Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bitbond, Cardlytics, CashEdge, Kony Solutions, MicroStrategy, MX, peerTransfer, Ripple, ThreatMetrix, Toopher, TradeHero, Trustev, WattzOn
  • Business Standard looks at the partnership between TradeHero and OANDA.
  • P2Binvestor reaches $50 million invoices-funded milestone.
  • Ripple Labs adds former State Department policy official, Anja Manuel, as advisor.
  • peerTransfer picks Digital River to provide payment processing.
  • Trustev Wins Most Disruptive Technology Award at SXSW.
  • WattzOn to participate in Georgetown University Energy Prize competition to help communities reduce energy consumption.
  • Toopher raises $200,000 of planned $300k financing round.
  • Fifth Third Bank launches online money movement solution from CashEdge.
  • Finovate Debuts: How Bitbond Leverages Bitcoin to Benefit Borrowers and Lenders.
  • Madrid-based Banco Mare Nostrum implements MicroStrategy as its analytics standard to drive analysis and insight for its employees.
  • American Banker features David Pinski’s move from a bank to a startup, Zumigo.
  • Payment Week interviews Cardlytics on how big data is changing consumer engagement.
  • American Banker: Ripple Labs hires Anja Manuel, a former U.S. State Department official, as company adviser.
  • Ovum names Kony a leader, recognizes it for its comprehensive cloud-based mobile solution.
  • ThreatMetrix enhances TrustDefender Mobile to help businesses meet new payment card industry data security standards.
  • Spring and All: FinovateSpring 2015 Presenters Revealed!

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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Trustev Wins Most Disruptive Technology Award at SXSW

Trustev Wins Most Disruptive Technology Award at SXSW
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Trustev, Uncategorized

Trustev_highreslogo_FEU14     The best in Texas? This morning, it’s Irish security startup, Trustev.

Trustev won the Decoded Fashion competition at the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. The company, which specializes in real-time fraud prevention, bested nine other finalists and more than 120 total applications to take top honors – and a cash prize of $5,000.

“This competition was meant to gain visibility for new startups with the potential to impact the future shopping experience,” said Decoded Fashion president and founder Liz Bacelar, speaking of the finalist field. Applicants included startups with specialties in e-commerce, data analytics, in-store retail technology, and mobile payments.
Trustev_FEU14_stage

The win at SXSW was Trustev’s second Texas triumph in a row. Trustev won the SXSW Accelerator Award for Top Enterprise Startup last year, just as the company was making its U.S. launch – and a month after the Trustev’s demo at FinovateEurope 2014.

The event, which was part of the festival’s “lifestyle hub” SXstyle, was sponsored by retail real estate operator, the Simon Group. Judges were Christa Allen (Simon Group), Jonathan Shieber (TechCrunch), Josh Goldman (Norwest Ventures), and Skyler Fernandes (Simon Venture Group).

Trustev was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Cork, Ireland. The company was founded by Pat Phelan (CEO) and Chris Kennedy (CTO), and demoed its Trustev Retail Decision technology at FinovateEurope 2014.

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Alumni News– March 17, 2015

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Bluefin Payment Systems, Expensify, Kabbage, LendUp, PaySimple, SocietyOne, Yoyo
  • NerdWallet looks at Kabbage and LendUp as innovators in combining social media and lending.
  • Westlake Financial Services to deploy billpay solution from ACI Worldwide.
  • Bluefin Payment Systems partners with PCI University to provide PCI compliance education suite to Bluefin’s merchant base.
  • P2P Banking highlights Society One’s role in Australian P2P lending.
  • PaySimple now powers the payments, scheduling and reporting services for RainMaker, a membership management solution for martial arts schools.
  • Finovate Debuts: Yoyo is More than Just a Mobile Wallet.

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, FinDEVr Alums Provide Data for FinTech Sandbox

Finovate, FinDEVr Alums Provide Data for FinTech Sandbox
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Uncategorized

If you are a fintech startup, then few things are more important than access to financial market data.

And for those companies participating in the FinTech Sandbox, an “enabler of startups” that begins March 26 in Boston, that access just got even easier.

Cloud-based financial markets data provider Xignite will join the FinTech Sandbox’s roster of data partners. This roster includes three other companies fintech fans will be familiar with: Finovate alum Yodlee and FinDEVr alums Tradier and Plaid.

FinTechSandBox_homepage

“Market data is the lifeblood of fintech,” said Xignite CEO Stephane Dubois, talking about his company’s participation in the Sandbox. “Without full access to these data points in the early stage of development and testing, many emerging players would not be able to reach their full potential .”

FinTech Sandbox is a nonprofit organization based in Boston that is dedicated to supporting emerging fintech companies. Participants in the six-month program get access to data feeds and APIs from leading data providers, cloud hosting from the program’s infrastructure partners, beta test partners, working office space, and “opportunities to collaborate with a vibrant community of entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, investors, and service providers.” The program begins March 26.

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Alumni News– March 13, 2015

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Uncategorized

Finovate-F-Logo-thumb-100x100-4490-thumb-100x100-8209-thumb-200x200-8210-thumb-200x200-8972-thumb-200x200-8975-thumb-125x125-9061-thumb-125x125-13257-thumb-150x150-13291-thumb-150x150-13321-thumb-125x125-13415

  • StreetShares Secures $200 Million Pledge to Support Loans to Veteran-Owned Small Businesses.
  • Financial Planning takes a look at the rivalry between Charles Schwab and “digital rivals” like Wealthfront, Betterment, and Motif Investing.
  • Tangerine is the first Canadian bank to offer Silanis’ eSignLive technology for customers using personal mobile devices.
  • Report on the growth of crowdfunding spotlights Realty Mogul.
  • EZBOB reaches a “trade finance partnership” with Alibaba, enabling British companies to get lines of credit with the Chinese cloud retail giant.
  • InComm integrates Visa ReadyLink into Walmart’s Rapid Reload network of prepaid card programs.
  • Yahoo Finance lists Mint Bills, Personal Capital, and Credit Karma as 3 of 5 apps that manage your money for you.
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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StreetShares Secures $200 Million Pledge to Support Loans to Veteran-Owned Small Businesses

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Uncategorized

StreetShares

Commitments totalling more than $200 million will help StreetShares focus on its mission to provide loans to veteran-owned small businesses.

Community Investment Management (CIM), Direct Lending Investments, and Eagle Bank Corp will team up to fund $200 million in small business loans over the next four years. Talking about his company’s determination to “put money to work fueling healthy small businesses,” Direct Lending Investments president Brendan Ross said that “marketplace lending is exploding. We are excited about this business partnership with StreetShares and the unique business owners they serve.”

Jacob Haar, CIM managing partner, praised StreetShares’ “responsible and transparent financing to underserved small businesses,” and added that the company’s approach to lending to veteran-owned small businesses would be a positive “long-term value for borrowers, local communities, and investors.”
StreetShares is a peer-to-peer, affinity-based, social lending marketplace that matches accredited investors with eligible small business borrowers. Businesses can apply for loans online or by phone and get preapproved within 24 hours. Companies then provide verification documents and prepare a “business pitch” StreetShares calls “your storefront on the StreetShares marketplace.” Investors on the platform will rely on the company’s “business pitch” in order to decide whether to bid on the company’s loan. Competing investors “win” the right to fund the loan by providing the lowest interest rate.
Applying businesses must be revenue-positive and in operation for at least one year. Loan terms are one and three years for amounts up to $50,000. There are no application fees or prepayment penalties, and funded businesses pay a one-time origination fee between 1.45% and 4.95%. Repayment is managed via a fixed weekly deduction from the company’s verified bank account. Investors on the platform must be “accredited”—meaning individual income of $200,000 or more ($300,000 with spouse) or a net worth of at least $1,000,000, excluding value of primary residence.
According to the company, the majority of its borrowers are small businesses owned by U.S. veterans. Via the platform, StreetShares considers itself the biggest coalition of veteran-based small businesses and service providers in the country. Mark L. Rockefeller, StreetShares CEO who co-founded the company with Mickey Konson, is himself an Iraqi War veteran.
StreetShares made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2015 in London this February. See a live video of their technology demonstration here.

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Risk Ident Makes Finals of MRC METAwards

Risk Ident Makes Finals of MRC METAwards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Risk Ident

risk-ident-logo-thumb-150x42-15075

We reported on RippleShot and BioCatch yesterday. But there is one more company in the field of finalists for the MRC METAwards to mention: two-time Finovate alum, Risk Ident.

Formerly known as Device Ident, Risk Ident specializes in real-time fraud protection for merchants and their customers. The company’s fraud identification technology includes device-fingerprinting solution, DEVICE IDENT, and an all-in-one intelligent anti-fraud solution, FRIDA, that leverages machine learning to automatically filter and analyze transactions.

Risk_Ident_homepage-thumb-500x288-15077

Risk Ident shares the “startup” category with allpago International, and fellow Finovate alum RippleShot. These three companies, along with the three in the “established company” category, will make live presentations at the MRC Vegas 2015 event on March 24-26. The winner will be selected by the attendees on Thursday, March 26.

MRC (Merchant Risk Council) METAwards recognize technological innovation in payments and fraud protection. Finalists were chosen by a panel of leading online merchants. Learn more about the Seattle-based organization.

Founded in 2012 by Roberto Valerio and Paul Jozefak, Risk Ident is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company demoed its Fraud Manager technology at FinovateEurope 2014.

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Alumni News– March 12, 2015

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint, Coinbase, Kabbage, MasterCard, Q2, Temenos, Zooz

Finovate-F-Logo-thumb-100x100-4490-thumb-100x100-8209-thumb-200x200-8210-thumb-200x200-8972-thumb-200x200-8975-thumb-125x125-9061-thumb-125x125-13257-thumb-150x150-13291-thumb-150x150-13321-thumb-125x125-13415

  • Finovate Debuts: AlphaPoint Powers Digital Currency Exchanges Around the World
  • Temenos partners with Microsoft to launch T24 country model bank for Mexico.
  • Coinbase adds support for FIX protocol for trade-order management.
  • Q2 Holdings Completes $116 Million Follow-On Stock Offering
  • CardNotPresent.com reports: Zooz to Expand Globally, Opens London Office
  • MasterCard and Kabbage partner to make Kabbage’s data and platform available through its network of acquirers.

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 Debuts: AlphaPoint Powers Digital Currency Exchanges Around the World

Finovate Debuts: AlphaPoint Powers Digital Currency Exchanges Around the World
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint, Finovate Debuts

AlphaPoint_hires_logo_box-thumb-150x37-14052-thumb-150x37-14053

If setting up an e-commerce marketplace is hard, setting up your own digital currency-exchange may be levels of magnitude more challenging.

Fortunately, there are companies like AlphaPoint that specialize in building customized digital currency exchanges—including bitcoin exchanges—in less than 20 days.

AlphaPoint_homepage

While bitcoin drives the digital currency bus in many ways, the proliferation of cryptocurrencies and altcoins means that exchanging value between alternative and traditional currencies is more complex than ever. AlphaPoint sees its role as two-fold: helping digital currency exchanges cope with the demands of their enterprise clients, and making it possible for startups and new companies to enter the market with the latest in technology.

AlphaPoint statistics

  • Founded in 2013
  • Vadim Telyatnikov is CEO
  • Headquartered in New York, with offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco
  • Powers nearly 20 exchanges in 15 countries across six continents, including the world’s largest Bitcoin/USD exchange, Bitfinex
  • Processes 1 million transactions per second

AlphaPoint_Screenshot_1_stage-thumb-500x304-15069

The story

AlphaPoint CEO Vadim Telyatnikov has referred to his company as the “Intel Inside” of digital currency exchange. As a white-label digital currency-exchange platform, AlphaPoint serves the fintech industry in three main ways.

  • Enabling quick launch of new digital currency exchanges for entrepreneurs and startups in any region, “with liquidity on day one.”
  • Helping established companies looking to add digital currencies to their product mix.
  • Delivering better performance, more functionality, and additional features to existing digital currency exchanges in need of upgrades.

For their Finovate debut, AlphaPoint choose to demonstrate their platform’s newly overhauled front end. Enhancements include new order types, improved scalability, and faster processing speed.

AlphaPoint_Screenshot_2_stage-thumb-500x297-15071

The technology

AlphaPoint 2.0 is a high-performance platform that allows users a wide range of customization options. The platform’s modular, widget-based design gives operators a lot of control over how visual data is displayed. The platform includes six predesigned templates, though users are “encouraged” to develop templates of their own. AlphaPoint also lets FIs configure, track, and trade their own currency pairs and combinations—fiat to fiat, commodity to fiat, and fiat to virtual.

The robust technology features error-detection codes for each record, and quick fail-over support to provide “best-of-breed” security and reliability. The platform also comes with Quantum Front, an system-admin resource that gives operators a wholistic view of users, risk, trading activity and more without being limited to the functionality of a web browser.

AlphaPoint’s platform is available as both a fully branded and white-label solution. The technology is fully supported on both Windows and Linux operating systems, and supports both FIX and FAST API connections to make it easy for traditional FIs in particular to deploy and use.

Joe Ventura, AlphaPoint founder and CTO, has more than 15 years of experience as a software architect at corporations like Deustche Bank and UBS. Talking about the platform, Ventura emphasizes that the technology was built with two things in mind: scalability and security. “Our vision is to make it as seamless as possible for mainstay financial institutions to embrace digital currencies,” Ventura said. “[We] are excited to add these new front-end features to make integration into existing web products even easier for our clients.”

AlphaPoint_Backendview_stage-thumb-500x271-15073

The future

AlphaPoint came into 2015 with the momentum of a $1.35 million fund-raise at its back. Following its Finovate debut in February 2015, PaymentEye called AlphaPoint one of the top demos of day two, and many observers credited the company for helping keep bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the conversation at the London conference.

Asked for his company’s initiatives and goals for 2015, Telyatnikov put greater access to digital currencies at the top of his list. And it is no surprise that he sees AlphaPoint as playing a major role in making that happen. “We are excited to release a stream of new features and products in 2015,” he said. “[We] will make it easier than ever for institutions to embrace digital currencies.”

See AlphaPoint’s live demonstration video from FinovateEurope 2015.

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Q2 Holdings Completes $116 Million Follow-On Stock Offering

Q2 Holdings Completes $116 Million Follow-On Stock Offering
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Q2

Q2logoNew-thumb-200x152-10032-thumb-125x95-10033-thumb-150x114-13234

With sales of 5.8 million shares at $19.75 per share, virtual banking solution-provider Q2 Holdings raised $116 million in capital.

The company itself sold 1.75 million shares, bringing in $34.6 million in new capital. In addition, existing shareholders sold 4.13 million shares. The funding, according to the Austin Business Journal, will provide Q2 with “working capital, including possible acquisitions.”

Formerly Q2ebanking, Q2 Holdings operated through its subsidiary, Q2 Software. The company went public in March 2014, raising $101 million. That year, Q2 had $79 million in revenue and 500 employees.

Q2banking_homepage-thumb-500x284-15058

This month, Q2 announced revenues of just over $22 million, for a 41% year-over-year gain. Q2 CEO Matt Flake called the report “a strong finish to a fantastic year.”

Q2 Holdings trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “QTWO” and is valued at more than $700 million.

The company made headlines in September 2014 with news that Heartland Financial USA was making a 10-bank deployment of Q2’s online banking platform. Based in Austin, Texas, Q2 demoed its risk and fraud analytics technology at FinovateSpring 2011 in San Francisco.

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Rippleshot and BioCatch Earn Finalist Spots in MRC METAwards

Rippleshot and BioCatch Earn Finalist Spots in MRC METAwards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Rippleshot

Finovate-F-Logo-thumb-100x100-4490-thumb-100x100-8209-thumb-200x200-8210-thumb-200x200-8972-thumb-200x200-8975-thumb-125x125-9061-thumb-125x125-13257-thumb-150x150-13291-thumb-150x150-13321-thumb-125x125-13415

I’ll admit it: the only thing better than both Rippleshot and BioCatch making the finals in the MRC METAwards is the possibility that, since they are in different categories, there’s a chance both Finovate alums will take home the gold.

Big-data anti-fraud specialist Rippleshot, and biometric authentication innovator BioCatch, will join four other fintech companies at MRC Vegas 2015 on March 24-26. All six companies will compete in a set of final presentations to determine the winners of the startup and established company categories, respectively.

MRC_homepage

MRC CEO Danielle Nago said the awards serve as a “showcase” for those developing “progressive innovations” when it comes to dealing with payments and fraud. “This collaboration allows merchants to incorporate safe and efficient practices for their customers,” she added.

Competing against Rippleshot in the start-up category are allpago international and Risk Ident. Biocatch squares off against both Adyen and Agari in the established-company category.

Rippleshot_hi_res_FS2014-thumb-150x37-15052Rippleshot made its Finovate debut at our spring conference in 2014. Based in Chicago and founded in June 2013, the company was co-founded by Canh Tran, CEO; Lucas Ward, CTO; Yueyu Fu, CPO; and Chief Scientist Randal Cox. Rippleshot was named one of ten “promising startups, to watch” by the 2014 FinTech Forward Rankings, and won “Startup Up and Comer” honors at the Chicago Innovation Awards in October.

biocatch_logo-thumb-150x39-15054Israel-based BioCatch made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014 in New York. BioCatch provides cloud-based behavioral authentication and threat detection for both mobile and online applications. The company recently launched its New Account Fraud Detection solution, and was featured in November 2014 by American Banker in its line-up of top 10 tech companies to watch.

MRC stands for “Merchant Risk Council.” Based in Seattle with offices in Madrid, Spain, MRC is a global, not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to operational excellence in the field of fraud, payments, and risk in e-commerce.

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Alumni News: March 10, 2015

Alumni News: March 10, 2015
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, CoverHound, CurrencyTransfer, Digital Insight, ebankIT, EyeVerify, Fiserv, iQuantifi, Mambu, MicroStrategy, Rippleshot, Stocktwits, Venmo

Finovate-F-Logo-thumb-100x100-4490-thumb-100x100-8209-thumb-200x200-8210-thumb-200x200-8972-thumb-200x200-8975-thumb-125x125-9061-thumb-125x125-13257-thumb-150x150-13291-thumb-150x150-13321-thumb-125x125-13415

  • CoverHound Raises $14 Million in Series B
  • Mambu partners with NCC Group, adding assurance solution, SaaS Assured.
  • Check out our interview with CurrencyTransfer.com co-founder, Daniel Abrahams.
  • Fiserv makes The Card Collection available to FIs to help accelerate transition to EMV chip cards.
  • Nashville Post reports on iQuantifi and its participation in the Plug and Play accelerator program this spring.
  • All ten of the top apps in U.S. News & World Report’s review of credit union apps were built by Digital Insight.
  • A look at technology in Kansas City features insights from EyeVerify CEO and founder Toby Rush.
  • Rippleshot and BioCatch earn finalist spots in MRC METAwards.
  • Gartner positions MicroStrategy in the “Leader” quadrant of the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms report for eight years in a row.
  • Finovate Debuts: ebankIT’s Solutions Tap into Wearables and Augmented Reality

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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