Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • PayPal Taps into Bitcoin by Adding Wences Casares to Board”
  • Taulia Raises $46 Million in Series E; Names New CFO”
  • Check out “Finovate Debuts: Authy’s Password Alternative”

Around the web

  • DriveWealth teams up with StockRadar to provide investors in China with access to U.S. stocks.
  • DNB Luxembourg goes live with Temenos core banking system.
  • Three credit unions in British Columbia—Bulkley Valley Credit Union, North Peace Savings and Credit Union, and Spruce Credit Union— choose DNA account processing technology from Fiserv.
  • Wealthfront launches new, free portfolio review service.
  • Insuritas to power insurance agency solution for Greater New Orleans Federal Credit Union.

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

Union Bank & Trust Picks Prairie Cloudware’s Digital Payments Guardian to Power its Mobile Wallet

Union Bank & Trust Picks Prairie Cloudware’s Digital Payments Guardian to Power its Mobile Wallet

PrairieCloudware_homepage_Jan2016

Union Bank & Trust (UBT), a $3.2 billion dollar bank, has chosen Digital Payments Guardian from fellow Nebraskan Prairie Cloudware to power UBT’s branded mobile wallet.

Alan Fosler, SVP at UBT, explained that using Digital Payments Guardian from Prairie Cloudware “will facilitate tokenization of payment and personal data” for customers using their debit cards via Android devices.

“As digital devices increasingly become the tool of choice for simplifying the complexities of life, we want to give our customers an easier, safer way to pay,” Fosler said.

PrairieCloudware_stage_FS2015

From left: Chief Revenue Officer Doug Parr and Chief Marketing Officer Mike Carter demonstrated Prairie Cloudware’s Digital Payments Guardian at FinovateSpring 2015.

Prairie Cloudware’s Chief Revenue Officer Doug Parr pointed to two factors that make his company’s technology a strong choice for FIs. First, Parr noted that “consumers have repeatedly indicated that they prefer to consume mobile payments via the existing relationships they have with their banks.” And second, the technology that delivers mobile payments cannot be a burden to either the user or the bank offering it. “Our Digital Payments Guardian allows regional organizations to deploy mobile payment services without needing a staff of thousands and an eight-figure technology budget,” Parr said.

UBT is not the only company that has adopted the technology in recent months. INTECH announced in October that it was licensing Digital Payments Guardian to provide to its credit union clients. In June, Prairie Cloudware announced a new round of funding.

Union Bank & Trust was founded in 1917 as the Farmer’s State Bank, changed its name to Union Bank in 1935, and added trust powers in 1959, becoming Union Bank & Trust Company. UBT is the third-largest, privately owned bank in Nebraska with assets of $3.2 billion.

Founded in December 2012 and headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Prairie Cloudware demonstrated its Digital Payments Guardian at FinovateSpring 2015.

Finovate Debuts: Finanteq Helps Innovative Banks Succeed in Mobile with SuperWallet

Finovate Debuts: Finanteq Helps Innovative Banks Succeed in Mobile with SuperWallet

most Finanteq_homepage_Nov2015

Can you imagine spending as much time with your banking app as you do with Facebook or Twitter?

Not only can FINANTEQ imagine it, but with its new banking app, SuperWallet, the Polish spinoff from eLeader is doing everything it can to make it happen across Europe and, soon, across America.

FINANTEQ’s goal is to move banks from the end of the value chain to the front. “Right now the bank is just an icon on a credit slip,” said FINANTEQ customer adviser, Kate Miroslaw. FINANTEQ’s SuperWallet reverses this deficiency by combining mobile banking, payments, and m-commerce all in one mobile banking app. Rather than being an afterthought, the mobile banking app suddenly is at the center of attention when it comes to paying bills, booking a flight, or ordering concert tickets.

Finanteq_stage_FF2015

From left: Finanteq m-Commerce Operations Manager Tomasz Perski; Customer Adviser Kate Miroslaw; and Marketing Manager Artur Malek demonstrated SuperWallet at FinovateFall 2015.

“Would people love the Starbucks app so much if it were just about payments?” asks Artur Malek, marketing manager for FINANTEQ. His point is that by allowing customers to do things like order ahead, the app transforms the consumer experience for the better. “This is the added value beyond payments,” Malek says. “And this is exactly what we do.”

Company facts:

  • Founded in September 2014 as a spinoff from eLeader
  • Headquartered in Lublin, Poland
  • Employs 100 professionals in Poland and the United States.

Finanteq_screen_1How it works

The way FINANTEQ sees it, banks theoretically have many ways to build relationships with their customers. But the actual interactions between banks and customers often don’t live up to these opportunities. “Selling to customers doesn’t happen very often,” Malek points out. And while payments are frequent, banks are often bystanders to the transaction, and besides, the payment space is increasingly being infiltrated by non-bank actors such as Apple and Samsung.

FINANTEQ’s solution is simple: combine e-commerce, banking, and payments in one app provided by the bank. In their demonstration of SuperWallet, the team from FINANTEQ walked through a wide variety of scenarios: checking account balance, booking a hotel, paying for parking remotely, buying concert tickets, hiring an Uber car, ordering groceries or takeout … all without leaving the app.

This means consumers don’t have to install numerous apps and, more importantly, don’t have to share data with scores of merchants. The bank safeguards the sensitive data transmitting only what is required for a transaction.

Finanteq_art_4“Payment is made using data in the app, delivery address and other details of the transaction,” says Tomasz Perski, e-commerce operations manager. “There are many shops inside the app, but once authorized, there is no need for login or password. The services and shops available are chosen by the bank (bank partners) or by Finanteq, and the app can also feature offers and discounts.”

The future

Superwallet has been available in Eastern Europe since 2014 courtesy of early client Santander Group. And two new banks in Poland are expected to come online with the technology in early 2016. FINANTEQ is currently building out its U.S. team in anticipation of entering the U.S. market. Malek says the company is building relationships with merchants, especially aggregators. He mentioned that FINANTEQ now offers bus-ticket purchases in more than 130 cities.

Called one of the most innovative mobile banking apps by Forrester Research, Superwallet also won the Citi Mobile Challenge in April 2015 in Warsaw by taking top honors in the digital wallet category.

Currently, FINANTEQ has good traction in the CEE region. Its clients are some of the biggest and most innovative banks in countries like Poland, including Finovate alum, mBank, which is also a client.


Check out this video of FINANTEQ’s FinovateFall 2015 demonstration.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: FINANTEQ Helps Innovative Banks Succeed in Mobile with SuperWallet”
  • Check out this week’s “FinDEVr APIntelligence”
  • “Union Bank & Trust Picks Prairie Cloudware’s Digital Payments Guardian to Power its Mobile Wallet”

Around the web

  • Iberiabank to deploy retail and SME platform from D3 Banking.
  • New savings app, Hip Money, featured in new video.
  • Fiserv and Alpha Payments Cloud team up to bring easier, faster payment processing to Australia.
  • Markit to begin using Amazon web services.
  • Earthport launches distributed ledger hub with single API access to Ripple.
  • Network International plans UAE deployment of cashless, cardless payment technology developed by Quisk.
  • TechCrunch: “App Annie Adds Support for Apple TV Apps, Including a ‘Top Charts’ Section”

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

 

Invesco Acquires Jemstep for Undisclosed Sum

Invesco Acquires Jemstep for Undisclosed Sum

Jemstep_homepage_Jan2016

Global investment management firm, Invesco, has acquired Jemstep, a startup that provides digital financial planning resources for professional advisers. Terms of the purchase were not immediately available.

“We believe investors are best served by partnering with a financial adviser to reach their unique investment goals,” says Martin L. Flanagan, Invessco CEO and president. “Jemstep’s proven platform enhances our ability to help advisers grow their business and … deliver superior client experiences in a rapidly evolving market environment.”

Jemstep_FS2013_stage

From left: Jemstep CEO Kevin Cimring and CTO Matthew Rennie demonstrated Jemstep Portfolio Manager at FinovateSpring 2013.

Jemstep is an online investment adviser that specializes in providing personalized advice to help people meet their financial and retirement goals. The company’s Portfolio Manager solution predicts how much money a given investment portfolio is likely to provide in retirement, and suggests alternative investment strategies that may yield even greater returns, including an action plan that specifies exactly what to buy and what to sell in all of their accounts, including 401(k) accounts. Lastly, the platform provides continuous monitoring and alerts to help investors, financial planners, and advisers stay on track.

Jemstep was highlighted in June 2015 by Let’s Talk Payments as one of those companies “pushing the envelope” in payment analytics. The same month, ThinkAdvisor looked at Jemstep in a column on the evolution of financial advisers. In May, Fox Financial Planning Network announced that it would use Jemstep’s Advisor Pro as the automated service platform for its AdvisorTouch Symphony program. And in April 2015, Jemstep partnered with Orion Advisor Services to bring automation to independent advisers on Orion’s platform.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Palo Alto, Jemstep demonstrated its Portfolio Manager at FinovateSpring 2013. Kevin Cimring and Michael Blumenthal are joint CEOs.

FinovateEurope 2016: Themes on the Thames

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As FinovateEurope draws near, we’ve been listening to the themes that will drive innovation in our industry in 2016. Our FinovateEurope 2016 Theme Word Cloud below is a representative sample of what we heard.

FEU2016Themes-FINAL

From APIs and the blockchain to personalization and robo-advisory, the themes of FinovateEurope 2016 remind us how new technologies are helping us with old challenges. The path to frictionless payments, for example, will be paved with technologies like beacons and natural language processing (NLP). Better mobile and online security increasingly will be the product of advanced biometric technologies, machine learning, and the blockchain. And there’s no better way to see these technologies on display than at FinovateEurope.

With that in mind, here’s a look at the current roster of companies that will be demoing live on stage in London in less than a month.

Come join 1,500 fellow fintech fans for what promises to be our biggest FinovateEurope to date. The show returns to Old Billingsgate Hall in London on 9/10 February, and tickets are available now. So visit our registration page today and save your spot at our first fintech conference of the year.

Questions? Visit our FAQ page for answers.


FinovateEurope 2016 is sponsored by The Bancorp and KPMG.

FinovateEurope 2016 is partnered with Acuity Market Intelligence, Aite Group, Bank Innovators Council, BankersHub, BayPay Forum, bob’s guide, Byte Academy, The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, The Cointelegraph, CrowdReviews, Digital Currency Council, The Emerging Payments Association, The Financial Services Club, Fintech Finance, The Fintech Times, Harrington Starr. IDC Financial Insights, Mapa Research, Mercator Advisory Group, The New Economy, Payments & Cards Network, PitchBook, Plus Journal, SME Finance Forum, techUK, The Paypers, Verdict Financial, and World Finance.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: Alerts from Ethoca Foils Fraudsters”
  • “BBVA Compass to Leverage BlackRock-owned FutureAdvisor”

Around the web

  • Fenergo forges strategic partnership with Markit and kyc.com, bringing its client lifecycle management solution to FIs.
  • Union Bank & Trust to leverage Digital Payments Guardian from Prairie Cloudware to power its new bank-branded mobile wallet.
  • SunTrust Bank selects the Enterprise Risk Case Management (ERCM) solution from NICE Actimize.
  • Former FDIC chair Sheila Bair gives Blooom a “ringing endorsement” during a recent visit.
  • Jack Henry & Associates promotes former president David Foss to CEO; Jack Prim transitions to executive chairman of the board.
  • Emailage and Quatrro Processing team up to provide end-to-end, anti-fraud and chargeback-management solutions to merchants.
  • Pymnts talks to Kashoo about connecting with SMEs that procure through Amazon Business.

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

Rage Frameworks Launches LiveWealth Intelligent Agent Platform

Rage Frameworks Launches LiveWealth Intelligent Agent Platform

RAGEFrameworks_homepage_Jan2016

Rage Frameworks unveiled its LiveWealth Intelligent Agent platform this week. The technology, powered by Rage’s aggregation engine, extracts and interprets data from paper and electronic sources and uses semantic intelligence to read both structured and unstructured data. This enables wealth managers to better monitor and act on information that might affect client portfolios.

Rage Frameworks CEO Dr. Venkat Srinivasan called the platform a “pioneering innovation” saying it “delivers the cognitive intelligence and automation capabilities wealth managers require, enhancing their ability to service their institutional and high-net-worth clients.”

RAGEFrameworks_stage_FS2015

From left: Rage Frameworks’ Nick Adams, VP banking solutions, and Aashish Mehta, SVP banking solutions, demonstrated at FinovateSpring 2015.

LiveWealth Intelligent Agent aggregates data from all U.S. and most international custodians, and normalizes it to client-specified formats. The technology is highly configurable, and provides managers with a wall-to-wall audit trail. In addition to a variety of analytics tools, LiveWealth’s Portfolio Analytics engine enables dynamic rebalancing and attribution, including portfolio modeling, multi-asset classification, and benchmark comparisons. The platform can be deployed alongside existing infrastructure without additional coding.

Rage Frameworks was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Dedham, Massachusetts, with offices in Pune and Belgaum, India. Its LiveCredit platform was demoed at FinovateSpring 2015. In November, Rage Frameworks announced a partnership with Genpact, combining artificial intelligence technology with business process automation. In August 2015, the company launched its Real Time Intelligence (RTI) platform for capital markets.

Finovate Debuts: Capriza Makes Enterprise Apps Uber-Easy

Finovate Debuts: Capriza Makes Enterprise Apps Uber-Easy

Capriza_homepage_Dec2015

Nobody needs a manual to use FaceBook, or a handbook to guide them through an Uber app. Why should enterprise software be any different?

Capriza turns complicated business processes into efficient, secure, mobile apps designed around the user’s workflow, not the other way around. The “mobilization” process, as the company calls it, can be finished “in a matter of days” and does not rely on coding, APIs, or integration to turn both packaged and custom solutions into technologies accessible via mobile device as readily as the desktop.

Capriza_stage_FF2015

Capriza VP of Regional Business Development Ivan Prafder demonstrated Capriza at FinovateFall 2015.

“We think of this efficiency that users have come to expect as the ‘one-minute experience,’ Ivan Prafder, Capriza VP of regional business development, said. “By this we mean those who can deliver necessary information in one minute are the winners in today’s technology economy.”

“Examples of this at the retail level abound,” he continued. “But no company today really focuses on enterprise software with this perspective in mind: an SaaS platform that enables businesses to deliver these one-minute experiences,” Prafder said. Until now.

Company facts:

  • Founded in July 2011
  • Headquartered in Palo Alto, California
  • Raised more than $53 million in funding
  • Maintains offices in North America and Europe
  • Yuval Scarlatt is CEO and co-founder

How it works

Capriza_art_1Capriza considers simplicity, personalization, and intelligence to be key factors in building the enterprise software of the future. Pointing out that training on enterprise software often takes a month or more, Capriza rejects the idea of having to “train” users to operate the software.

The technology also should be personal. “No more one-size-fits-all,” says Prafder. “SAP has 15,000 different business processes. Salesforce has 2,000,” he explained. “But in terms of the actual workflows people use, there are probably only fifteen or twenty different processes.” For Capriza, personalization is about “extracting and delivering” the workflows that are relevant to end-users.

“We all use the same app. But we use it differently and rely on different metrics,” Prafder explained. “We allow end-users to determine the metrics that matter to them.”

And finally, Prafder says, the technology has to be smart. “Legacy applications are like having to press refresh over and over just to see if you’ve got new email.”

Capriza_art_2

During their Finovate demo, Capriza Senior Solutions Engineer Stephen Insdorf showed how a CEO or manager of a business could use a Capriza-powered app to perform executive functions like requisition approval by mobile device. But the majority of the company’s presentation was dedicated to proving how easy and quick it was to build, test, and deploy a “mobilized app” with Capriza.

Insdorf showed how, with a simple combination of pull-down menus and drag-and-drop options, a designer creates features like login and approval pages. Capriza’s real-time access allows designers to work on both sides of the screen for speed and accuracy. Designers can select and automate processes on a single page as well as across pages, and individual records can be used to quickly build a template or to set fields for the entire dataset.

Capriza_art_3

“Having the functionality is great,” Insdorf said. “But delivering a crisp experience for the user is essential.” To that end, Insdorf showed how the platform’s style-tools enabled him to reconfigure data and tables in order to create different user experiences. “However you want to curate this ability for the user, you are absolutely within your capability to do this quickly and easily with our platform,” Insdorf said. Designers test their completed apps on the platform for quality assurance before using the platform to distribute it to users.

The future

Capriza has enjoyed “enormous traction” in financial services, banking, and insurance. They credit this mostly to the strict regulatory environment and the shift away from both cash and brick-and-mortar. In the first case, Capriza helps financial service professionals operate more efficiently by reducing complexity. In the second case, Capriza helps FIs and other businesses take advantage of the growth of the mobile channel and the willingness of consumers to deal more directly with technology. “In the last five to seven years, users have become true information consumers who want to interact directly with the software—without a middleman,” Prafder said.

Over the last quarter, Capriza has signed 12 customers in the financial services industry. One company in Europe has a “$3 billion transformation agenda” for which Capriza is a “key piece.” A variety of other industries have also shown interest in the technology, including government and technology, media, entertainment, and hospitality.

Capriza_art_4

Prafder said the company’s vision for the future remains centered around “delivering user-centric apps for the enterprise” without making dramatic asks on enterprise IT structure. “It’s a huge win for them,” he said. “The pain of migration isn’t there. No rip and replace.” According to Prafder, Capriza sits on top of the enterprise-application stack, focused on the 5% of critical workflows that can drive 80% to 85% of missed productivity gains. He added that Capriza is helping enterprises “leverage the richness they have already built.”


Check out Capriza’s demo video from FinovateFall 2015

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Rage Frameworks Launches LiveWealth Intelligent Agent Platform”

Around the web

  • Top Image Systems secures $100,000 contract with major Israeli B2B e-commerce provider.
  • Kasasa by BancVue forms strategic investment partnership with The Riverside Company; rebrands as Kasasa.
  • EconoTimes Business highlights Betterment in a look at the way the low fees of robo-advisers benefit retirees.

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

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • CUneXus Raises $1 Million, Signs Partnership with Edmunds.com”

Around the web

  • Tradeshift brings its procure-to-pay solution to Zurich Insurance Group.
  • Suffolk Country National Bank to deploy Fiserv technology to improve customer experience.
  • FIS joins the CardLinx Alliance.
  • Signifyd adds Bill McKiernan, founder of CyberSource, to its board.
  • Shoeboxed earns a spot on NerdWallet’s list of must-have apps for entrepreneurs.
  • Trade IT named runner-up in Wealth Management category of the Fin Track Awards for its Trading Ticket solution.
  • Nostrum Group CEO Richard Carter featured on the cover of the Yorkshire Business Insider.
  • Topicus Finance mentioned in Banken.nl column on the rise of crowdfunding in the Netherlands.
  • Simon Cadbury of Intelligent Environments writes about digital-only banks for TechWeek Europe.
  • “European Breakout List for 2016” features several Finovate alums.

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

 

Gem Raises $7 Million in Series A

Gem Raises $7 Million in Series A

Gem_homepage_FinDEVr2015

In a round led by Pelion Venture Partners, blockchain technology specialist and FinDEVr alum Gem raised $7.1 million in funding. Also participating in the Series A were:

  • Amplify.LA
  • Blockchain Capital
  • Danmar Capital
  • Digital Currency Group
  • Drummond Road Capital
  • KEC Ventures
  • RRE Ventures
  • Tamarisk Global
  • Tekton Ventures

Angel investor James Joaquin also participated in the financing, which takes Gem’s total capital to $12 million, according to Crunchbase. Ben Dahl of Pelion Venture Partners and Bitium CEO Scott Kriz will join Gem’s board of directors.

Gem_stage_FinDEVr2015

Gem CEO and founder Micah Winkelspecht spoke on “Redefining Banking from the Ground Up” at FinDEVr 2015 in San Francisco.

In a statement at the Gem blog, the company highlighted its vision for distributed ledger technology as part of a “‘blockchain economy’ that forms the underlying architecture of our daily lives: from capital markets to patient care, supply chains to logistics, property rights to digital rights management.”

Gem makes it easier for companies to use blockchain technology by turning complex processes into modular, bitcoin APIs and then leveraging its platform to scale and automatically deploy. Gem recently developed a multi-signature bitcoin API for developers, and is currently building a “modular platform for blockchain applications” that has broad-use cases for many different industries.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Venice, California, Gem debuted at FinDEVr 2015.