across all bank functions. In moving its digital banking systems onto Azure, EQ Bank became the first bank in Canada fully hosted in cloud architecture, according to a news release.
Equitable Bank also announced that EQ Bank, its digital banking platform, teamed up with Flinks Technology Inc. to provide its customers the ability to share financial data securely with their chosen third-party fintech applications. This partnership and the integration of Flinks Outbound, an open banking environment, provide EQ Bank with the framework to deliver open banking capabilities and launch and operate new application programming interface data sharing methods while providing the bank with critical new data management capabilities.
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Synchrony Financial is giving merchants the ability to offer a short-term, no-interest installment option, Synchrony SetPay pay in 4, via the Clover point-of-sale and business management system from Fiserv Inc.
The offering will allow customers to make four equal, interest-free payments for purchases usually between $40 and $500, with the first payment due at checkout. It will be part of the Pay with Synchrony app available on the Clover App Market for participating merchants using any Clover device.
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BlueVine Inc. unveiled its first set of business banking features designed specifically to aid accounting professionals in serving their small business customers. Accountant Role lets small business owners using a BlueVine business checking account grant their accountants access to selected account information through a dedicated login. Accountant Dashboard enables accountants to access their clients' transactions from one place, download bank statements, reconcile transactions and bills, and view all relevant contextual information.
Banking and lending
Black Knight Inc. introduced the Black Knight Fee Cures Suite, an analytic tool that lets lenders compare loan estimates and closing disclosures from closed loans to help minimize mandatory tolerance fee cures. To create the tool, Black Knight combined the analytics of its Actionable Intelligence Platform with Ernst Fee Service data and the Empower loan origination system loan information.
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Wilmington, N.C.-based nCino Inc. announced that nbkc bank is live on nCino's Commercial Pricing and Profitability on the nCino Bank Operating System. The Commercial Pricing and Profitability on-platform solution enables pricing to happen at every relevant deal point in the commercial deal life cycle.
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KlariVis, an enterprise dashboard and analytics solution for the financial services industry, announced its new relationship with McAllen, Texas-based Rio Bank as a key analytics tool for the bank's future.
Payments
Global Primex LLC launched its payment platform, VLoad, in partnership with Metropolitan Commercial Bank, a subsidiary of Metropolitan Bank Holding Corp. VLoad is an online payment method that offers privacy and security to consumers and merchants in the VLoad Merchant Network.
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Salt Lake City-based WebBank will invest up to $250 million in the obligations of a securitization structure sponsored by Avant LLC that are secured by credit card receivables. The investment will be used to meet the continuing demand and growth of the Avant MasterCard credit card issued by WebBank.
Data and information management
AvidXchange Holdings Inc. revealed an application programming interface integration for Acumatica Inc. that provides an automated, end-to-end purchase-to-pay process via the combined TimberScan Titanium and AvidPay platform. AvidXchange also announced an end-to-end, purchase-to-pay integration available for Sage 100 customers in AvidStrongroom.
Trading and investing
Charles Schwab Corp.'s Schwab Advisor Services improved its digital onboarding capabilities, enabling independent advisers to open and fund up to 10 new client accounts in one "digital envelope." The digital onboarding workflow also now gives advisers the option to upload up to 16 commonly used firm documents for new clients to view, edit, acknowledge and approve.
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Tenjin AI Capital Advisors LLC fully launched its investment platform, Tenjin AI, to individual investors and registered investment advisers. The platform is accessible as an app and enables investors to invest in Tenjin AI's proprietary investment models.
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