Giftly, a startup that brings gift card-giving and receiving to the mobile platform, announced today that it has been acquired by GiftCards.com.

Giftly, which launched in 2011, allows users to send and receive gift cards using their mobile device without requiring point-of-sale integration on the merchant side.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but San Francisco-based Giftly will become a part of GiftCards.com while maintaining its offices in the Silicon Valley.

Giftly had previously raised $2.8 million from Baseline Ventures, SoftTech VC, Floodgate, Thrive Capital, and TechStars co-founder David Tisch. Even though GiftCards.com has been in the industry since 1999, it is looking to raise its first round of capital this year, which it will use to accelerate its growth and complete the Giftly acquisition.

To learn more about Giftly, watch its FinovateSpring 2012 demo.

SmartPay, an instant financing option powered by BillFloat, will soon be available via a select group of Radio Shack retail outlets in Houston as part of a pilot program, BillFloat announced today.

SmartPay allows consumers to pay for newly bought smartphones on an "in-store lease-to-own" basis. The new partnership with Radio Shack will be the first time such a financing opportunity has been available to potential smartphone buyers.

SumUp, a European player in the mobile-based card reader and point-of-sale space, recently launched in Russia and has opened an office in Moscow.

In Russia, the SumUp card reader will support all major credit and debit cards, including MasterCard and Visa. Support for American Express is coming soon.

The Ireland-based company is now operating in 11 countries:

• Bangor Daily News blogger interviews CashStar CEO Steven Boal.

• Service2Media announces implementation of mobile app development platform.

• Locaid CEO Rip Gerber wins CTIA "Ingenious Innovator" award for product and service innovation.

• Temenos unveils DataSource, their new enterprise data management system.

• Take a peek at the new look of Comarch Smart Finance.

• Swipely earns $12 million in Series B funding.

• Big banks boost Capital Access Network's lending capacity by more than 50%.

• SimpleTuition announces $4 million Series D round.

• Wipit powered wallet now available to Boost Mobile customers.

• Pandai brings on John Porter as Chairman.

• PandoDaily reports: Google closes Checkout, pushing thousands of merchants into Braintree's arms.

• Cardlytics pulls in $40 million.

• Arxan's mobile app integrity protection platform now supports the Tizen OS, protecting Tizen apps from cyber threats.

• eToro reaches 50 million trades landmark.

Thanks to all who tweeted and followed #Finovate throughout the last week's event. On Tuesday afternoon there was enough activity to propel #finovate to the top of the trending subjects in San Francisco. Here are some of our favorites. 

Stay tuned to @finovate for continued coverage of the 500 Finovate alums.

Day One

Day Two

Card-linked offers platform, Cardlytics, announced last week that it has raised $40 million from undisclosed, existing investors.

The Boston-based company's president and COO, Lynne Laube, explained that the $40 million will be used to expand its international presence. Cardlytics already has plans to launch with bank partners in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. Specific bank partners are still undisclosed.

Boost Mobile customers soon will find themselves part of the mobile payments movement, as the non-contract wireless provider adds a mobile wallet feature to its smartphones.

That mobile wallet will be powered by Wipit, a mobile payments company with a focus on providing service to the underbanked. Founders of the company include veterans of the prepaid wireless industry: John Tantum, former President of Virgin Mobile USA, Michael Lanzon, former VP of Sales and Marketing for Boost Mobile, and Job Tucker, former Director of National Sales and Distribution for Boost Mobile.

SimpleTuition's job of providing resources to help students responsibly borrow, maintain, and retire student debt just got $4 million easier.

The $4 million in venture funding comes from a trio of previous investors in the company: Atlas Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, and North Hill Ventures. The additional capital brings SimpleTuition's funding total to more than $21 million, excluding $5 million in debt financing from August of last year.

Capital Access Network announced that it has secured an additional $165 million credit line. The additional funding will extend the company's lending capacity to nearly $500 million from its current level of $295 million.

Participating in the syndicate are:

Shasta Ventures led the financing round. Joining them were current investors First Round Capital, Greylock Partners, and Index Ventures.

Swipely plans to use the $12 million in new capital to help finance growth nationwide, as well as building the network of merchants who use their payment marketing technology. This latest round of funding brings the company's total to more than $20 million.

• Birdback teams up with Braintree for 3-day payments hackathon.

• Indiana Members CU chooses Jack Henry & Associates' Symitar for in-house core processing.

• Keynote DeviceAnywhere adds mobile scripting, UI enhancements.

• VoiceTrust moves operational headquarters to Canada, opening offices in Toronto and Montreal.

• Figlo expands partnership with Yellowtail Consulting to enable stronger focus on South Africa.

• Wipit partners with Sprint/ Boost Mobile to bring mobile payment capability to cash-preferred consumers.

• Virtual Piggy signs first UK partners, Toy Galaxy and Toadstool.

• eToro granted UK financial regulation approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

• Silicon Republic features Holvi.

• Tyfone releases Connected Smart Card solution to allow FIs to enhance user ID info used to access sensitive data.

• Tradeshift partners with Invoiceware International to deliver compliant e-invoice validation in Latin America.

• BillGuard to integrate with Google Wallet for transaction monitoring.

• SigFig Portfolio adds support for Windows Phone.

Last week's FinovateSpring 2013 received great coverage through blogs, tweets and articles. Here are the highlights:

Three contributors risked carpel tunnel to cover all 72 demos. Thanks to Erin McCune and William Mills III and Phillip Ryan for going the extra mile!

Bank Innovation
by Phillip Ryan
FinovateSpring recap and ratings
Day one morning recap
Day one afternoon recap
Day two morning recap
Day two afternoon recap

The latest investment in the biometric-identity innovator brings the company's total funding to $3.7 million. Participating in this latest round were Think Big Partners, Mid-American Angels, Nebraska Angels, and other individual, angel investors.

EyeVerify plans to use the additional funding to add sales and marketing talent, as well as invest in research and development. Founded in January 2012, the company is based in Kansas City, Kansas, and has eleven employees.

For the second time in as many months, open source payment network innovator, OpenCoin is closing another round of funding. This time the company has earned investment from Google Ventures and China-based IDG Capital Partners.

The total amount of the angel funding round has not been disclosed, though Google Ventures is rumored to have contributed less than $200,000.

• Quantopian featured in the print edition of Barron's Electronic Investor column.

• Software company Malauzai, technology partner with Allied Payment Networks, talks mobile photo bill pay adoption rates.

• CardNotPresent takes a look at OneID's two-factor authentication technology.

• Palo Alto Software collaborates with MasterCard to provide lean planning and management software solutions to small businesses.

• Lendio interviews BBC Easy founders in a podcast on its blog.

• CommunityLend's FinanceIt launches paperless document function.

• Serverside Group grants license for its US card customization patents to financial services provider, DimpleDough.

• CashStar announces year-over-year growth in Mother's Day eGifting cards sold.

• MobilePaymentsToday takes a look at Zooz In-Ad Payments service.

• FlexScore provides waiting list for access codes to beta version of their web-based financial advisor platform.

• American Banker features crowdfunders LendUp and Realty Mogul.

• TransCard congratulates technology partner FamZoo on winning FinovateSpring 2013 honors.

After the final demos wrapped up on two fintech-packed days at FinovateSpring 2013, the audience voted for their favorite demos to ultimately decide who would be named Best of Show. The top 5 overall took home the trophies.

The winners (in alphabetical order):

We'll have the videos of all 72 demos posted on Finovate.com in a few weeks.

Thanks to everyone who joined the audience and came to be a part of our largest show so far. And thanks to the 77 innovators* who braved the Finovate stage. 

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*Five demos hosted a co-presenting company, including Visa, MasterCard, USAlliance Credit Union, Intuit, and Paydiant

Notes on methodology:  
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.     
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.    
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: "Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed."  
4. The five companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named Best of Show.  
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners.

• FamZoo, LendUp, Money Desktop, PayNearMe, and TipRanks win Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring 2013 in San Francisco.

"Prestadero uses its proprietary management software to originate loans in an extremely efficient way. Our platform allows us to parse out declined loans in seconds and determine rates for approved loans in less than 1 minute.  

Our web interface allows lenders to view their entire portfolio in detail. Lenders can also view specific graphs and scorecards that allow them to make better investment decisions, even if they are not investment professionals. We provide lenders with tools, such as our "diversification index," which quickly and comprehensively lets them know their risk exposure depending on the diversification of their loans. Our software also enables lenders to select multiple loans at once by filtering through the user's selected criteria. They can also choose to reinvest their returns based on the same or a different set of criteria.

Through their online account, borrowers have full control over their loan's entire process, from filling out the application to paying it off completely. We also charge the borrower's bank accounts directly when their payments are due, diminishing delinquencies and providing a better service for our customers. The entire process is streamlined and coded with peer-to-peer finance in mind, reducing human interaction on the back-end of the technology and providing more accurate, up-to-date information on our front-end."

"Plastyc is demonstrating the administrator-facing side of the BankingUP platform, allowing issuing banks and program managers to:

• Monitor and analyze cardholders' financial activity in real time;
• Monitor and analyze cardholders' non-financial activity; e.g., usage of mobile apps and web, customer support interactions;
• Communicate instantly with programmable subsets of cardholders via web inserts and smartphone push notification for marketing/upselling and product alerts.

This is a departure from traditional batch mode financial-transactions only reporting obtained from processors."

"Zooz will show an exciting new feature that demonstrates an important use case of the Zooz consumer driven platform capabilities."

"Capture data-driven customer insights and boost customer loyalty through useful online experiences. Captivate and connect with customers across business-critical digital channels using the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Maximize the value and impact of your institution's online presence and drive online customer conversion using the robust analytics and powerful visualization tools in Adobe Marketing Cloud. 

Launch, analyze, and refine lead generation campaigns across channels, including web, mobile and email. Get real-time insight into online campaign performance and engagement. Modify in-progress campaigns to increase response rates, conversion rates, and revenue. Then refine and personalize experiences to encourage repeat visits."

"The LendUp Ladder changes the dynamics of a small dollar loan; rather than being a dangerous first step into a cycle of debt, small dollar loans become an opportunity to learn good financial behavior and to build credit."

"Gremln is introducing its new Secure Social Media version, designed for financial services companies. This new product creates the ability for marketing and compliance departments to work together toward the common goal of utilizing social media to build business and retain customers through engagement; all without violating guidelines set forth by regulatory bodies like the SEC, FFIEC, and FINRA.

Keyword and phrase filtering, abstract concept matching, a structured approval process, archiving and custom permission settings for each department and team member. All posts are subject to an approval process that you custom design. Maximize your use of social media fearlessly."

"The Tradeslide Challenge is a gamified learning process where traders compete to develop the skills that make up a solid trader (risk management, discipline, etc.), in the right order, one badge at a time."

"Micronotes Cross-Sell is simply the most productive digital cross-sell tool on the market. One of our customers is demonstrating this by showing the product, sharing results and explaining what those results mean to his financial institution."

"Persint's consumer analytics application integrates with account aggregation and is designed to complement existing PFM. Leveraging public data sources mapped to conform to aggregation categorization, Persint delivers performance context through comparison to U.S. household peers. 

Just five demographic inputs can segment a household into one of over 100 unique peer groups. Other solution features include:

"Bright Funds offers a simple, elegant tool to the financial services sector for effective charitable giving management. With Bright Funds, individuals create personalized giving portfolios and contribute to thoroughly researched funds of highly effective nonprofits addressing the greatest challenges of our time. Bright Funds combines the power of research, the reliability of a trusted financial service, and the convenience of centralized contributions and tax reporting."

"ValidSoft's SMART platform caters for the disparity in mobile networks and devices, use cases and the corresponding transactional risk intrinsic in mobile payment applications. SMART achieves this by providing a layered architecture of voice and mobile network‐based security protocols and technologies, both visible and invisible, to protect mobile payment and M‐banking transactions alike."

"The Cymonz application includes a client transactional website and the back office management application with specific currency and international payment business processes, customization and integrations. The application addresses a wide spectrum of needs, including client management, currency transactions, risk management, settlements and compliance. 

Cymonz integrates with third party applications and can be configured to allow for liquidity, payments, customer service as well as anti money laundering, marketing and support tasks. 

iOS and Android applications are also available along with the ability for you to white label your currency application and provide it to your partners to increase currency and payment flows."  

"HarmonyLoan Central is the client-branded, consumer web-interface for borrowers to access their HarmonyLoan. The Loan Retention Software (LRS) eliminates a traditional refinance. With one click and an e-signature, a borrower resets their rate, incurring zero closing costs, with no credit check, or underwriting, all in minutes. The FI has no back office processing costs, increases retention, at a premium yield. The servicer reduces portfolio churn, and the originator creates a recurring revenue stream. In other words, everyone wins."

"Allied's Picture Pay is the nation's first mobile bill payment application that enables financial institutions' customers to pay bills using the camera on their mobile device. With Picture Pay, users simply take a picture of the bill, enter the amount and date, and the bill is paid.

Picture Pay's technology does the rest by reading the data from the bill, then syncing with the customer's bank or credit union to process the payment. Additionally, Picture Pay can automatically add a new biller to the user's online banking system, eliminating the hassle of entering the payee and account information online."

"SeedInvest is demonstrating its state-of-the-art, equity-based, crowdfunding platform and a number of groundbreaking features including:

Due Diligence Dashboard

• Virtual Diligence Session
• Permission-based Dataroom
• Diligence Board

Simple Invest

• Instant Identity Check
• Legal Docs Execution
• Streamlined Funds Transfer

Virtual Boardroom

• Virtual Board Meetings
• Easy Reporting
• Quick Signatures"

"Arxan's Mobile Application Integrity Protection products deliver critical defense and shielding at the application layer with static and active self-defend and tamper-proof attributes. By deploying Arxan protected apps, financial institutions can launch advanced and feature-rich mobile financial services with confidence. 

Our state-of-the-art 'Guards' are small units of object code that "lockdown" applications with multiple and performance sensitive protection against attacks such as: malware, fraud, data breach repackaging, unauthorized access, IP theft, removal of security or critical business logic; all of which would have significant consequences for financial institutions." 

"Powered by PayNearMe is a white-label treasure services product that any financial institution can offer to their merchants to enable them to accept cash payments from consumers at thousands of 7-Eleven and ACE Cash Express stores nationwide."