Six Digital Myths Hampering Banks’ 2015 Strategic Planning

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In late summer, I published a two-part post detailing the most important retail banking projects for next year (here and here). I’ve got another installment or two in the pipeline, but since it’s already starting to feel like we are making our final descent into 2015, I wanted to take a step back and explain WHY those projects rose to the top. 

So here, in semi-prioritized order, are six myths that continue to hamper the strategic planning of retail banks (at least in the United States). 
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Myth 1 >> Bank branches are needed for “complex” financial matters

Truth
: Branch banking is on the way out.
Prediction: The U.S. brick-and-mortar footprint will fall 30% to 40% by 2020.
Thoughts:
  • I get that people like the local branch. My wife loved Blockbuster. My grandparents operated a much-loved corner grocery. But neither survived when the economics turned against them. Bank branches will survive in my lifetime, but their footprint (square feet & staffing) will decline 5% to 10% per year for the foreseeable future. 

  • Name one thing done in a branch that can’t be done more efficiently and/or more effectively through digital means or an ATM (let’s assume that the customer believes resolution can be obtained from either method). Sure, people still go to the branch for advice and problem solving since that’s a long-standing tradition and it’s comforting to talk to a nice person in a pressed blue shirt. But it’s also an inefficient way to get things done, for both the bank and the customer. My last trip to the branch was to open a college checking account at the bank we’ve held accounts for seven years (and whose associates know us by sight). It took an hour! And that doesn’t include the travel time for two trips to the branch (we forgot to bring a SECOND picture ID). It all could have been done in a few minutes online or via mobile had that option been available. 
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Myth 2 >> Desktop online banking is still needed for “serious” work
TruthBanking by the desktop has peaked, too. 

Prediction: The amount of time spent banking online via desktop will fall 20% to 30% by 2020.
Thoughts
  • Many people still think that “important work” requires a browser and the real estate of a 13-inch screen. I agree for writing or design tasks, that’s true. But the average banking interaction amounts to looking at a few two- and three-digit numbers and typing a search term every now and then. Those things can be easily done on mobile. 

  • In fact, by building the UI mobile first, designers are forced to focus on the most important data elements, creating a better experience. 

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Myth 3 >> Marketplace (P2P) lending won’t be used by “our” customers

Truth: Consumer and SMB lending could be disrupted by new players (but that’s far from a given). 

Prediction: Marketplaces take 5% to 10% share by 2020

Thoughts
  • I’m not one to throw “disruption” around lightly. In fact, it has never appeared in a title in my 10 years of blogging. Why not? Because I’ve been working in the online banking industry for 22 years and have seen nearly ZERO market share shift in the U.S. banking system over that time. The only major U.S. Internet-only success was ING Direct (now Capital One). And they don’t count because it was a division of a huge legacy player expanding their geographic reach. (Note: There has been market share shifts in the acquiring side due to PayPal, Square and others, but that was mostly wrested away from non-banks.)
  • But marketplace lending (aka P2P) is the first thing I’ve seen that actually is taking share away from legacy players. Lending Club is over $2 billion; Prosper and Zoka are over $1 billion; and SOFI is probably there as well. And there are more than 100 equity and debt crowdfunding companies funding small and medium businesses. While this is still small change in the multi-trillion consumer and SMB lending market, there are signs that these companies are posed to grab meaningful share. 
  • What makes the lending marketplace model potentially disruptive is that they can bring together large pools of capital with very different risk tolerances and price the loans dynamically, which is much harder for traditional players to do (though regulation is a wildcard here as marketplaces could end up with draconian “safeguards” that would render their risk-based pricing advantage moot)
  • But I don’t count out the big players yet. While it’s not easy, they can and probably will, copy the marketplace lending model, and perhaps continue their role as primary credit providers. However, having been a lending-product manager at a major bank, I can attest that it is extremely difficult to change historic patterns in loan underwriting. 
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Myth 4 >> Consumers gravitate to best-of-breed providers for every financial need
Truth: Consumers HATE to proactively work on their finances and will often settle for what’s most convenient. 
Prediction: The primary “financial institution” (which can mean many things) will gain share of wallet going forward IF they integrate other services into online/mobile banking.

Thoughts:
  • Ever since I’ve been involved, it’s been debated whether banks could be “the one-stop shop” for financial services. In the pre-Internet era, it was prohibitively expensive to put world-class mortgage bankers, investment advisors, insurance experts, remittance providers, SMB services, and so forth into the branch-based delivery model. 
  • But in today’s interconnected “API” world, that is not the case. The financial provider with the most trust — or as Richard Crone says, “The company that enrolls, controls” — can deliver the best of everything related to money management, retirement planning, value investing, and risk management/insurance. Consumers actually do gravitate towards one source if they believe it’s delivering value across disparate items. Case in point: Amazon.com. (Note: I penned my favorite report of all time around that theme, Building the Amazon.com of Financial Services (original in 1998, updated in 2000.)
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Myth 5: Consumers trust YOUR security (it’s the others that keep letting them down)
Truth: Your customers are VERY AFRAID you’ll cause a nightmare scenario security-wise. Why do you think people log in so many times each week? 
Prediction: You can thank Apple for making biometrics mainstream.
Thoughts
  • I’m not sure how banks have gotten away with such lax consumer/SMB-facing security for so long. It’s a testament to the strength of their core businesses that they can cover billions in losses every year. 
  • It’s also an unintended consequence of offering all digital banking services free of charge. Every tweak to the website and mobile app are new costs without any tangible revenue bump (see Myth 6 below). 
  • But we are finally reaching the end of the username/password era with better authentication via smartphone, far more sophisticated back-end fraud-monitoring, and seamless biometrics (aka TouchID). I, for one, will be able to sleep better, knowing our business isn’t constantly on the brink of a devastating cybertheft.

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Myth 6 >> Consumers won’t pay for digital banking value-adds
Truth: A lucrative segment of the population prefers deluxe or premium versions of goods and services. 
PredictionFinancial institutions are leaving BILLIONS on the table each year due to their lack of creativity in charging for value-adds. I give up trying to predict when it will happen, but once one of the Big-4 launches Platinum Digital Banking, the entire industry will rush to copy. 

Thoughts: I’ve written about this so many times, I’ll just point you to the most recent post (here).

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Since our comments are broken, hit me up on Twitter @netbanker with your thoughts. 
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Picture credit: Get your six-pack of wrong turn signs on eBay

Alumni News– November 18, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgCoinbase to introduce bitcoin tip button to enable micropayment acceptance online.
  • Venmo users can now log in using both bank ID and Touch ID.
  • TechWeek Europe takes a look at Arxan Technologies’ State of Mobile App Security report.
  • Malaysian Digest features Azimo in a discussion on the revolution in the money transfer industry.
  • Dough Roller interviews iQuantifi CEO and Co-Founder, Tom White.
  • Business News Daily quotes Igor Gonta, CEO of Market Prophit on the importance of having a social media strategy.
  • PostFinance AG’s Monexio selects Mobino platform to help develop its own digital payment solutions.
  • SK Planet wins first prize at KPRA Awards 2014 for its filter program, Flitter.
  • Hiscox launches new digital insurance platform powered by Backbase CXP.
  • PayPal challenges Apple Pay with an app for the Pebble smartwatch.
  • The European Commission approves Tradeshift data format for government purchasing.
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.

OnDeck Seeks to Raise $150 Million in Initial Public Offering

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Alternative small business lender OnDeck has announced plans to raise $150 million in an initial public offering.

According to analysis from The Wall Street Journal, the IPO could value OnDeck at $1.5 billion. The Journal also suggested that the $150 million number for the IPO was likely a “placeholder amount” that will probably change. 

While the company understandably has few words to share about its impending IPO, OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow has said a number of interesting things about the future of his company and the small business community it serves. Asked about the future of the alternative lending industry over the next 10-20 years in an interview with NPR this summer, Breslow replied: “I think it loses the designation of alternative.”
“I think just like today I buy a plane ticket online with Priceline.com. Maybe 20 years ago I would have talked to a travel agent. You know – we are going through that entire cycle. We’re probably in year five of a 20-year journey in terms of lending.”
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OnDeck reported more than $107 million in revenue in the first three quarters of 2014, and a net loss of $14.4 million. The revenue figure represents a year-over-year gain of 2.5x.

Here are a few key metrics to keep in mind:
  • OnDeck will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol, ONDK
  • Lead underwriter is JP Morgan Stanley
  • Originated more than $1.7 billion in loans to 25,000 small businesses
  • Raised more than $170 million in venture capital funding, and more than $300 million in debt financing
  • Collected more than 4 million customer payments
  • Previous investors include:
    • RRE Ventures
    • Institutional Venture Partners
    • Village Ventures
    • SAP Ventures
    • First Round Capital
    • Google Ventures
    • Tiger Global
Also underwriting the IPO were Deutsche Bank Securities, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Pierce, Fenner & Smith.
OnDeck’s IPO news comes just a few months after the IPO filing of peer-to-peer lender, Lending Club (another Finovate alum). This reflects both a continued strong investment pace in fintech innovators in general, as well as a particular passion for alternative lenders. OnDeck earned the investment dollars of a number of major fintech-savvy venture capitalist firms and individuals such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and former American Express CEO, James Robinson.
What are people saying about the IPO? At places hardcore investment websites like Seeking Alpha, the questions are all about the sustainability of growth and the potential for profitability in the near-term. Over at Inc., Jeremy Quittner sees challenges and advantages for OnDeck as opposite sides of the same coin, considering the company’s “balance sheet lender” business model as a “risk” and its capacity for generating significant income from interest a “reward.”
OnDeck recently presented at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014, introducing its frictionless, extensible, and powerful API. The company announced its plan to partner with Worldpay in August, and reported in June that it’s small business lending platform had a $3.4 billion, 22,000 job impact on the economy. In March, OnDeck raised $77 million in a round led by Tiger Capital. The New York-based company was founded in 2007 and was last on the Finovate stage for the spring 2012 show in San Francisco.

Alumni News– November 17, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgBoku announces a pair of C-level appointments: Ingo Lippert as CBO, Christian Hinrichs as CFO.
  • Zopa partners with AltFi Data; plans to open loan book to the public in Q1 in 2015.
  • The Sunday Times profiles TransferWise founders Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus.
  • Bolstr surpasses $200,000 in 2014 investor payouts
  • Expensify featured in Slate. Check out the video.
  • Billhighway’s 523% Four-Year Growth earns it the #193 Spot on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 List.
  • ChicagoInno features Arroweye Solutions and Rippleshot for their listings on the FinTech Forward Rankings.
  • Check out Finovate Debuts: Minetta Brook’s Knewsapp.
  • MetaIntelli and Arxan Technologies partner to help developers mitigate mobile security and privacy risks.
  • Venmo gets Touch ID security, tagging, and direct linking to bank accounts.
  • MyBankTracker examines how 1U is using Hoyos‘ facial recognition security technology.
  • InComm launches New eCommerce Site for B2B Bulk Gift Cards.
  • Bluefin joins the New York Bankers Association.
  • Google Compute Engine now features intelligent horizontal Autoscaling.
  • Wharton Fintech blog features Knox Payments.
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.

Finovate Debuts: Minetta Brook’s Knewsapp

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is Minetta Brook, which demonstrated Knewsapp at FinovateFall 2014.

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Minetta Brook aims for Knewsapp to change the way investors stay informed of news relating to stocks in their portfolio. The web-based news discovery application surfaces topics before they become trending news, giving researchers a tool superior to Google.

The stats

    • $2.4 million in funding
    • 10 employees
    • 100+ firms in beta
    • 100,000+ news sources searched
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Knewsapp

Traditionally, when seeking information that may effect a stock in their portfolio, investors search Google, Yahoo or other investment info sources. But typical search engines measure the importance of an article based on popularity.This method elevates content that could be days old, and buries stories investors actually need to read.

For traders, risk management professionals, and research analysts that need real-time news, search engines are not the best tools for content discovery. Knewsapp’s content-based model finds the information investors need to make important trading decisions.

Aside from simply serving up news, Knewsapp also helps investors know what news may effect their investments. It uses a proprietary scoring method to suggest content they should read to be informed, based on their portfolio.

Knewsapp launched on Bloomberg in May. Here’s what the full integration looks like:

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Features
>>Top tickers

Knewsapp continuously scans Twitter and more than 100,000 sources of news and blogs for unusual activity. The result is a list of stocks with the most relevant and fastest developing news, based on their score and velocity.

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Ticker and/or topic combination search
With this function, users search a ticker symbol by itself or in combination with key word(s). The result shows headlines of relevant news stories, sources, scores and similar topics.

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Additionally, a filter capability enables users to see news in specific markets or sectors.

Portfolio monitoring
With hundreds of stocks in a portfolio, it can be difficult to know which terms to search. Knewsapp simplifies this by displaying the score, along with the rate the news is developing, for each stock in a portfolio.

When users filter by the score or velocity, they see which stocks are receiving above average coverage in the news or on Twitter. The right-hand panel displays news stories corresponding to stocks in their portfolio.

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Story DNA
The Story DNA section word cloud displays a quick view of topics and themes within a selected news story.

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Minetta Brook debuted the public web version of Knewsapp at FinovateFall 2014.

Financeit Brings in Fresh Funding After U.S. Launch

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What do wonders of the world, deadly sins, the Harry Potter series, and Financeit’s funding have in common? They all come in sets of seven (at least for now).

Financeit’s seventh round of funding comes from BEST Funds, which is adding an undisclosed amount to the $21.4 million Financeit has raised since its 2007 launch.

Previous rounds include $13 million in November 2013, along with $8.4 million in angel funding received in five rounds from 2007 to 2012.

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The new installment comes a few months after the Toronto-based company launched its point of sale financing solution in the United States. This is no small feat, given the hurdles of complying with U.S. regulations. Financeit plans to use the funds to expand growth in the new market.

Check out the live demo of Financeit’s U.S. launch, along with its partnership with FIS, at FinovateFall 2014.

Another +1 For Host Card Emulation: SimplyTapp Garners $6 Million

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Host Card Emulation (HCE) solutions company, SimplyTapp, is making it easier for banks to place their own tap to pay functionality in customers’ hands.

To further this mission, two investors, Blue Sky Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, recently contributed $6 million in Series B funding to the Austin-based startup.

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Other funding rounds include a $1.4 million Series A round last November and a $200,000 seed round in February of 2013. Its total funding now tallies just over $7.5 million.

Check out SimplyTapp’s video from FinDEVr San Francisco 2014, where it explains HCE.

Alumni News– November 14, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgIntelliResponse acquired by [24]7 for its customer service suite.
  • Another +1 For Host Card Emulation: SimplyTapp Garners $6 Million.
  • Financeit Brings in Fresh Funding After U.S. Launch.
  • Payfone selected as “Best Revenue Creator/Enhancer” for Mobile Network Operators in the 2014 Fierce Innovation: Telecom Edition Awards.
  • InComm & PayPal collaborate to offer digital gift cards.
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.

Fintech Fundings: More than $145 Million Raised Week Ending Nov 14

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For the most part, Fintech investors took a small breather this week. Other than the VCs sending a cool tenth-of-a-billion-dollars off to POS provider Revel Systems, the rest of the sector pulled in about $50 million. 
Two of the 10 newly funded are Finovate alums: 
  1. Austin, TX-based SimplyTapp attracted $6 million to expand its NFC mobile payment technology. 
  2. FinanceIT secured an undisclosed investment from Toronto neighbor BEST Funds. 
The deals from Nov 8 to Nov 13 in order of size:
Point-of-sale systems
Latest round: $100 million (of which $25 million is a credit line)
Total raised: $114 million 
Tags: POS, acquiring, SMB, San Francisco, California
Source: Crunchbase
Gift card marketplace
Latest round: $18.1 million
Total raised: $21.7 million 
Tags: Giftcards, loyalty, payments, Chicago, Illinois
Source: Crunchbase
Payment services for merchants
Latest round: $8.2 million
Total raised: $8.2 million 
Tags: Credit/debit cards, acquiring, SMB, merchants, loyalty, Sunnyvale, California
Source: Crunchbase
French marketplace for short-term capital financing
Latest round: $7.5 million
Total raised: $7.6 millon 
Tags: Lending, receivables, working capital, SMB, Paris, France
Source: Crunchbase
Digital payment processor
Latest round: $6 million
Total raised: $7.6 million 
Tags: Credit/debit cards, acquiring, POS, SMB, NFC, Austin, Texas, Finovate alum
Source: FT Partners
Franchise financing marketplace
Latest round: $3.8 million
Total raised: $7.5 million 
Tags: Credit, lending, underwriting, SMB, loans, investing, P2P, crowdfunding, 
Source: Crunchbase
Digital payment processor
Latest round: $600,000
Total raised: $820,000 
Tags: Credit/debit cards, acquiring, SMB, Kuopio, Finland
Source: Crunchbase
Customer financing at the retailer’s point of sale
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total funding: $21 million (not including latest round)
Tags: POS, lending, SMB, merchants, Toronto, Canada
Source: FT Partners
Payment solution for U.S. merchants to accept Chinese UnionPay cards
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Credit cards, debit cards, acquiring, payment processing, Palo Alto, California
Source: Crunchbase
Indian digital payments layer
Latest round: Undisclosed (Series A)
Total funding: $500,000 (prior to latest funding)
Tags: Payments, social media, merchants, acquiring, Mumbai, India
Source: Crunchbase

Alumni News– November 13, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgKili acquires NFC microSD pioneer DeviceFidelity.
  • American Banker lists Currency Cloud, BioCatch, Linqto, VerifyValid, and Rippleshot as top 10 tech companies to watch.
  • Fintech in the fall: themes and company updates from CAN Capital, Encap Security, Fuze Network, Guardian Analytics, Larky, Ripple, and Xpenditure.
  • American Banker examines 2015 plans for FIS, Fiserv and Diebold.
  • Forbes looks at the success of RoboAdvisors: Betterment, Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and SigFig.
  • Forbes examines Kantox’s P2P FX trading technology.
  • TSYS partners with FICO to deliver a marketing product for card issuers called TSYS Targeted Messaging.
  • Digital Insight enters reseller agreement with Guardian Analytics to deliver anomaly detection services to financial institutions.
  • Trulioo wins 2014 Canadian Technology Companies to watch award from Deloitte.
  • Huffington Post interviews Andrea Gellert, SVP Marketing at OnDeck.
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.

Fintech in the Fall: Themes and Company Updates

Fall is in full swing and there has been plenty of news to keep the fintech world busy.

I spent last week at Money20/20 where the themes centered around Apple Pay, Bitcoin, and Millennials. In between listening to industry experts on these and other topics, I sat down to chat with seven Finovate alums. Here are a few notable updates:

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CAN Capital (fka Capital Access Network) has supplied just over $4 billion in funding to more than 55,000 small businesses. It continues to expand, reporting double-digit growth from last year.

CAN’s financing works well for small businesses who cannot obtain funding through traditional bank loans. Its 60%+ approval rate is made possible by the robust tech and big data analytic capabilities that enhance market insight. This ultimately broadens CAN’s access to prospective clients and enables it to provide customers with a lower priced loan.

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In June, it launched the beta version of CAN Connect, a set of 4 APIs. One of these APIs is called CAN Instant Quote (IQ). It pulls data from software that a small business uses frequently, such as scheduling or accounting software, to pre-approve them for instant financing.

In November, CAN announced a partnership with Yodlee to extend funding through its small business offering. This will enable Yodlee’s financial institution clients to offer customers access to funding via CAN’s Instant Quote API. The service will be available by Q1 of 2015.

While fixed term loans are still CAN’s core product, it is currently looking into offering flexible payment terms in 2015.

See CAN Capital’s demo from FinovateFall 2013 where it debuted Mobile Funder.

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Encap Security offers Smarter Authentication, a seamless way for banks to authenticate users across multiple channels, without disrupting the user experience.

Several weeks ago, Encap partnered with Feedzai to leverage its analytic engine that authenticates users. When the customer’s identity is in question, they are sent challenges to authenticate themselves, rather than being shut out of the system entirely.

Other partnerships are in the works, but all are confidential at this point.

Additionally, Encap has recently integrated Apple’s Touch ID to replace users’ PINs. While Encap’s Smarter Authentication will still be the underlying technology, Touch ID will help authenticate the user at each point of interaction.

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The company plans to incorporate other biometrics in the future.

Watch Encap demo Smarter Authentication at FinovateSpring 2014.

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As we tweeted last week, Fuze was recently acquired by Ingo Money, a company that specializes in mobile check cashing services for underbanked consumers. Ingo enables customers to instantly deposit checks onto a prepaid card, bank account, or mobile wallet.

The acquisition will combine Ingo’s mobile check cashing with Fuze’s swipe-to-pay and swipe-to-load features to give users more control over their money. Ingo will also leverage Fuze’s existing network of more than one billion cards, which includes:

    • 50 million prepaid cards
    • 459 million debit cards
    • 576 million credit cards
    • 531 million private label cards
    • 137 million other types

Ingo is also working on solutions to help users avoid late fees by enabling them to send funds to a location of their choice, such as their landlord. Additionally, it plans to expand the number of retail locations where customers load cash and move money from card to card.

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The terms of the acquisition, which is set to be finalized by the end of this year, were undisclosed.

Fuze Network last demonstrated at FinovateFall 2011 where it debuted Swipe2Pay.

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With a swell in data breaches this year, security has become a hot topic with the half-billion personal identities stolen in the last 8 months.

The increasing number of new solutions and capabilities banks now offer has opened up fresh opportunities for fraudsters to compromise users’ identities. To combat this, Guardian Analytics has added capabilities that gather user reputation data, such as their IP address.

Guardian Analytics is working with more than 300 financial institutions and has expanded its partnerships outside of banks. In the last year and a half, it has partnered with two non-bank institutions, Fiserv and Digital Insight.

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In the future, the California-based company plans to expand its analytics-based security solutions, since rules-based security is failing under the ever-expanding number of requirements needed to protect institutions.

Guardian Analytics debuted FraudXCHANGE at FinovateFall 2012.

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Larky, a company that provides card-linked discounts and offers on a mobile platform, signed six new financial institution clients across Alabama, Michigan, and New York in October.

Each new client is using a white-labeled version of Larky’s platform coupled with a package of local offers and rewards. The offers not only save users money, but also drive traffic to local business, and increase card usage.

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Check out Larky’s demo from FinovateFall 2014.

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Open source payments protocol, Ripple,announced a partnership with Yantra, which specializes in electronic payment systems. Specifically, Ripple will use Yantra’s risk management capabilities.

The Ripple network increases the speed and velocity of transactions, which add to its risk. To mitigate the liability, it leverages Yantra’s technology to create context and conditionality to its money movement processes.

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Yantra will augment the data collected about transactions and is adding new tools, such as custom search fields, to better analyze the data, and all within seconds.

Ripple debuted at FinovateSpring 2013.

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When we last spoke with Xpenditure at the beginning of this year, the company had $2.2 million in Angel funding and 15 employees. By the end of 2014, it will have raised $3.5 million in total funding and expects to have 25 employees.

It is also expanding its operations. It recently opened offices in São Paulo and New York City. In fact, the U.S. is its fastest growing market and accounts for 30% of its customers.

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In late October, it launched a partnership with MasterCard and its expense management system will be available as a part of MasterCard’s Business Owner ToolBox in Canada.

Check out Xpenditure’s demo from FinovateEurope 2014.

Neo-Banking is Just Getting Started

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Definition: Neo-Bank
Delivering banking services without touching the funds

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This morning, Celent’s Stephen Greer published a post called, The Challenges of the New Neo-Bank, wherein he states:

In recent months, the neo-bank model (e.g., Simple, Moven, GoBank) has hit a few stumbling blocks that call into question the promise of the digital-only model…

Stephen lays out four scenarios for the future of neo-banks:

1. Neo-banks are acquired and assimilated into larger financial brands

2. Larger brands start their own digital “neo-bank-like” brands

3. Neo-banking fails to become a viable business model, but nevertheless influences the industry

4. Neo-banking becomes the dominant method of accessing underlying accounts held at traditional banks

My thoughts: We already see #1 and #2 happening, so the question comes down to whether we are headed long-term towards #3 or #4. Like most analysts, I’m firmly in the “it depends” camp. But I’ll go out on a limb a bit. I believe we will see dozens, if not hundreds, of neo-banks launch in the next few years. Here’s why:

image1. Simple’s $100-million exit to BBVA
I’m not sure how much equity the founders held at the end, but it must have been a multi-million dollar payday for five-plus years of hard work. While that’s not enough to make the cover of Forbes, it’s a huge win for most entrepreneurs.

2.  Marketplace lending provides a path to profitability
The problem with the neo-bank model in an era of low deposit rates and shrinking interchange, is that those traditional income sources are not enough to pay competent developers, execs and customer service folk. With consumers loath to pay fees, most startups end up forced into the ad-supported model, which strains their credibility with customers.

But with the growing popularity, and proven profit potential, of marketplace lending (aka P2P lending), neo-banks can partner with or build their own loan platforms to profitably put those deposits to work (sounds less “neo” and more “banking” doesn’t it?). So I envision the day where neo-banks allow you to store your funds in the prepaid account for no interest, or put it to work in a lending marketplace to earn a few percentage points on the funds, with the neo-bank pocketing a bit of the spread.

3. Third-party financial watchdogs become trusted services
Another advantage of being an independent neo-bank is that it’s easier to become an unbiased watchdog over all things financial. The neo-bank can track all your accounts (Mint/Yodlee), find areas where you are overpaying or have potentially been defrauded (BillGuard), monitor your credit score (Credit Karma) and even analyze the effectiveness of your 401k (Brightscope).

Right now, it’s still almost impossible for third-party startups to get to scale because customers just don’t trust them. But that will slowly change as the newcomers gain brand recognition (for example, Intuit’s Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax brands).

4. It’s much, much harder to launch a real bank
Ten years ago, we were seeing about 10 new banks launched every month. Due to all the failures brought on by the Great Recession (and I would argue, way too much deposit insurance), there has only been one new bank launched in the past three years (through end of 2013). So, if you want to get a banking business started, you have little choice but to go with a non-bank model.

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Comments? Give me a shout @netbanker

Picture credit: Article from NY Times, 20 Feb 2014 (link); sign in background from Simple HQ