Vikar Technologies Secures Series A Funding Led by Btech Consortium Fund & Verde Technology Ventures
Vikar Technologies secures Series A funding led by Btech Consortium and Verde Technology Ventures to enhance community banking solutions
Old Bridge, NJ – Jan 22, 2025 – Vikar Technologies (“Vikar”), a leading provider of innovative account opening and loan origination solutions for community banks and credit unions, is excited to announce the successful completion of its Series A funding round. The round was jointly led by Btech Consortium Fund (“Btech”) and Verde Technology Ventures (“VTV”), two prominent investment firms dedicated to advancing technology solutions for community banks.
Vikar’s product offerings, including Omni-Channel Account Opening Solutions and Loan Origination Software, have positioned the company as a differentiator in the market. Vikar’s modular approach can complement embedded software or fully replace existing solutions in a bank’s loan origination and account opening tech stack, allowing banks to consolidate tech vendors. With the backing of Btech and VTV, Vikar is poised to further drive product innovation and enhance its ability to serve the community banking industry nationwide.
Banks are drawn to Vikar for their turnkey solutions and agile integration capabilities, enabling them to go live in months rather than enduring years of ongoing implementation. Vikar’s technology platform is designed for seamless customization, enabling tailored workflows to meet each customer’s specific needs, recognizing that banks have well-established procedures that should drive the software rather than software limitations driving the bank’s workflow process.
This pivotal funding will fuel Vikar’s growth, enabling the company to expand its team, scale operations, and broaden its innovative offerings that deliver automated end-to-end solutions to community banks and credit unions nationwide. “This funding from Btech and VTV underscores their dedication to supporting community banks with cutting-edge technologies,” said Glenn Bolstad, CEO of Vikar, “This partnership aligns perfectly with Vikar’s mission to strengthen and empower this vital sector of the financial industry.”
“Our investment in Vikar Technologies reflects our confidence in their innovative solutions and their ability to transform the way community banks operate”, said Mike Sekits, Managing Director at the Btech Consortium Fund, “We are proud to support Vikar as they continue to empower financial institutions with advanced technology that drives efficiency, enhances customer experiences, and fosters sustainable growth.”
“This investment represents VTV’s continued confidence in Vikar’s trajectory and potential,” commented Jeffrey Green, Managing Director at VTV. “We’re particularly impressed by Glenn and his team’s ability to create scalable and flexible banking technology products that are reshaping how community and regional banks serve their customers.”
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About Vikar
Vikar provides automated end-to-end software solutions to community and regional banks. Their account opening and loan origination solutions enable seamless collaboration among various stakeholders such as customers, lenders, branch managers, underwriters, KYC teams, and operations teams. This is achieved through a unified interface that supports interactions across different banking services, including loans, deposits, treasury, and wealth management. Their solutions are designed with an integrated, comprehensive perspective on a bank’s operations and connects seamlessly with core banking systems. It supports all major banking business lines—retail, commercial, and wealth management—and can be utilized in multiple service formats, such as self-service, joint service, and full-service models. This versatility helps banks enhance productivity and improve the client experience while maintaining a holistic approach to financial services. For more information visit: https://www.vikartech.com/
About Btech Consortium Fund
The Btech Consortium Fund is a partnership between U.S. community banks, Elizabeth Park Capital Management, and Strandview Capital. The mission of the consortium is to empower community banks through technology to better compete with larger national banks, become less reliant on legacy core technology, and to better serve their customers. The banks in the Btech Consortium are tech-forward, high-performing banks. These banks have joined forces to gain market leverage and a competitive advantage through insights into emerging bank technology, access to new vendor relationships, and sharing of technology best practices among bank peers.
For more information visit: https://btechconsortium.com/
About Verde Technology Ventures
Verde Technology Ventures is a Corporate Venture Capital investor that invests in both early and growth-stage, fintech-focused venture capital funds and directly into growth-stage venture-backed fintech & fintech adjacent companies for the benefit of its Bank Affiliates. Its mission is to further the corporate development and corporate strategy efforts of its Affiliate Banks.
Contacts
Stephanie Mazzone
Director of Marketing for Vikar
[email protected]
Btech Consortium Fund Invests in DefenseStorm to Protect Community Banks
Existing Investor Participation in Raise Shows Confidence in Company Direction
Alpharetta, Ga (BUSINESS WIRE) – DefenseStorm, the leading provider of cyber risk management solutions and co-managed services to financial institutions, recently completed a Series C-1 raise. The round was led by a number of existing investor partners, including Georgian, Curql, and Live Oak Ventures. Joining the round is new investor the Btech Consortium Fund, a group of community banks leveraging technology to better serve their customers.
Community banks are innovating their technologies and services to meet customer demand for accessibility and convenience, improve operational efficiency, and compete better against larger banks. While needed for growth, innovation creates risk, with cybercriminals poised to exploit the vulnerabilities exposed by change. All banks, regardless of their size, must proactively manage cyber risk, which includes pre-emptive and continuous action to assess and address risks caused by innovation.
“DefenseStorm and the Btech Consortium Fund are committed to providing community banks access to the latest technologies, offering a comprehensive cyber risk approach that ensures they can protect their assets, customers, and reputations,” said Steve Soukup, CEO of DefenseStorm. “Our integrated technology platform is purposefully “Built for Banking”, meaning it is designed to meet all the demanding requirements and regulations that are unique to banks. And our team of highly trained cyber experts provides the much-needed resources that many smaller banks can struggle to hire and retain. It’s a true partnership, ensuring community banks can effectively respond to the constantly evolving world of cyber threats.”
Working together, the Btech Consortium Fund and DefenseStorm are building a community of trust, so all banks can grow and thrive together. It involves bringing together financial institutions, business partners, government agencies, and others to share and act on incidents, making the industry better as a whole. It’s a concerted effort to make communities a better place by putting a stop to threat actors that hold businesses hostage with ransomware or steal an individual’s credit card.
“We are honored to invest in DefenseStorm”, says Kevin Covert, Managing Director at the Btech Consortium Fund, “As community banks rapidly deploy modern technology to streamline efficiencies and innovate, we believe DefenseStorm’s products will prove critical for achieving security and compliance. We are recommending DefenseStorm to all our bank consortium members and the hundreds of community banks with whom we communicate.”
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About DefenseStorm
DefenseStorm provides an integrated platform of cyber risk assessment, governance, security, and fraud solutions that ensure financial institutions achieve and maintain cyber risk readiness. The only system specifically built for banking, it accounts for all the daunting challenges, regulations, and technology requirements financial institutions face. Their intelligent data engine, GRID ACTIVE, ensures real-time access, analysis, and action on all critical threat data. The Cyber Threat Surveillance Operations (CTS Ops) team provides access to managed resources 24x7x365, delivering the help and expertise needed by financial institutions. For more information visit: https://defensestorm.com/company/about-us/
About the Btech Consortium Fund
The Btech Consortium Fund is a partnership between U.S. community banks, Elizabeth Park Capital Management, and Strandview Capital. The mission of the consortium is to empower community banks through technology to better compete with larger national banks, become less reliant on legacy core technology, and to better serve their customers. The banks in our consortium are tech-forward, high-performing banks. They have joined forces to gain market leverage and a competitive advantage through insights into emerging bank technology, access to new vendor relationships, and sharing of technology best practices among bank peers. For more information visit: https://btechconsortium.com/
Contacts
David Cross
VP, Marketing for DefenseStorm
[email protected]
Theodor Nordegren
VP, Strandview Capital | Btech Consortium
[email protected]
PortX and Plaid Announce Partnership to Fast-Track Data Access and Innovation for Financial Institutions
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PortX, the leading financial infrastructure and integration technology company that provides open access to data and drives innovation for financial institutions with its Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (IPaaS), announced a strategic partnership with Plaid, the data network powering the digital financial ecosystem. This collaboration combines the power of PortX’s digital core banking integration experience with Plaid’s industry-leading capabilities for connecting data between applications and bank accounts.
Seamless Banking and Enhanced Data Analysis
The alliance between Plaid and PortX marks a pivotal moment in the financial technology sector, combining the expertise of two industry leaders to revolutionize how financial institutions harness data for innovative products and services. For customers of PortX, which operates as both a systems integrator and middleware provider, the partnership significantly enhances their ability to scale up secure and efficient financial data sharing by minimizing the technical effort and resource allocation typically required for such an expansive task. This leads to a more comprehensive and holistic view of customer data, enabling these institutions to offer highly personalized services and gain deeper financial insights with greater ease.
“Digital finance is here to stay, in fact, 85% of consumers say they have benefited from using technology to manage their finances. It’s imperative that financial institutions embrace technology the same way their customers have – to maintain account primacy and prepare for the codification of open banking in the US,” said Tamara Romanek, Head of Partnerships at Plaid. “Partners like PortX transform banking infrastructure for financial institutions, aiding them in digital transformation and enabling rapid innovation. Together we are enhancing the digital infrastructure and optionality for financial institutions and their customers.”
Expanding API Capabilities and Facilitating Open Banking
The partnership is poised to expand the horizons of API capabilities in financial services significantly. It sets the stage for more active participation in open banking initiatives, where financial data is shared securely through APIs. PortX’s command over API orchestration and financial services integration, alongside Plaid’s storied expertise in secure data connectivity and Core Exchange, its FDX-aligned API, empowers financial institutions to be at the forefront of the open banking revolution. This capability is critical for offering advanced and personalized digital banking and embedded banking services.
“Our partnership with Plaid is the type of innovative collaboration that can propel the financial services industry into a new era of digital transformation and customer-centric solutions,“ said David Wexler, CEO of PortX. “This partnership represents a significant stride towards a future where financial management is more accessible, efficient, and aligned with the evolving needs of both FIs and their customers.”
ABOUT PORTX
PortX is an integration technology company focused on financial services infrastructure that delivers open access to core data and enables rapid project delivery, innovation, and optimal customer experiences. Our solutions facilitate interoperability between internal systems and member services such as online banking, credit checks, mortgage and loan applications, and more, allowing for a real-time 360-degree view of the customer. We help financial institutions empower their teams to connect to fintech partners and real-time payment networks like Zelle®, ACH, Fedwire, Mojaloop, and others. For more information, please visit www.portx.io and connect on LinkedIn.
Contacts
Brad Allen
[email protected]
Financial Integration Startup PortX Secures $16.5 Million in Series B Funding
Seattle (Sep. 27, 2023) – PortX, a leader in integration and open banking for community financial institutions and fintechs, announced today the successful close of its Series B funding round, securing $16.5 million, co-led by FUSE, a Pacific Northwest-based venture capital firm, and Curql, a collective of forward-thinking credit unions. They are joined by BankTech Ventures, EJF Capital, and the Btech Consortium – all financial services-focused investment firms representing nearly 200 community financial institutions. Today’s announcement comes one year after the company secured $10M to close its Series A funding.
Additionally, the company announced a new subsidiary in the form of a CUSO due to the strong backing from the Curql Collective, which manages a strategic investment fund representing 68 credit unions and credit union industry partners. This marks a strategic move for PortX to better serve its credit union customers.
Nick Evens, President and CEO at the Curql Collective, remarked, “Our investment in PortX is a statement of belief in their unparalleled technology and vision. The creation of a CUSO will deepen their relationship with credit unions, offering more customized and effective solutions. We’re proud to partner with a company that understands the unique needs of these community financial institutions.”
PortX’s mission is to remove the barriers that impede innovation in financial services. The company’s Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) provides financial institutions with flexible infrastructure that delivers open access to data, simplified application connectivity, and accelerated adoption of new technologies and networks.
With the infusion of Series B funding, PortX is set to accelerate its role as a game-changer in financial services, focusing on several transformative initiatives. These include developing the next generation of products and support that will empower banks and credit unions with unparalleled technological advantages. Enhanced AI offerings and data automation components will further fortify these institutions with cutting-edge capabilities. Additionally, the company’s marketplace of connectors aims to revolutionize the speed at which banks can integrate fintechs and third-party apps, streamlining operations and improving user experience. The investment will also fuel PortX’s commitment to providing exceptional technology specifically tailored to meet the complex demands of banks and credit unions. And its innovative paradigm of low-code tooling gives financial institutions the agility they need to adapt quickly and stay ahead in a highly competitive landscape.
“We at FUSE see PortX as a game-changer in the open banking ecosystem. Their vision and technology align perfectly with the industry’s evolving needs,” said Brendan Wales, Founding Partner at FUSE. “This is our second investment in the company, and it’s not just a vote of confidence in PortX, but a bet on the transformative power of open banking in shaping the future of commerce and financial services. And it’s exciting to partner alongside other visionary investors who are equally committed to innovating and improving financial services for FIs.”
“There is an unmistakable sense of urgency and importance around open and seamless core integration for community banks and credit unions. The financial backing we’ve received from these investors only emphasizes this industry-wide imperative,” said David Wexler, CEO of PortX. “With their partnership, we’re accelerating a monumental shift toward open banking, arming financial institutions with the next-generation tools they need to elevate their products and services. I think the market has spoken, and it’s clear: the future of financial services hinges on innovation. I’m excited because PortX is at the forefront of that transformation.”
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About PortX
PortX is an integration technology company focused on financial services infrastructure that delivers open access to core data and enables rapid project delivery, innovation, and optimal customer experiences. Our solutions facilitate interoperability between internal systems and member services such as online banking, credit checks, mortgage and loan applications, and more, allowing for a real-time 360-degree view of the customer. We help financial institutions empower their teams to connect to fintech partners and real-time payment networks like Zelle®, ACH, Fedwire, Mojaloop, and others. For more information, please visit www.portx.io.
In the September 2023 issue of the Digital Transactions Magazine, Mike Sekits discusses the growing business-to-business payments sector. In the magazine, he details shortcomings that the current B2B Payment technology is not keeping up with customer expectations and innovations from fintechs. See page 20 for Mike’s article.
View the full Magazine HERE.