One of the more popular companies at FinovateSpring was SaveUp (note 1). The startup has modernized the tried-and-true sweepstakes approach and optimized it for the web. It’s a fun way to procrastinate for a few seconds, it’s cheaper than a lottery ticket, and I’m hooked after winning a $5 Banana Republic gift card. At Finovate, the company said it was seeing 30% of its users visit daily, and 60% play weekly.

The company is working with with 20 credit unions (with a total of 1.2 million accounts) and at least one bank (Bank of the West) to gamify savings and other financial activities. I haven’t seen any of the co-branded efforts yet, but anyone can register directly at the startup’s website and play the instant-win games or enter the sweeps. Users are limited to three plays per day, but can earn more by performing financial tasks, such as linking a credit card, or watching a video.

For the first time in my experience, today the site had an advertiser other than the brands providing sweepstakes prizes in the sweepstakes. Ally Bank had a small AdSense-like promotion running on the top of SaveUp’s newly designed site (see below, note I did not capture the actual ad). The Ally ad was a generic checking account pitch and did not include any premiums, sweeps, or any tie-in to SaveUp.

The San Francisco-based company was founded a year ago, has 7 employees, and VC backing of $2 million.

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Saveup’s main page after logging in (25 May 2012)
Note: Earlier the top box contained an ad for Ally Bank’s checking account. But that ad is no longer being served to my account, and I neglected to get a screenshot of it.

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Note:
1. We just published a recap of the biggest trends at FinovateStartup 2012 in our Online Banking Report publication (subscription).