January 2014 - Page 5 of 6

FinovateEurope 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 1

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 9, 2014
Categories: CurrencyTransfer, Fastacash, FinovateEurope 2014, Luminous, Matchi, Tink, Toshl

FinovateEurope is almost a month away, and we’re well into preparing for the show, to be held in London on February 11 and 12 at the historic Old Billingsgate Market Hall.

Before we all gather around the demo stage, we wanted to give you a preview of what to expect. Below are the first six companies in our sneak peek series. Stay tuned for more!

CurrencyTransfer.com enables foreign exchange companies

to compete for your business transfers.

Features:

Compare low-cost currency quotes, and book trades in one independent venue
100% cost transparency, displaying side-by-side ‘sell’ and ‘market’ quotes
Post trade analysis; no more paper trails

Why it’s great:

Access foreign-exchange quotes from all your providers in one place. Execute your business trades at the best price at the click of a button.

Daniel Abrahams

Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at CurrencyTransfer.com. Half Israeli, Daniel divides his time between offices in London and Tel Aviv. Mentor at Startup ABC & Personal Finance blogger.
LinkedIn

Stevan Litobac

Co-Founder and Head of Product at CurrencyTransfer. Stevan has advised a number of early stage startups. Loves making things.

fastacash transfers value through social networks globally.

Features:

Addresses intersection of payments, social and mobile
Transfer monetary value and content across any social or messaging platform
Technology easily customized and embedded into partners’ solutions

Why it’s great:
Enables transfer of money, airtime, coupons and any other value across any social network or messaging platform.

Vince Tallent
Vince has extensive experience in the TMT industry with a global focus on mobile and payments.
LinkedIn

Gilberto Arredondo

Throughout his career, Gilberto has been involved with new technologies and innovation by driving commercial and operational activities for telecommunications companies.
LinkedIn

Jack Henry & Associates & Luminous helps banks solve problems. It’s the ultimate financial innovations company with visionary products that are breakthroughs in sheer simplicity.

Features:

Virtual safety-deposit box
Banking customers can upload, sort and store personal and business documents
Customers can automatically save and back up the latest version of important documents

Why it’s great:
Customers can easily bank online with important documents automatically filed after just one click

Andrew Teversham

As Chief Technology Officer for Luminous, Andrew heads up the development and implementation teams at Luminous and has gained extensive experience with SAP implementations over a number of years.
LinkedIn

Phillip Wood

Phillip is a business development leader with 17 years’ experience in direct sales, business development and strategy in B2C and B2B across EMEA.

Matchi is an innovation-matchmaking platform for banks and innovators.

Features:

Unprecedented collaboration opportunities for banks
Marketing platform for innovators to showcase their latest innovations to banks
A go-to-destination for market-ready, banking innovations online

Why it’s great:
It’s an innovation-matchmaking site for banks and innovators globally.

Warren Bond

Warren Bond, CEO of Matchi, is constantly looking for new ideas and ways to drive innovation and change in the banking industry.
LinkedIn

Gerrit Hoekstra

Gerrit Hoekstra, CTO of Matchi, has been delivering embedded mobile and strategic enterprise-grade, big-data solutions for more than 25 years and is passionate about innovative technologies at all levels.
LinkedIn

Tink is an innovative personal finance-management app which allows users to better understand how their money is spent.

Features:

Making personal finance effortless
Consume data in a personalized feed
Insights into your personal finance

Why it’s great:
Makes personal finance fun, beautiful and convenient for the first time!

Daniel Kjellén, CEO and Founder
LinkedIn

Fredrik Hedberg, CTO and Founder

Toshl Finance Making finance fun. Helping people shake their finance-management indifference.

Features:

Funtastic finance management UI
Fully featured apps on phones, the desktop and everything in between
Available worldwide

Why it’s great: Making finance fun.

Matic Bitenc

CEO, background in UX, international relations.

Miha Hribar

CTO, co-created numerous high-profile IT projects.
LinkedIn

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CAN Capital Raises $33 Million from Meritech Capital, Accel Partners

By David Penn Posted on January 9, 2014
Categories: CAN Capital

CAN Capital has secured $33 million in funding from Meritech Capital Partners, Accel Partners, Ribbit Capital, and QED Investors.

This latest funding-round raises CAN Capital’s total to $63 million, which includes $30 million in funding raised by Accel Partners in 2012.

Almost one month ago to the day, Capital Access Network announced its rebranding as CAN Capital. Chief Marketing Officer James Mendelsohn said that the rebranding was an effort to better “resonate with small business owners” as well as speak to “potential lending partners, and employees.”

By that measure, today’s news is the first indication that the rebranding is already paying off. CAN Capital CEO Daniel DeMeo said that the funding will allow the company to “further enhance our product offerings to continue meeting our customers’ needs.”

CAN Capital provides working capital to SMEs. The company uses its proprietary risk models and data from daily business performance to provide funds from $2,500 to $250,000.

A few additional metrics for CAN Capital which:

has provided SMBs with access to $3.6 billion in capital
operates a $460 million line of credit
has supported more than 120,000 small business financial transactions
serves businesses in more than 650 industries
has enabled 75% of CAN Capital customers to renew funding
grew revenues by 49% from 2009 though 2012
grew its employee base by 30% over last three years

CAN Capital competes in the small business capital-access space with companies like Kabbage, Lending Club, On Deck Capital and, most recently, PayPal. All are Finovate alumni. CAN Capital was among a number of alternative lenders featured in a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal this week.

CAN Capital demoed its Mobile Funding tablet technology for financial sales reps at FinovateFall in 2013. See the company’s presentation here.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 9, 2014

By David Penn Posted on January 9, 2014
Categories: CAN Capital, Kabbage, LendUp, Lighter Capital, Mortgage Harmony, Moven, Ping Identity, Xero

Gartner’s Web Access Management Marketscope Report gives Ping Identity a positive rating.

Moven, LendUp, Kabbage, and Xero are featured in a Wall Street Journal article on alternative lenders and social media.

CAN Capital raises $33 million from Meritech Capital, Accel Partners.

PenFed is now offering Mortgage Harmony’s One Click rate reset protection.

Lighter Capital closes 39th financing with Influence Technologies.

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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FinovateEurope 2014 Early-Bird Deadline is this Friday! Register Now to Save!

By Eric Mattson Posted on January 8, 2014
Categories: Uncategorized

FinovateEurope 2014 is barely more than a month away and we are projecting a record crowd will be on hand to witness dozens of the hottest new fintech innovations debut live.

On February 11 & 12, 68 hand-selected innovative companies will take the stage in London to showcase their latest ideas to a projected crowd of more than 900 financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts and entrepreneurs.

If you would like to join the event, the early-bird deadline for the conference is this Friday. If you register before then, you will save £100 and lock in your chance to attend.

In case you’re curious, here is a small sample of the organizations that have already registered for the event.

ABN AMRO
Accel Partners
AIB Bank
ANZ
AXA Bank
Balderton Capital
Bank of Aland
Bank of America
Bank of Ireland
Bank Julius Baer
Barclaycard
Barclays Bank
Be Group

Celent
Credit Suisse
Datamonitor
Ernst & Young
Experian
Fidelity Investments
Financial Times
FT Partners
Goldman Sachs
Google
Index Ventures
ING Direct
Jyske Bank

Life.SREDA
Lloyds
Riyadbank
Skagen Funds
SpareBank
Standard Bank
Swedbank
The Bancorp
Volksbank
Wellington Partners
Microsoft
PostFinance
Rabodirect

If you’re interested in witnessing the future of European fintech, please get your ticket today to guarantee your ability to attend as we’re headed towards a sellout crowd.

We’ll see you in London in February (or Silicon Valley in April)!

FinovateEurope 2014 is sponsored by: The Bancorp, Be Group, Financial Technology Partners, and Life.SREDA.

FinovateEurope 2014 is partners with: Aite Group, BankersHub, Celent, The Financial Services Club, FSIC, Hotwire PR, Level 39, & Visible Banking.

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FinovateEurope 2014 Early-Bird Deadline is this Friday! Register Now to Save!

By Eric Mattson Posted on January 8, 2014
Categories: Uncategorized

FinovateEurope 2014 is barely more than a month away and we are projecting a record crowd will be on hand to witness dozens of the hottest new fintech innovations debut live.

If you would like to join the event, the early-bird deadline for the conference is this Friday. If you register before then, you will save £100 and lock in your chance to attend.

In case you’re curious, here is a small sample of the organizations that have already registered for the event.

ABN AMRO
Accel Partners
AIB Bank
ANZ
AXA Bank
Balderton Capital
Bank of Aland
Bank of America
Bank of Ireland
Bank Julius Baer
Barclaycard
Barclays Bank
Be Group

Celent
Credit Suisse
Datamonitor
Ernst & Young
Experian
Fidelity Investments
Financial Times
FT Partners
Goldman Sachs
Google
Index Ventures
ING Direct
Jyske Bank

Life.SREDA
Lloyds
Riyadbank
Skagen Funds
SpareBank
Standard Bank
Swedbank
The Bancorp
Volksbank
Wellington Partners
Microsoft
PostFinance
Rabodirect

If you’re interested in witnessing the future of European fintech, please get your ticket today to guarantee your ability to attend as we’re headed towards a sellout crowd.

We’ll see you in London in February (or Silicon Valley in April)!

FinovateEurope 2014 is sponsored by: The Bancorp, Be Group, Financial Technology Partners, and Life.SREDA.

FinovateEurope 2014 is partners with: Aite Group, BankersHub, Celent, The Financial Services Club, FSIC, Hotwire PR, Level 39, & Visible Banking.

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Finovate Alumni News — January 8, 2014

By David Penn Posted on January 8, 2014
Categories: CurrencyFair, Doxo, Dynamics, Flint Mobile, LendUp, Manilla, Refundo

Merchant Maverick calls Flint Mobile “the perfect service for low-volume merchants.”

LendUp and Refundo team up to provide short-term loans for underbanked taxpayers waiting for refunds.

Manilla launches Bill Share to make managing family finances easier.

CurrencyFair unveils their new website.

The Seattle Times joins doxo to simplify bill delivery and payment for subscribers.

Dynamics ePlate Visa Card adds 50th rewards partner.

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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Manilla Launches Bill Share to Make Managing Family Finances Easier

By David Penn Posted on January 7, 2014
Categories: Manilla

Sometimes the only thing more important than having a safe place for “your stuff” is a having a way – when you want to – to safely and easily share your stuff.

To that end, Manilla is announcing Bill Share, the latest addition to their free, cloud-based bill-management service.

“Whether you’re co-managing finances with your spouse, overseeing a college student’s accounts, helping elderly parents with their money or sharing information with your account, money management often involves more than one person, and that can become complicated,” said Manilla CEO Jim Schinella. Bill Share provides the sort of “shared finances” functionality that a number of personal finance management apps have begun to feature (such as Yodlee’s Best of Show winning app, Tandem).

How so? Manilla users can take advantage of Bill Share simply by granting selected Manilla users access to their account. Users can then jointly manage finances, share information with financial professionals, and leave comments for others.

The Manilla app with Bill Share is available for free from the iOS, Android, and Amazon Kindle Fire app stores. The app is not yet available online at Manilla.com.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in New York, Manila provides safe and secure cloud-based access to bills and personal finances. The company demoed its AOL Bill Manager technology at FinovateFall 2013. See Manilla’s presentation here.

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Allied Payment Network’s Partnership with Mitek Pays Off with PicturePay

By David Penn Posted on January 7, 2014
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Allied Payment Network, Mitek

Since adopting PicturePay, bank and credit union customers of Allied Payment Network have seen 5-15% month-over-month growth in transactions and 10% growth in retention rates for customers who used bill pay. This has taken retention rates as high as 98%.

This is the emerging bill pay landscape as seen from the partnership between Allied Payment Network and Mitek. With more financial institutions offering ways for customers to pay bills, a feature like mobile bill pay helps distinguish those FIs looking to maximize opportunities through the fastest growing transaction channel.

Allied Payment Network notes that half of the customers who use PicturePay never took advantage of online bill pay services in the past. And a big selling point for the technology is the ability to pay using the mobile device’s camera rather than having to type out information on a keyboard.

The company was recently in the news with announcement of its partnership with ACI Worldwide to provide same day bill pay via PicturePay. Among the technology’s recent adopters is Ameriana Bank and, this year, Allied Payment Network announced its first credit union to deploy PicturePay.

Allied Payment Network teamed up with Mitek to present its PicturePay solution as part of the FinovateSpring 2013 event in San Francisco. See the company in action here.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 7, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 7, 2014
Categories: BancVue, Dwolla, Jack Henry, Numbrs, Q2, Q2ebanking, TSYS, Zopa

State of Iowa expands government payment partnership with Dwolla; Iowa DOT begins using service for IFTA and IRP.

Urban Partnership Bank introduces upbAnywhere, the New Virtual Banking Platform from Q2 (Q2ebanking).

ABL Advisor looks at BancVue’s BancAssets advising partnership with UHaul.

CEO Interview: Julien Arnold of Numbrs.

Zopa wins “Best Peer to Peer Lender” award from Moneynet Personal Finance.

TSYS announces partnership with Womply to provide TSYS Merchant Insights business analytics dashboard.

Jack Henry Banking to provide its clients with access to American Express’ FX International Payments service.

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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Mobile Monday: Reminding Customers to Make Mobile Number Primary

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 6, 2014
Categories: Capital One, Mobile Banking, Service

Now that mobile is on its way to becoming the dominant banking interaction channel, we are going to obsess on the nitty-gritty details this year, both here and in our Online Banking Report newsletter.

First up: How to get better mobile data into your CRM. By now many (most?) readers do a good job grabbing mobile numbers during new customer onboarding. But are you doing the same with existing customers? And even if you have a mobile number on file, is it the primary phone number on the customer’s account?

Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) is reminding customers at login to take a look at their account info on file. And furthermore, the bank has added a small reminder to make your mobile number primary, if desired (see screenshot below).

Bottom line: Having the best primary phone number is a small, but important, part of servicing customers effectively. My only quibble with Capital One’s implementation is that the reminder is easy to overlook as it’s buried mid-page in a small font with a blue “i” graphic. A more dramatic graphical treatment would improve the results.

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Capital One 360 login reminder page (30 Dec 2013)

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Image source: Mobile First webinar by Ken Fang posted on Howto.gov

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CEO Interview: Julien Arnold of Numbrs

By David Penn Posted on January 6, 2014
Categories: Numbrs

With FinovateEurope a month away, it seemed like a good time to check in with some of the European startups redefining innovation in financial technology. Today we bring you our conversation with the CEO of Numbrs, Julien Arnold.

Numbrs made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2013 in New York. The Switzerland-based, self-described “nonbank”demoed a personal finance app that combines bill pay, fund transfer and PFM into an easy-to-use mobile banking solution.

Additionally, the Numbrs app does more than help users see and analyze past spending and saving. The app also helps users anticipate and project their future financial behavior. This feature, called “Timeline” is one of the more unique aspects of the Numbrs app and potentially shows an important new direction in the PFM space.

Numbrs was founded in September 2012. The startup has raised more than $11 million in its 2013 Series A round. Follow Numbrs on Twitter @numbrs.

Finovate: You are making a move to the United States, and have opened in office in New York. Can you tell us some of the thinking behind this decision? How did you know the time was right?

Julien Arnold: Numbrs will expand to the US market and establish a new entity in the greater New York area. We’ve launched the app in Germany in November. The user, media, and investor feedback has been very good so far, and we are very confident that the product will be a huge success in the United States as well. That’s also why we decided to raise another 3.8 million USD to adjust Numbrs to the specific market needs. As soon as the product improvement process will be finished we’ll raise an additional amount of money to ensure the market launch.

Finovate: What are some of the major differences between mobile-first banking in Switzerland and the rest of Europe? What are some of the major differences between Switzerland and the United States? How will you deal with those differences in seeking to popularize Numbrs?

Arnold: For now Numbrs is only available in Germany. We are also planning to launch the product in Switzerland and the UK. Of course, the actual banking behaviour differs considerably from one country to another. Especially, Switzerland is a very sophisticated market.

Finovate: Talk about the Future Timeline. This was the feature that our publisher, Jim Bruene, was most impressed by. Can you talk a bit about the idea behind the Timeline, as well as the technology that makes this feature possible?

Arnold: Numbrs analyses your spending behaviour and existing transactions to calculate your future income and expenses.Your financial status, today and tomorrow, is shown on your timeline. Numbrs safely integrates with all your banks via securely encrypted protocols – such as HBCI in Germany – to aggregate all your financial data into an easy-to-understand overview, which we call the Timeline.

Through a combination of machine learning algorithms, each transaction is automatically categorised, and will be enriched with useful information, such as a logo of the counter party with which the transaction was made.

Finovate: What is your relationship with Centralway? How did it begin and how important has the relationship been to the development of Numbrs?

Arnold: Numbrs is a product created by the Company Builder Centralway. Numbrs profits from the infrastructure, the knowledge and the efforts each team member puts into the project. To partner up with Centralway has been a very important step for the successful roll out of Numbrs.

Finovate: The Numbrs business model is based on advertising. Do you see advertising as the major revenue source for the business a year from now? Three to five years from now?

Arnold: The business model offers a lot of potential for the future. There are numerous possibilities to increase revenue also outside of the field of advertising.

Finovate: Can you tell us a little about your background? Before Numbrs you were involved in building Groupon London. Is there anything in your experience with Groupon London that informs the work you are doing with Numbrs?

Arnold: Before my move to Centralway Headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, I had various positions in different startups of which one was as at Groupon UK in London. Groupon evolved from a startup company to its IPO in no time. During that I had the chance to understand the challenges of a hyper growth company and would like to apply those learnings to Numbrs.

Finovate: Tell us a little about your team. Who do you work with most closely on a day-to-day basis?

Arnold: Numbrs is about technology and design. The biggest part of the team are developers. Although I’m not a technology expert, it’s very important to me that I can influence the product at all levels. Thats why I’m constantly in contact with our frontend and backend developers and work with them on the product level.

Finovate: What can we expect to see from Numbrs in the first few months of 2014?

Arnold: We’ll increase the marketing spendings in Germany and roll-out a 360 degree marketing campaign. Besides that I’ll focus on launching Numbrs in the United States and UK.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 6, 2014

By David Penn Posted on January 6, 2014
Categories: BillGuard, CurrencyFair, Expensify, FinanceIt, FlexScore, FutureAdvisor, Geezeo, Google, Jemstep, LearnVest, Level, MasterCard, Mint.com, Personal Capital, Saved Plus, Signifyd, Simple, TIO Networks, Wallaby Financial, Wealthfront

Checking in with FlexScore is top of the list in this Forbes column on financial planning for those turning 50 this year.

Mint, Personal Capital, SavedPlus, and LearnVest earn spots on Fox Business’ list of “5 apps to help keep your 2014 financial goals.”

CodeSumBlog names BillGuard as its top financial management productivity app.

MasterCard completes acquisition of Provus, Turkey’s leading independent payments processor.

Google announces that customers can now activate their Google Wallet card via the mobile app.

CurrencyFair highlighted in New York Times column on Ireland’s tech start-up scene.

Check out numbers from Simple’s year in review with 6.6 million transactions.

The Financial Post covers FinanceIt’s POS financing solution.

Expensify revamps UI and adds executive assistant permissions with new “Wingman” feature.

Novartis to offer Geezeo-powered PFM.

Forbes lists LearnVest, Personal Capital and BillGuard as apps for saving money.

Xconomy lists Jemstep and Personal Capital as two new online services to put you back in command of your 401(k).

TIO Networks acquires Globex Financial Services to add well-known & respected billers to TIO’s business.

Signifyd API adds fraud prevention to ecommerce platforms.

Saved Plus, Wallaby, FutureAdvisor, Wealthfront, and Level picked for CNN Money’s list of the 15 best financial sites and apps.

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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Finovate Blog

Month: January 2014

FinovateEurope 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 1

CAN Capital Raises $33 Million from Meritech Capital, Accel Partners

Finovate Alumni News– January 9, 2014

FinovateEurope 2014 Early-Bird Deadline is this Friday! Register Now to Save!

FinovateEurope 2014 Early-Bird Deadline is this Friday! Register Now to Save!

Finovate Alumni News — January 8, 2014

Manilla Launches Bill Share to Make Managing Family Finances Easier

Allied Payment Network’s Partnership with Mitek Pays Off with PicturePay

Finovate Alumni News– January 7, 2014

Mobile Monday: Reminding Customers to Make Mobile Number Primary

CEO Interview: Julien Arnold of Numbrs

Finovate Alumni News– January 6, 2014