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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Forbes talks withSimple CEO Josh Reich on how a bank can be a brand you love.
MasterCardprovides payment services for Basware Pay, an automated supply chain finance system. See MasterCard at FinDEVr in San Francisco.
Fenergoannounces expansion into Asia-Pacific region.
Trustev to deploy its anti-fraud technology in RadioShack stores and online.
Courtesy of Nasdaq.com, NerdWallet featuresProsper and Lending Club in its look at the rise of P2P lending.
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.
You know you’re looking at the biggest FinovateFall ever when you’re six posts deep into our Sneak Peek series and we’re still not done.
Before we introduce you to the next batch demoing in New York later this month, here’s a quick guide to those we’ve already covered. Remember, there’s still plenty of time to get your ticket to FinovateFall 2014 and see all this fintech talent yourself.
This week, our six innovators are MasterCard, Matchi, Misys, Silanis, Sr. Pago, and WingCash. Enjoy!
MasterCard’sPay with Rewards gives MasterCard cardholders the ability to redeem their rewards for purchases at millions of eligible MasterCard locations worldwide.
Features:
Differentiate rewards programs at the Point of Interaction
Accepted at millions of locations with no changes to the POS
Provides cardholder flexibility and choice
Why it’s great:
MasterCard connects consumers, FIs, merchants, governments, and businesses worldwide, enabling them to use electronic forms of payment, and now … rewards points.
Chris Guiney, VP Product Development, MasterCard Loyalty
Guiney leads a team of professionals dedicated to bringing the power of targeted loyalty services to clients and consumers worldwide. He is the platform owner of the MasterCard Rewards System.
Matchi is a global innovation matchmaking platform that enables innovators to showcase market-ready solutions, and for banks to source these innovations from anywhere in the world.
Features:
All logged innovations are market-ready at least at prototype phase
Offers banks a curated shortlist of solutions aligned to their strategies
Sponsor Banks can connect & collaborate
Why it’s great:
It brings innovators and banks together to drive banking forward and increase ROI for both parties.
Presenters:
Warren Bond, Co-founder
Bond is Co-founder of Luminous and has – as its CEO – steered this firebrand to deliver a number of innovations that contributed to FNB winning the title of most innovative bank in the world in 2012.
Milligan has an extensive background in innovation management within banking, as well as strategy consulting. He is passionate about “bringing new ideas to the discipline of the market.”
Businesses choose eSignLive by Silanis when e-signatures matter. With e-SignLive’s Use Your Own Device capability, banks can now use the customer’s smartphone/tablet to capture hand-scripted e-signature.
Features:
Individual and joint remote account opening
No need to visit the branch just to sign – eliminates costly in-branch hardware
Make e-transactions more secure and personal
Why it’s great:
No app, no special hardware. Make on boarding convenient and secure with any smartphone. A remote, personalized digital experience makes your bank easier to work with.
Presenters:
Tommy Petrogiannis, CEO and Co-founder
Petrogiannis co-founded Silanis in 1992. As CEO, he is responsible for strategy, vision, and keeping the company focused on delivering the best possible customer experience.
Witte has been implementing enterprise software for 10+ years. As Senior Technical Consultant, he is involved in many banking deployments, and focused on mobile signing.
Sr. Pago is a payment system providing a debit card, card reader and app, and is revolutionizing the cash-based financial ecosystem upon which 70% of Mexicans rely.
Features:
First time a MasterCard can be replenished with a card reader
Enables payments and spending without a bank account
Processes magnetic strip and chip-based cards
Why it’s great:
Sr. Pago is revolutionizing the informal cash-based financial ecosystem in Mexico.
Presenter:
Pablo Gonzalez Vargas, Co-founder and CEO
Prior to Sr. Pago, Vargas founded a successful marketing agency, IF Marketing Atelier. He also founded EXA Radio and TV, one of the most important media chains for youth in Latin America.
WingCashsays Cash is not weight, it’s wings. Cash securely delivered by WingCash to your wallet in the cloud for your convenience anytime, anywhere.
Features:
Safely and securely stored in the cloud
Conveniently accessible by you anytime, anywhere
Cash you hold, you control, and only you spend
Why it’s great:
Because life is better with cash, WingCash securely delivers cash to your cloud-based wallet anytime, anywhere. Hold on to cash, it is our future.
Presenter:
Bradley Wilkes, Founder & President/CEO
Wilkes is the Founder of WingCash, He also founded ProPay, a subsidiary of Total Systems Services (NYSE: TSS). He’s been awarded
6 payment-related patents. He received both an MBA/TM and BS degrees.
Curtis is an accomplished leader in the mobile payment industry. He is a solutions-driven sales professional with 14+ years of experience successfully delivered a wide array of financial solutions.
OnDeck announced today that Jane J. Thompson, former head of Wal-Mart Financial Services, will join the board of directors of OnDeck.
“I have dedicated my career to driving growth for a variety of companies across the financial services industry, with a particular focus on those underserved by traditional options,” Thompson said.
Noah Breslow, OnDeck CEO, added, “Her expertise and leadership will help guide our growth across our marketing, product innovation, risk management, and customer services efforts.”
Thompson currently serves as the CEO of Jane J. Thompson Financial Services LLC, a management-consultant firm. Before serving as president of Financial Services at Wal-Mart, Thompson led the Sears Credit, Sears Home Services, and Sears Online groups within Sears.
Thompson is also director at Navient Corporation, a loan management, loan servicing, and asset recovery firm, VeriFone Systems, and The Fresh Market. An advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Thompson was named Innovator of the Year, and one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance by American Banker Magazine.
Jane J. Thompson’s joining of the OnDeck board comes as the company moves closer to an initial public offering.
How about real-time credit card recommendations right at your fingertips?
Or at least around your wrist – Wallaby Financial announced today that it is introducing Wallaby for Android Wear. Following on the heels of Wallaby’s deployment for Samsung Gear 2, today’s news further establishes Wallaby as a leader in bringing financial services apps to the wearable devices market.
Matthew Goldman, Wallaby Founder and CEO, said that the emphasis on wearables is designed to help give consumers the information and services they want “in the context of their daily lives.” Goldman said, “each successive wearable device launch allows us to further enhance the capabilities we provide instantaneously and conveniently to our customers.”
Wallaby for Android Wear operates on a number of Android devices, including Moto 360 and LG G. The app is free for anyone with a Wallaby account and, when launched, uses geolocation and its own proprietary database of more than 2,000 credit card profiles to help users see and select the best credit card to use in a given transaction.
Wearable technology remains on the cusp of acceptance. Writing in Wednesday’s The New York Times Fashion & Style section, one author suggested referring to wearables not as “wearable tech” but “ugly tech.” At the same time, the Times feature notes the fact that companies like Apple are moving closer and closer to a potential wearable of its own (an “iWatch” for example) suggests that the field could be “on the precipice of change.”
After al, the author says, “if anyone can change the perception of wearables and ugliness, it’s definitely Apple.”
And it is also a definite that Apple won’t be alone. With the Android user base continuing to grow worldwide, opportunities for collaborations between hardware innovators (like Samsung) as well as software innovators (like Wallaby Financial) are likely to remain robust. One of the most interesting things about wearables is how they encourage innovation when it comes to inputs. For example, Wallaby for Android Wear features the ability to use voice commands for certain key functions – a key attribute given the form factor of many, if not most, wearable devices.
Wallaby was founded in 2011, and is headquartered in Pasadena, California. The company was last on the Finovate stage for FinovateSpring last year in San Francisco.
PayPalextends fingerprint authentication to Samsung Note 4 and Gear S.
EverBank partners with FIS to bring PeoplePay to its banking customers.
Forbes.com featuresCheck among three nightmare-reducing money disruptors.
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.
I’m always on the lookout for digital process improvements, from the major to the minor. And this one definitely falls in the latter category. But in my 22 years of banking online, I don’t recall ever being prompted to update my income so that my card issuer could reconsider my line size.
But that’s exactly what I received this morning. At first blush, it almost sounded like a crafty fraud attempt. But Capital One wisely inserted my full name, the last four digits on the account, and promised to handle it in just 60 seconds (see first screenshot), so I’m pretty sure it’s legit. They also reassured me that it won’t require a credit bureau inquiry.
Clicking through the email places the cardholder onto the normal online banking login screen. After logging in, you are sent directly to an account-update page (screenshot 2) to update income and employments status. After completing the two fields, you are thanked and can navigate to other areas or logout (screenshot 3). Total time expended = 87 seconds (Internet times were a little sluggish late afternoon on the West Coast).
Thoughts: This card dates back to 2010, so it’s possible they are on a four-year cycle to update income information; however, I just sent my W2 to Capital One two days ago for a mortgage refinance. So I have to believe this email was triggered by that; if so, it demonstrates solid CRM integration, although it seems curious that the bank wouldn’t just pull my income directly from the mortgage app.
All in all it was a painless experience, and I look forward to seeing whether the bank uses it to alter my credit line.
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Capital One email asking for an income update (2 Sep 2014)
Over two days at UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, FinDEVr will provide developers, architects, engineers, and other builders with a unique opportunity to meet and network with some of the biggest names in fintech software development.
Our FinDEVr Preview has already introduced you to some of these companies, innovators like Yodlee Interactive and TD Ameritrade Institutional. Today, we introduce you to one more: Visa and its Developers program.
Like many companies known primarily for their vast experience as a financial services provider, Visa is also a major innovator when it comes to technological innovations for financial institutions and their customers.
Remember, early bird pricing for FinDEVr ends next week. Lock in your savings and get your tickets today.
The Visa Developers program provides a broad array of tools, services, and resources from both Visa and its subsidiary brands to help developers create seamless, multi-channel payment solutions.
Keynote: The Future of Commerce
Learn how Visa is supporting the creation of new, innovative commerce solutions by enabling developers, mobile network operators, device and platform operators to easily connect to Visa’s network through new open payment APIs and SDKs.
Workshops
1) Visa Checkout API-less Web Integration
Implement your own instance of Visa Checkout on a website and get started with the Sandbox, adding requirement elements to a cart page, receiving/decrypting a payload, and updating with a pixel. Learn how simple it is to implement Visa Checkout on a website without making a single API call.
2) Visa Checkout Android SDK Integration
In this session we’ll show you how to add Visa Checkout support to your app using our Android SDK. Learn how easy it is to configure your app for Visa Checkout, as well as get a payload and perform an update via our API.
3) Visa Checkout Provisioning Integration for Financial Institutions
Learn how to implement the Visa Checkout Provisioning interface on your site to streamline the provisioning of Visa Checkout accounts for your customers. We’re discussing light and heavy integration options. See how simple it is to help your customers create Visa Checkout accounts on your site.
Presenters
Raj Sundaresan, SVP, Digital & Mobile Products
Michael Blanton, Senior Director, Visa Digital Integration
Alan Johnson, Senior Director, Digital Developed Markets
Mark Legere, Senior Integration Architect, Visa Digital
Dipti Bele, Integration Architect, Visa Digital
Join us next week for our FinDEVr Preview featuring MasterCard Developer Zone. To read our earlier previews, check out our introductions to Yodlee Interactive and TD Ameritrade Institutional.
From iCloud to Home Depot, is anybody else looking for some good news when it comes to digital security?
Fortunately, BioCatch – who will be making its FinovateFall 2014 debut later this month – is punching through the “Who Got Hacked?” gloom with news that its mobile security technology is now out of beta.
BioCatch CEO Benny Rosenbaum highlighted two features he thinks will help separate BioCatch Mobile from the rest of the multi-authenticating pack. “What makes our solution so unique is the fact that it’s completely transparent, works behind the scenes, and yet is far more secure than traditional two-factor authentication, ” he said.
How so? BioCatch specializes in cognitive biometrics. Cognitive biometrics provides for a greater range of inputs than many multi-factor authentication schemes. For example, BioCatch not only creates a unique signature based on physical factors such as left or right-handedness, but also factors in device interaction patterns, geolocation, and more.
The goal is to help identify many of the more common security breaches experienced by FIs and their customs. These include account takeover and malware threats, as well as identifying the presence of “jailbroken” devices. The trick, said Rosenbaum, is to allow banks to “add new functionality without admitting new fraud or creating new friction.”
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, BioCatch was recognized last December by Aite Group as an “emerging player in biometric authentication.” And Gartner called BioCatch a “Cool Vendor in Security” as recently as April 2013. The company announced that it had raised $10 million in new funding in June, courtesy of investments from Blumberg Capital and OurCrowd, as well as existing investors.
Banking and payment technologies giant, FIS, announced today it has signed an agreement to acquire payment technology company, Clear2Pay for $493 million (€375 million).
Once the acquisition is complete, FIS will augment its global payment services with Clear2Pay’s technology. The Fortune 500 financial services provider anticipates that the new technology will give its larger customers a set of modern payments solutions.
Here are some quick facts on the two parties:
FIS
Founded 1968
Went public in 2001
Headquartered in Jacksonville, FL
39,000 employees
Serves 14,000+ institutions in 110+ countries
Clear2Pay
Founded 2001
Privately held company. Has raised $127 million
Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium
1,200 employees
Counts 40 of the 50 largest global financial institutions as clients
The pending acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval and contractual closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth quarter.
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.
After resting up over the weekend, we hope you’re ready to take a look at six more companies that will demo their newest fintech creation in New York City at FinovateFall this September 23 and 24.
Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve seen:
Business Centric Services Group (BCSG) is a cloud- services brokerage offering business apps for small businesses via FIs with a platform reaching over 4 million SMBs worldwide.
Features:
Modularized platform that allows FIs to tailor their offering
24×7 support for SMBs on all apps
Client support: from proposition design, to go-to-market strategy, to ongoing delivery
Why it’s great:
Its platform will continue to evolve with the market. Whatever it does, it will always start with the small business need.
Presenters:
1) John Davis, Managing Director
Prior to BCSG Davis spent 10 years at Barclays where he was Marketing and Product Director for Barclays Business, and also Managing Director of Clearlybusiness.
Diebold’s evolution of Relationship Banking lowers the costs of self-service channels in the branch, combined with a seamless extension of tablet-based Sales, Servicing and Account Opening
Features:
Advanced teller transactions moved to self-service terminals
Personalized Account Opening, Sales & Service via Tablet
Shared customer history and product promotion across channels
Why it’s great:
Diebold furnishes the ability to effectively identify, engage, service and anticipate the needs of customers across your self-service and assisted channels will differentiate your brand.
Presenters:
1) Shelly Ewing, New Business and Solution Incubation for Diebold
2) Chris Siemasko, SVP Product Solutions for Zenmonics
Larky delivers engagement and loyalty through a unique platform that provides point-of-sale discounts at local and national merchants and magically reminds users of offers at the right time and place.
Features:
Location-triggered alerts when a discount is near
Tracks 2,000+ memberships. Users never miss an offer they deserve (including yours!)
White-labeled platform seamlessly ties in with your brand
Presenter:
Andrew Bank, Co-Founder
Successful start-up entrepreneur with substantial experience identifying and developing products, services, and business relationships with high ROI. Passion for creating compelling new solutions.
MaxMyInterest by Six Trees Capital LLC is an intelligent cash-management solution that helps investors earn up to 0.80% more on FDIC-insured bank deposits, rebalancing funds automatically as rates change.
Features:
Earn up to 0.80% more on cash without changing your checking account
Get the best interest rates, automatically, even as rates change
Fund
s move to and from checking as needed
Why it’s great:
Max brings efficiency and transparency to the $12 trillion market for cash, making it easy for investors to securely and effortlessly increase the yield on the cash portion of their portfolios.
Presenters:
1) Gary Zimmerman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Zimmerman is an investor and entrepreneur, focused on financial technology. Prior to founding MaxMyInterest, he was an investment banker at Citigroup. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics.
Wu leads the technology development team and is an expert in interface design. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a degree in Computer Engineering.
Sonavation empowers trust through ultrasound technology by creating more secure environments in which to access sensitive financial data, conduct non-cash transactions and offer peace of mind.
Features:
Impenetrable security using ultrasound technology and cloud-based Identity-as-a-service infrastructure
Protection of sensitive banking information
ATM, credit and debit card protection
Why it’s great:
Sonavation is on a mission to replace passwords and PINs with highly secure biometric solutions, leveraging the power of ultrasound to deliver piece of mind.
Presenter:
Bob Stewart, Chief Operating Officer Stewart is the Chief Operating Officer at Sonavation, currently focused on delivering the convergence of physical and cyber security.
TickSmith has built the first commercial Big Data platform for financial data.
Features:
Powerful and scalable Big Data technology and analytics
Management of all types of financial data
Solve compliance, reporting, analytics and distribution problems on huge data sets
Why it’s great:
TickSmith provides out-of-the-box, previously unavailable possibilities to exploit financial big data.
Presenters:
1) Francis Wenzel, CEO
Seasoned financial data and technology executive and entrepreneur with 28 years of experience. LinkedIn
2) David David Côté, CIO
Entrepreneur, consultant and IT Architect with 17 years of experience developing, architecting, deploying and running technology solutions and infrastructure for banks, travel and IT companies. LinkedIn
Check back this Thursday to see another six companies that will demo at FinovateFall 2014.
I’m just back from delivering my son to his first year of college. It was our second go-round, so most of the process was familiar. But one noticeable difference: No financial institutions on campus were seen signing up new student checking accounts. While it may just be the policy on this particular campus, selling checking accounts to college freshman is a dying practice (note 1).
In a digital banking world, there is little reason for an 18-year old to start a new bank account at a financial institution near their college. In fact, it might even be a poor choice. What’s the most important feature of a student bank account? No, it’s not ATMs, low fees or even a killer mobile-app. While those are desirable, the key feature, at least for kids still supported from home, is integration with their parents’ account for funds transfers and money management.
And the best way to get seamless integration is to open a companion account at the same bank/CU as mom and/or dad. So instead of sponsoring a booth on campus to pick up a bunch of low-dollar, money-losing, student checking accounts, FIs should concentrate on getting all their customers’ kids banking needs set up prior to college (for example, see F&M Bank teen banking account below). Then when you know you have a high-school senior on your books, help the family with the MUCH, MUCH bigger issue, financing those four years of advanced learning.
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F&M Bank’s Varsity Checking is geared towards teens aged 12 to 17 (link) Note: The bank offers a downloadable financial education guide
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Note: 1. I’m using the term “checking” account loosely here. Really, all most kids need is a debit card which does not allow overdrafting. Though, in the USA, the ability to write the occasional paper check is still a nice feature. 2. Varsity Debit card pictured is part of the Varsity Banking student package account from Farmers & Merchants Bank in California.
Cachet Financial Solutions will deploy its Select Business RDC merchant solution for leading regional bank.
