Kicking off the end of the year, NXTUS and Premier Sponsors — Emprise Bank, INTRUST Bank and Kansas Bankers Association — announced seven winners of the 2023 NXTSTAGE Financial Technology Pilot Competition.
Leading fintech startups from five states and Canada pitched at the showcase event, offering their next-generation solutions to help regional banks, credit unions and financial services businesses improve identity verification, offer new digital tools to customers, link in with their small-business clients’ financial information, and expand lending and services to rural and urban underserved community segments.
Similar to ABC’s “Shark Tank,” the event included three-minute pitches from each finalist. Then, the Premier Sponsors provided remarks on their innovation goals and revealed which finalists they would continue to work with as prospective technology partners.
Emprise Bank praised the whole finalist cohort and announced they are pursuing a project with PitaTech, which offers a targeted solution for lenders needing to search equipment lien records. “Embracing innovation is pivotal to our future growth, and we remain committed to supporting innovators and building the ecosystem,” said Matt Michaelis, Chairman, President and CEO of Emprise Bank. “We take great pride in nurturing the next wave of financial innovators in many ways, including by offering guidance on core capabilities essential for creating a market-ready product that enables us to empower our customers to thrive. We will continue to engage with PitaTech as they build their capabilities, working toward a potential pilot program.”
INTRUST Bank announced they will be working with V2verify to potentially implement their voice authentication solution and ForeSight, which enhances banks’ loan evaluations and reduces drop-offs among loan applicants, who can get mired in current processes. “We see fostering innovation as a key to serving our customers and communities well,” said Steve Castro-Miller, Managing Director of Technology of INTRUST Bank. “The NXTSTAGE program continues to bring great ideas and new approaches to Kansas, and we are pleased to help these entrepreneurs get the exposure to decision-makers that they need to continue to improve their products and approaches.”
The Kansas Bankers Association has selected ASA Technologies, Pebble Plan, Railz and V2verify as their organization’s winners. Each of these winning firms receives a feature article in The Kansas Banker magazine, as well as a complimentary one-year associate KBA membership. “Each of the finalists offers relevant tools that can help our member banks innovate and compete, but these four rose to the top as most promising solutions for banks across the state to better serve their clients and promote growth for their communities,” said Doug Wareham, President & CEO of the Kansas Bankers Association. “I want to thank the leaders from these KBA member banks for serving on the task force that helped choose KBA’s winners: Bank of Commerce, Bank of the Plains, First Heritage Bank, NBKC Bank and Union State Bank.”
About KBA’s Winners
ASA Technologies is revolutionizing banking by offering a new way for community and regional banks to provide fintech experiences directly to retail and business customers without one-to-one fintech integrations. ASA’s flagship offering, the ASA Vault, is a fintech app store specifically designed for banking. With ASA Vault, fintechs no longer take business from banks. ASA sits between banks and fintechs, allowing customers to access, permit and use technology apps without sharing personally identifiable information. This places ASA and its banking partners in a position to comply with regulatory data, privacy and security proposals.
Pebble Plan gives banks a low-cost/high-return opportunity to de-risk their small business loan portfolios while strengthening client relationships, increasing community engagement and providing a unique set of compliance benefits. This hybrid fintech/edtech startup lets entrepreneurs stress-test potential ventures before seeking financing and re-envision struggling ventures before they get too far off track and start missing payments. Banks partnering with Pebble Plan get better-prepared borrowers as they support their communities. By helping entrepreneurs make better decisions earlier on and providing access to this unique educational resource, banks are helping reduce the likelihood of business failure and personal financial collapse.
Railz is a fintech innovator, pioneering in the space of Accounting Data as a Service,™ reshaping the financial data landscape for businesses and financial institutions alike. Established by tech visionaries Derek Manuge and Sohaib Zahid, Railz is determined to automate data collection and analysis, thus enabling real-time decision-making with an easy-to-implement API. With a mission to build the largest financial data network, Railz is empowering creators of the next generation of financial services. It’s not just about accessing data; it’s about making it work powerfully for businesses, driving insights and actions that were previously out of reach. Railz stands as a beacon of progress in the fintech sector, receiving accolades for its API and making daily news with its innovations. Serving a diverse clientele, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, Railz continues to expand offerings that positively impact the world of finance.
V2verify’s technology is light years ahead of the original voice biometric. Not only can V2verify authenticate a user with two seconds of natural speech, but it also boasts a 99% authentication success rate with an industry-leading EER, a built-in liveness test that prevents the use of recordings, wave files that cannot be reverse-engineered if hacked and a built-in genetic evolutionary AI. V2verify originates from a suite of products and services that have supported financial institutions, retailers, merchants and third-party processors around the world for over 30 years. Their successful track record of processing and securing financial data provided the foundation used to build V2verify, the next-gen voice biometric authentication and identity management platform.
