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FinDEVr 2015 San Francisco: We’re Bringing Builders Back

By David Penn Posted on April 22, 2015
Categories: FinDEVr 2015 San Francisco

For two days in October, the city by the bay once again will be a bastion of fintech builders.

We are excited to announce our second annual event for fintech developers, software architects, CTOs, and other IT professionals: FinDEVr 2015 on 6/7 October in San Francisco, California.

Last year’s event featured speakers from 50 key fintech backbone companies such as Yodlee, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, TD Ameritrade, and Google, along with startups like Forte, Plaid, and Knox Payments (full list here). And we expect even more this year.

Earlier this year we talked to most of last year’s presenters and many attendees about our inaugural FinDEVr conference in 2014. We found overwhelming support for an event focused on the TECHNOLOGY used in building modern financial services.

And that’s why we’re heading back to our favorite venue in San Francisco: the conference center on the campus of UCSF Mission Bay. It’s convenient and super comfortable, but it holds only about 700 people, so act fast as tickets will sell out.

Last year we experimented with various presentation lengths. Based on feedback, we are standardizing with TED-style, 20-minute speaker slots focused on financial tools and technology, along with actual case study detail. At least five minutes of each presentation will be devoted to questions submitted by the audience.

And to allow attendees to better fine-tune their schedule to their technical interests and needs, FinDEVr will be dual-track for both days.

Finally, all the presenters will be readily accessible during lunch, breaks, and end-of-the-day happy hour to answer your questions and resolve hurdles you may be facing in adopting specific technologies.

We hope you’ll join us. Tickets for fintech builders are currently less than $500 (50% off) as part of our “presale.” So act now and save.

And if you’d like to be one of our presenters at FinDEVr 2015, please send us an email at sanfran@findevr.com. Let us know how you’re applying the latest technologies to help make financial services faster, safer and more efficient for businesses and consumers everywhere.

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Game On: What Banking Can Learn from Fitbit

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 22, 2015
Categories: Game-based, Personal Financial Management, TD Bank

I’ve always been a “wanna be” tracker. I like watching the stats closely, but I also lose interest if the process, either capturing the data or compiling it, becomes tedious. But thanks to mobile (including wearables), the drudgery is disappearing and that has big implications for banking and financial services.

Some examples: I’ve used Mint since 2007 for personal and business expenses, so I have a massive database of transactions, which in theory should make it easy to locate just about anything I’ve charged to a credit or debit card in the past eight years. However, it’s never quite perfect because I will go for long periods without doing the required maintenance to keep every aggregated account flowing. Recently, I just fixed one of my main credit cards which has been on hiatus for two years. So, there are big holes in the data.

Then there’s BillGuard, another service I love and have been using for years. I love how it alerts me to questionable items as they hit my card accounts. However, BillGuard’s database is so good, that I rarely hear from them any more. This is good news for me (no questionable items), but less so for them. Because what’s invisible, loses its perceived value.

And I’ve tried tracking other things over the years, both financial and personal. And nothing seems to stick. Until now. I just hit my two-year anniversary using Fitbit, usually glancing at its tiny readout several times per day. So what is it about Fitbit that makes it addictive? And more importantly, how can financial institutions do the same for money management?

1. Make it easy to use: While Fitibit requires zero maintenance once you get it activated, you do have to remember to keep it on you. The same goes double for a bank’s credit or debit card. You not only have to remember it, but also must choose to use it at the point of sale.

Action item: Incent users to get your card loaded into digital ecommerce sites such as Apple Pay, Amazon, iTunes, PayPal, Uber, Spotify and others. Capital One just unleased a great, albeit expensive, program with Uber to credit back 20% of rides to its cardholders (link).

2. Make it easy to see exactly where you stand in real-time: Fitbit provides feedback literally every step of the day. It’s extremely motivating, though at times discouraging when you fall way behind in personal goals. Card issuers today do something similar delivering real-time alerts right to the smartphone homescreen (and soon to the Apple Watch). But transaction alerts still don’t tell you where you are.

Action item: Make notifications smarter by including daily, weekly, monthly transaction summaries and/or credit available. They could be included in the notification, or enabled with a swipe of the transaction alert.

3. Make it easy to compare to previous periods: This is still a missing piece of my ultimate Fitbit experience. The mobile app makes it easy to scroll backwards or look at bar charts to see how you are doing over time. But there are no simple month-over-month or year-over-year comparisons to see your progress in similar time periods.

Action item: Create single-click views of financial activity and balances compared to one month ago, one year ago, two years ago, etc.

4. Provide ongoing incentives: Similar to saving money being its own reward, burning calories by walking and climbing is clearly its own incentive to bump up your Fitbit numbers. But it doesn’t hurt to provide extra incentives along the way. An incentive can not only keep customers engaged, but also appreciative of the game provider. Unlike BillGuard, which so quietly goes about its business that I forget about it, Fitbit delights users with badges and pop-up notifications, for hitting various daily or lifetime milestones. (Fitbit actually needs to do more incentivizing, as experienced users can rarely get a new badge; I haven’t had a new one since last November).

Action item: The badges may be cheesy, but the email congratulations are powerful (see inset from Fitbit the first time you walk 20,000 steps in a day). This has to be one of the simplest things you could do to reinforce good money management. Send an email congratulating a customer when their savings balance, rewards points, interest earned, or whatever, increases compared to a month ago or a year ago. Who doesn’t appreciate an “atta boy or girl” every now and then (even if it is from your bank).

5. Get social: While I’m not of the social media generation, I do understand its appeal. Just today, Fitbit sent me a reminder to add friends. This allows users to compete against friends and family, a potentially motivating way to get you off the couch and moving. And while I’d never share Fitbit data with friends, I do enjoy a friendly competition with my wife. The key is to make sharing highly selective, customizable, and easy to switch on and off.

Action item: While financial information is not as readily shareable as fitness data, Venmo has proven that it has potential. The youthful set who’ve taken to using Venmo (see the Venmo line), enjoy sharing payment activity, but only without revealing the actual dollar amount, and allowing for maximum snark in the share. And there are also plenty of serious use-cases for sharing financial data, such as employees with their employers, kids with their parents, etc. Card issuers should add optional sharing to all card-management platforms.

——–

Screenshot: TD Bank landing page (22 April 20015, link)

—————–

Picture Credit: TD Bank has been giving away Fitbit Flex trackers to new checking account customers (screenshot above). A reader from MaximizingMoney.com contributed this upper-right photo of TD signage in the NYC subway.

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Credit Karma Now Serves Americans with Thin Credit Files

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 22, 2015
Categories: Credit Karma, Credit Reporting

In the U.S., 15 million adults have no credit score because they are new to the country or have a short financial history. While such “thin-file” credit customers could create a Credit Karma account, they could do little else on the platform until recently.

This week, the free credit-report service is rolling out its Thin File customer experience to help these customers take action to create good credit.

The San Francisco-based company will enable thin-file consumers to:

Review the information in their credit profile
Learn how to build their credit history
View recommendations for credit cards and loans that might help build credit

Additionally, they have access to Credit Karma’s tools such as an interest rate calculator and personal spending tracker.

Credit Karma debuted at FinovateSpring 2008, the first Bay Area Finovate conference. It has since built out its platform with multiple tools, offers from partners, and a PFM offering.

Serving more than 21 million users, Credit Karma has raised $195 million in financing and was valued at $1 billion after its September 2014 funding round of $75 million.

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LendKey to Power Online Student Lending at Navy Federal Credit Union

By David Penn Posted on April 22, 2015
Categories: LendKey

Navy Federal Credit Union, the largest credit union in the world, is making a splash in the student-loan market with news that its online student lending program will be powered by LendKey.

Aaron Aggerwal, assistant vice president of education lending at Navy Federal, says, “We’re excited to provide students, and their families, the funding they need for school when federal loans, grants, and scholarships are not enough.”

“LendKey’s customizable platform was the right solution for our members and the implementation process ran very smoothly,” he adds.

Using LendKey’s technology, Navy Federal CU will provide both consolidation and private student loans to its members. Navy Federal CU has over $64 billion in assets and more than 5 million members. The institution serves active duty civilian and contractor personnel and their families working with the Department of Defense and Coast Guard.

LendKey has more than 300 community banks and credit unions using the platform, providing loans to more than 35,000 consumers. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New York, LendKey announced earlier this month a commitment of up to $1 billion from MidCap Financial to purchase students’ consolidation loans originated on the LendKey platform. The company inked a deal with TrueCar to integrate auto buying and lending in March, and another student lending partnership, with the Western Independent Bankers, in September. Vince Passione is founder and CEO.

LendKey is scheduled to make its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose next month. To see them live on stage, pick up your tickets to our spring conference today.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on April 22, 2015
Categories: Bazaarvoice, Betterment, blooom, Credit Karma, D3 Banking, Fiserv, FutureAdvisor, InComm, LendKey, Linkable Networks, Motif Investing, Quantopian, Stocktwits, Tradier, Trustev, TSYS, Wallaby Financial, Wealthfront

On Finovate.com

FinDEVr 2015 San Francisco: We’re Bringing Builders Back

LendKey to Power Online Student Lending at Navy Federal Credit Union. See LendKey at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose in May

Credit Karma Now Serves Americans with Thin Credit Files

Around the web

D3 Banking taps Jeffrey Hale as chief business development officer.

Business & Leadership features “Irish success story” Trustev and its CEO and co-founder, Pat Phelan.

MarketWatch looks at Betterment, Blooom, FutureAdvisor, Motif Investing, and Wealthfront in its column on the “battle” between human and robo-advisers.

Northwest Community Credit Union to deploy Portico from Fiserv.

Wallaby Financial launches Wallaby for Apple Watch.

TSYS enables full-service payment-processing for American Express OptBlue program.

Bazaarvoice hires Sara Spivey as its new chief marketing officer.

WSJ mentions StockTwits’ role in social media for investing.

Fierce Finance IT: Tradier’s API platform sees explosion of firms looking to build robo-advisers.

Linkable Networks launches Omnyverse affiliate network with digital offers, promotions and incentives.

InComm enables Budget Mobile to offer Airfair Lifeline Reload services through 90,000 retail stores.

StockTwits collaborates with Quantopian.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek: Part 5

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 21, 2015
Categories: DarcMatter, Digital Insight, Emailage, FinovateSpring 2015, FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek, Hedgeable, Moven, RAGE, Shoeboxed

FinovateSpring’s 72 fintech innovators have 3 weeks left to perfect their live demos before debuting their new technology on stage 12/13 May in San Jose, Calif. That means there’s still some time left for you to pick up a ticket and take a closer look at the types of technology you’ll see demonstrated live at San Jose’s City National Civic.

Today, we’re featuring seven companies:

Check out the previous installments of our Sneak Peek series below. And stayed tuned for Part 6 on Thursday:

DarcMatter is an online platform solving inefficiencies in the alternative-investments market through enhanced capital connectivity, data-driven investing, and advanced syndication.

Features:

Institutional-level access to prescreened and compliant alternative investments
Issuers are empowered to raise capital on their own
Over $100 billion of investor capital

Why it’s great
DarcMatter provides an infrastructure for the alternatives market and enhances the capital process from start to finish.

Presenters

Sang Lee, CEO & Founder
Formerly an investment banker in the energy field at WestLB and BNP Paribas, Lee has accrued a wealth of expertise in financial regulation, business, and financial structuring.
LinkedIn

Stan Solodkyy, CTO
Solodkyy has experience from integration of financial institutions with the SWIFT network to providing software consultancy to world-leading brands.
LinkedIn

Digital Insight will illustrate the use of beacons within its mobile banking app, creating a more personal, relevant, and contextual experience based on a user’s location.

Features:

Personalizes a user’s experience in banking branches
Provides financial institutions relevant, timely information to engage with users more effectively

Why it’s great
Digital Insight is designing more personal, relevant, and contextual experiences based on knowing a user’s location.

Presenters

Marshall Yuan, Senior Product Manager, DI Labs
Yuan is senior product manager at DI Labs where he leads experimentation in new solutions to help financial institutions engage and delight their end users.
LinkedIn

Ronald Leung, Engineering Lead, DI Labs
Leung is the engineering lead at DI Labs where he has been working with financial institutions to build innovative solutions and user experiences.
LinkedIn

Emailage uses email as a key data-element for detecting fraud trends across industries and regions. Emailage’s machine-learning algorithms detect fraud in real time.

Features:

Analyze any email address on any web site
90% confirmed fraud has not been previously detected
Real-time fraud score based on current trends

Why it’s great
No sensitive, transactional data is ever shared or stored by Emailage. It requires only an email address to provide an extremely precise risk assessment.

Presenter

Amador Testa, Chief Product Officer
Testa is Emailage’s CPO and has 15 years experience in financial fraud prevention. Prior to Emailage, Amador was a leader for AMEX and Citigroup.
LinkedIn

Hedgeable is a robo-adviser on steroids.

Features:

Advanced portfolio customization and sophistication
Downside risk protection
Access to alternatives

Why it’s great
First generation robo-advisers are cookie-cutter, like Altavista; Hedgeable is innovating like Google.

Presenters

Matthew Kane, Co-founder & Chief Ninja
Kane is co-founder and CTO of Hedgeable where he leads all product, design, UI/UX, development, and strategy initiatives.
LinkedIn

Michael Kane, Co-founder & Head Sensei
Kane is co-founder and CEO of Hedgeable where he leads all investment-management and business-development duties. Previously at Bridgewater Associates.
LinkedIn

Moven is a disruptive digital experience and debit card designed to provide real-time feedback so users can build better money habits and save more.

Features:

Frictionless account onboarding with incremental prospecting
A real-time financial wellness experience driving customer engagement
A global, agile, and scalable platform for international banks

Why it’s great
Moven has created real-time, contextualized notifications to gamify savings and create a behaviorally driven experience that goes beyond traditional goal-based paradigms.

Presenters

Brett King, CEO, Founder
King is an Amazon best-selling author, well-known industry commentator, host of the BREAKING BANK$ radio show and founder of revolutionary mobile-based banking service Moven.
LinkedIn

Alex Sion, President, Co-founder
Sion is President of Moven and an adviser on digital strategy and disruption to global financial leaders such as HSBC, Citi, and Barclays.
LinkedIn

RAGE Frameworks’ LiveCredit is a flexible, scalable origination and servicing solution that enables the design and launch of any financing product, end-to-end, from origination to underwriting to booking and service.

Features:

Dynamic Product Configurator enables new products without custom coding
Scalable origination and servicing
Enables flexible financing, accounting and compliance

Why it’s great
Its framework-based approach empowers unprecedented flexibility and market-leading, time-to-market deployment.

Presenters

Nick Adams, Vice President, Risk Solutions
Adams runs business development for LiveCredit and is a 10+ year veteran of startups and multinational companies. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and an MBA in finance from Northeastern.
LinkedIn

Aashish Mehta, SVP, Business Banking Solutions
Mehta is responsible for all LiveCredit business operations. He sits on the management team and has been with RAGE for nearly 10 years.
LinkedIn

Shoeboxed is launching the next banking standard. The pioneers in email and mobile receipt-capture now open the door to receipt data for financial institutions.

Features:

Automated receipt-capture for consumers and small businesses
Item-level extraction of purchase details
Turnkey implementation for financial institutions

Why it’s great
Receipt-capture is becoming a standard banking feature, giving access to previously unattainable data.

Presenters

Tobi Walter, COO, Co-founder
An investment banker-turned-entrepreneur, COO Walter oversees the business and corporate development efforts of Shoeboxed.
LinkedIn

Alex Anderson, Business Development Manager
Anderson oversees the planning and implementation of strategic banking and accounting partnerships.
LinkedIn

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Tuesday Tactics: Let Users Schedule their Online Account Opening

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 21, 2015
Categories: Uncategorized

One of the biggest opportunities in digital banking today is closing the account-opening gap. The gap is the close-rate online (generally well below 50%) compared with the much-higher percentage at the new-accounts desk in a bank branch (see note 1).

There are hundreds of ways to improve digital account opening (see previous posts), but I stumbled across a new one this week. WiseBanyan, a new robo-advisor I’m quite impressed with, sent me a reminder to use my invite before it expired (see first screenshot below).

The email provides two choices (three if you count “delete”): Open My Account or Extend My Invite. Naturally, as a life-long procrastinator, I chose “extend.” That’s when WiseBanyan unleashed today’s Tuesday Tip. I was delivered to a simple webpage (second screenshot) offering a simple way to add the task to my calendar. Procrastination foiled! (We’ll see next week).

————

Screenshots:
1. Email from WiseBanyan (19 April 2015)

2. WiseBanyan “extend my invite” landing page

—–
Note:
1. I know we are comparing pineapples and peanut butter; of course, more people abandon online account opening (or its ecommerce counterpart, the shopping cart). It’s easy to “kick the tires” online by starting an application with no intent on finishing it. But few people would make a trip to a branch and sit down with a branch staffer unless they were serious about opening an account.

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HedgeCoVest Takes Top Honors at 2015 Benzinga Fintech Awards

By David Penn Posted on April 21, 2015
Categories: Betterment, iBillionaire, iQuantifi, LikeFolio, Market Prophit, Motif Investing, Personal Capital, Thinknum, TipRanks, Trunomi

The votes are in! HedgeCoVest is the winner of the Overall category at the 2015 Benzinga Fintech Awards.

HedgeCoVest earned its first-place award at the Benzinga Fintech Awards Gala Event held earlier this month in New York City. The company picked up 5 million ad impressions and a one-year license to the Benzinga Pro Real-Time News & Data feed. Second- and third-place prizes were also awarded.

In attendance at the event were more than 50 CEOs, more than 100 fintech companies, about 20 venture capital firms, 10 major U.S. retail brokerages, and four fintech accelerators, as well as a host of press and media.

HedgeCoVest also performed well in individual categories, winning the Alternative Investment category, and earning runner-up recognition in the Most Disruptive category. Finovate alums taking home individual awards are listed below. See a full list of all winners, runners-up, and finalists.

Betterment: winner: Robo Advisor Tools, Founder of the Year (Jon Stein); runner-up: “A Penny Saved, A Penny Earned”

iBillionaire: finalist: Idea Generation Creating Proprietary Data

iQuantifi: finalist: Robo Advisor Tools, “A Penny Saved, A Penny Earned,” Idea Generation Strategy

LikeFolio: winner: Idea Generation Research Platforms & Tools

Market Prophit: runner-up: Idea Generation Creating Proprietary Data

Motif Investing: winner: Most Disruptive; finalist: Founder of the Year (Hardeep Walia), Alternative Investment

Personal Capital: runner-up: Idea Generation Strategy; finalist: “A Penny Saved, A Penny Earned”

Thinknum: finalist: Best Use of the Crowd, Most Promising Startup

TipRanks: winner: Idea Generation Trade Recommendations

Trunomi:. finalist: Best Enterprise Solution

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on April 21, 2015
Categories: Authentify, Backbase, Cachet Financial Solutions, Currency Cloud, Emida, EZBOB, Five Degrees, HedgeCoVest, Kony Solutions, Motif Investing, OneID, PayNearMe, Sekur.me, Trulioo, Xero

On Finovate.com

Check out FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek: Part 5

HedgeCoVest Wins Top Honors at 2015 Benzinga Fintech Awards

Around the web

oneID launches its simple, free solution to secure personal information online across all devices.

Born2Invest talks about “thematic investing” in its review of Motif Investing.

Currency Cloud opens offices in New York, kicking off its U.S. expansion.

Select Mobile Money from Cachet Financial Solutions now supports Apple Watch.

Sberbank launches new digital platform based on technology from Backbase.

Five Degrees named winner of Dutch FinTech Awards in Banking & IT category.

PYMNTS looks at Ezbob’s role in SMB lending in the United Kingdom.

PayNearMe enables customers of LA Covered to pay their monthly premiums in cash.

Critical Mass radio show interviews Sekur.me CEO Jack Bicer.

Trulioo wins Europe’s 2015 Digital Identity Innovation Award. Watch Trulioo demo live at FinovateSpring.

NAB links core API technology to Xero’s accounting cloud ecosystems, connecting client’s online bank to their Xero account.

Authentify enables E-Transfer Technologies to protect currency trading accounts with mobile multifactor authentication.

Forbes: Kony and Soasta partner to close the mobile development and monitoring loop.

Mobile Commerce News features Emida.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Six Alt-Lending Unicorns Worth Combined $15 Billion: Lending Club, Prosper, On Deck, Sofi, Avant, Funding Circle

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 20, 2015
Categories: Crowdfunding, Loans & Credit, P2P Lending

Payments companies, especially mobile, have dominated the fintech news cycle for much of the past four years. But as those well-funded payments companies vie to become global standards, attention has turned to the lending arena. At least six alt-lending startups (not including China) have now passed the billion-dollar valuation mark:

1. LendingClub: $7.2 billion (public: LC)

The company launched as one of the original Facebook desktop apps in May 2007 and made its industry debut at the first Finovate in September 2007. Its December 2014 IPO briefly valued the company at $9 billion, the largest-ever IPO for a fintech startup.

2. Prosper: $1.9 billion (valuation from $165 million round announced last week)

The company was the second person-to-person lender in the world (after the U.K.’s Zopa) and the first in the United States, launching in Feb. 2006. It also made its industry debut at the first Finovate in 2007. It was much larger than Lending Club during its first few years; however, high default rates from its pure auction model scared away early investors. But the company retooled its underwriting and has become the third largest consumer P2P marketplace in the USA (and the world outside China).

3. On Deck Capital: $1.5 billion (public: ONDK)

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) were hit hard in the 2008 recession with lower profits combined with a massive dry spell in traditional bank credit. So, naturally, entrepreneurs moved in and picked up the slack. On Deck was one of the first on the scene, making its Finovate debut in 2009. Originally, On Deck was dipping its toes into the direct lending space as a proof of concept for its small-business lending platform it hoped to sell to banks. But it turns out they were in the right place at the right time, and, after a December IPO, On Deck is a successful public lender valued at $1.5 billion.

4. Sofi: $1.3 billion (based on Goldman Sachs fundraising efforts for the Feb 2015 round; however, recent press reports say the company is looking to raise $500 million in a 2015 IPO valuing it at $3.5 billion)

With $700 million in loans originated in Q1 2015, Sofi just passed Prosper to become #2 in the United States—and in the world, outside of China. The company initially focused on refinancing student loans for graduates of elite universities, but it has diversified into other types of consumer and SMB lending.

5. Avant: $1+ billion. Forbes recently estimated its value at $875 million; we think that’s low based on the $1.4 billion, including $350 million in equity, that startup has raised.

Like On Deck, Avant is targeting a segment abandoned by traditional lenders in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. But Avant’s specialty is sub-prime borrowers, a segment with higher margins in good times, but risky bets in downturns.

6. Funding Circle: $1 billion, based on an estimate in The Telegraph this month

The only non-U.S. company on the list is London’s Funding Circle (although Wonga is probably still close, and has been above $1 billion in the past). Funding Circle, which specializes in SMB marketplace lending, was founded in 2010 and moved into the U.S. market last year with the acquisition of Endurance Lending.

———–

Also in the running: Finovate alums Kabbage—meet them at FinovateSpring next month, along with a handful of other promising newcomers; CAN Capital; Kreditech; and Wonga, which was valued well above $1 billion in 2012, but has had a falling out with U.K. regulators. Several peer-to-peer lenders in China are believed to have obtained unicorn status, the biggest being Lufax, which was said to be valued at almost $10 billion by the Wall Street Journal last week.

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Global Debt Registry Teams Up with TransUnion to Better Serve Debt Industry

By David Penn Posted on April 20, 2015
Categories: Global Debt Registry

In the race to provide better information to all the different parties in the debt-ownership and -collections industry, Global Debt Registry has just hitched itself to a rocket.

Courtesy of a new partnership, TransUnion will begin marketing the services of Global Debt Registry. TransUnion is a major provider of information for collections departments at large banks and other financial institutions, and is ranked among the top three credit bureaus in the world.

“The ability to team up with GDR to offer our clients GDR tools to manage account information post charge-off—and to support validation of a given debt—is a natural extension to our core services offered to financial institutions, debt collectors, and consumers,” said Peter Ghiselli, vice president in TransUnion’s specialized risk business unit.

Above: Global Debt Registry Chief Commercial Officer Charles Moore demonstrated his company’s technology at FinovateFall 2014 in New York.

Mark Parsells, Chairman and CEO of Global Debt Registry, pointed to TransUnion’s leadership role in providing data and information to the collections community. “GDR and TransUnion’s mutual customers will benefit from our collaboration, which offers a broader market of debt buyers, collectors and financial institutions to reduce costs and risks, improve transparency and efficiencies to the debt-ownership industry.”

Founded in 1968, TransUnion serves more than 45,000 businesses, and more than 500 million consumers in more than 30 countries around the world. The company has been active in the direct-to-consumer market since 20o2, followings its acquisition of TrueCredit in 2002.

Global Debt Registry is a clearinghouse for the debt industry, giving debt owners, collection agents, financial institutions, and consumers a new level of transparency and insight into the “chain of title.” This transparency makes it easier for those working in the industry to accurately identify the true owners of debt for collection purposes. Through a consumer portal, Debt LookUp, Global Debt Registry’s platform can be used, for example, to ensure that repayment on a debt is being made to the correct individual.

Global Debt Registry made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014. The company was founded in 2009, and is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. GDR announced a $7 million Series A round in January. Read our interview with CEO Parsells from the beginning of the year.

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Mint Bills Brings Mobile BillPay to One Million Customers of Questar Gas

By David Penn Posted on April 20, 2015
Categories: Mint Bills

Who knew one of the beneficiaries of the energy boom in the Mountain West would be Mint Bills?

Intuit’s Mint Bills today announced a partnership with natural gas utility Questar Gas that will provide online and mobile billpay services to almost one million customers in Idaho, Montana, and Utah.

Brad Markus, general manager for customer service at Questar Gas, said that while providing a wide variety of payment options was a priority for his customers, pedigree was also important. “Mint Bills was the perfect partner for us. We not only liked the mobile bill pay product, but also that it’s a part of Intuit, a trusted brand,” he said.

Utility companies have been an area of focus for Mint Bills for years. In addition to its new partnership with Questar Gas, Mint Bills is working with two other players in the natural gas world, UGI Utilities and New Jersey Natural Gas, providing multichannel billpay for more than two million households combined.

Steve Schultz, general manager of biller services for Mint Bills, said, “Given the increasing adoption of mobile devices, we’re seeing more natural gas utilities starting to offer electronic payment options for their customers.” Schultz added that the cost-effectiveness of Mint Bills was also a big factor for utilities companies like Questar, which are looking for mobile payment technology “for little to no cost.”

Mint Bills makes it easy for consumers to manage and pay their bills. The app monitors all connected accounts—savings, checking, credit—and provides configurable alerts to let users know when bills are nearing due dates. Users can sign up online, or download the iOS or Android versions to use the mobile app.

Mint Bills was launched by Intuit late last year, following the company’s acquisition of Check (formerly Pageonce) in May 2014.

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