Quovo lands funding to expand to Canada
Venturing into Canada
Quovo will enter the Canadian market thanks in part to an investment from Portag3 Ventures, writes David Penn at Finovate. The new investment takes the data platform provider’s total funding to $20 million.
Quovo CEO and co-founder Lowell Putnam says Canada is a source of “immense growth potential” for the company given the country’s “thriving fintech ecosystem and financial institutions hungry to adopt innovative technologies”.
Putnam also highlights a strategic element in Quovo’s relationship with Portag3 Ventures. “The decision to raise funding from Portag3 was about much more than capital,” he says. “Portag3 is well connected in the Canadian financial services industry and is helping us to hit the ground running as we work to establish ourselves in the market.”
Portag3 Ventures is a Canadian-based venture capital firm sponsored by Power Financial Corporation, IGM Financial Inc, and Great West-Lifeco Inc.
As part of the expansion, Quovo plans to partner with Canadian fintechs and incumbent financial services companies. The company’s director in Canada, Brad Joudrie, points out that the company had already added to its Canadian institutional coverage, and included Canadian financial account types into its data model.
“We’re fully committed to building a sustainable business to support the country’s growing financial services sector,” Joudrie says. “The investment from Portag3 will enable us to build out a regional team, deliver on Canadian consumer requirements, and fuel innovation in Canadian financial services.”
The investment and expansion news comes on the heels of Quovo’s launch of two new data solutions to streamline ACH transactions and payment management. ACH Verification uses instant account verification or Quovo’s Autoverified Microdeposits to authenticate key account and account owner details and ensure frictionless ACH transactions. Payment Management enables monitoring of customer accounts to accurately determine the best time to debit accounts for steady payment flow and lower NSF fees.
“Our movement into payments demonstrates the utility of Quovo’s technology across a breadth of industries, and we’re excited to deliver solutions to some of the major obstacles faced by payment originators,” Putnam says. Both solutions were developed using Quovo’s Income + Expense and Balance Estimator products, introduced last month.
Quovo’s technology offers companies connectivity and insights for millions of consumer financial accounts across more than 14,000 different institutions.
In December, the company launched Quovo PFM, a suite of embeddable personal finance management modules for financial institutions that complements the fintech’s account aggregation offering.
