Email banking company ActivePath raises $10M

The company's interactive email solution allows consumers to make bank transactions via email

Banking-by-email company ActivePath announced Monday that it has raised $10 million in a Series B round of funding led by Battery Ventures and Gimv NV, with participation from existing investors including Genesis Partners.

Founded in 2007, ActivePath’s proprietary technology allows banks, credit card companies, and e-commerce companies to deliver real-time interactive emails such as alerts, statements, and special offers, in which customers can make bank transactions on the spot.  For example, a customer might get an email from their bank regarding an upcoming bill, and the customer can make the payment with one click from within the email itself.

ActivePath’s email banking solution comes with multiple layers of security, including a secure logo that authenticates the sender, a pop-up window that prompts the customer to provide a username and password before he/she can view the email, and a security screen that is displayed at the transaction level.  The solution DOES require banking customers to install a browser add-on, but the convenience of being able to pay a bill or make a transfer via email is a pretty tempting offer.

Obviously, financial institutions and businesses stand to gain from the service as well, as the solution cuts down on the layers of clicking customers ordinarily have to go through to get to the website, which runs the risk of losing their attention.  This could be a huge boost to e-commerce sites’ sales, considering how much a one-click purchasing option can cut down on the rate of shopping cart abandonment. 

But it can also be highly beneficial to banks and other financial institutions, which, for the most part, are limited to making special offers and promotions on their site—which means customers have to go to the website and sign in first to see the offer.  Email banking allows banks and other financial institutions to push new offers in ways they couldn’t before. 

"Email marketing is an enormously huge and rapidly growing market that's on the cusp of a major transformation,” said Scott Tobin of Battery Ventures, in a statement.  “Whether it's commercial or personal banking, bill pay or just about any transaction over the web, all of the processes for making them efficient and customer friendly converge with ActivePath's solution.”

ActivePath plans to use the new funds to drive product development and increase sales and marketing in the U.S. and Europe.  Currently, ActivePath works with the two largest banks in Israel and was launching a pilot test with the “largest bank in Europe” as of last October.  The company could not be reached for comment.

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