Vantiv Brings its Payment and Processing Solutions to the USPS

Vantiv Brings its Payment and Processing Solutions to the USPS

Vantiv_homepage_June2015

The United States Postal Service has picked Vantiv to provide it with an array of payment solutions and processing services. The partnership will include risk and data security solutions, encryption and tokenization technology, and more.

The financial terms of the partnership were not immediately available. Vantiv says that its technology will be used at more than 33,000 USPS locations in the United States, Asia, and Latin America.

Talking about the agreement, group president of merchant and financial institution services at Vantiv, Royal Cole said that his company’s “highly flexible, scalable, and easily integrated solutions” were ideal for the kind of sizable retail customer base served every day by the USPS. “This contract with the Postal Service is another example of how the strength of Vantiv’s omnichannel commerce-solutions, innovative capabilities, and service leadership is helping us win new clients,” said Cole.

Vantiv_FF2014_stage

(Left to right): Coy Christensen, VP product development, and Jesse Kunicki, development manager, for Vantiv, demonstrated TriPOS at FinovateFall 2014 in New York.

Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Vantiv made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2014 where it presented its TriPOS payment-integration platform. The third-largest merchant-transaction acquirer in the United States, and the number-one PIN debit acquirer, Vantiv processes 17 billion payment transactions and more than $600 billion in volume each year. Vantiv became a public company in March 2012 (market cap $6 billion), and trades under the NYSE symbol, VNTV.

In recent years, Vantiv has launched a variety of omnichannel, e-commerce solutions such as Vantiv Mobile Checkout and Vantiv Mobile Accept in partnership with AT&T and Sprint. The company has been an active acquirer, scooping up Element Payment Services in 2013 for $163 million and Mercury Payment Systems in 2014 for $1.65 billion.

TipRanks Takes Top Prize at IBM Watson Hackathon in Israel

TipRanks Takes Top Prize at IBM Watson Hackathon in Israel

TipRanks_homepage_June2015

Stock market analysis service TipRanks won first place at the IBM Watson Hackathon in Tel Aviv, Israel. The company’s winning solution was StockRadar, an application that leverages the AI of Watson to provide insights into stock market sentiment.

StockRadar determines which stocks have the most positive or negative sentiment, as expressed in both financial news and social media. For the hackathon, the application surveyed more than 80,000 news articles and 30,000 tweets.

The IBM Hackathon took place on 10/11 June 2015 and was the first Watson Hackathon event hosted in Israel. Applications were developed on IBM’s Bluemix platform, and the winning team was awarded a trip to visit the IBM Watson Labs in New York City.

TipRanks called the day-and-a-half hackathon “challenging and fun.” The company was especially glad to “have a working PoC (proof of concept) that (we) can integrate into our existing service. Very exciting.”

StockRadar_screenshot

Going forward, TipRanks will be integrating the capabilities developed through the StockRadar hack into the TipRanks dashboard. The company also plans to do some quantitative research to see just how positive and negative sentiment extremes can affect intermediate-term price-movement.

Founded in June 2012 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, TipRanks demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2013 in New York and FinovateSpring 2013 in San Francisco, winning Best of Show honors on both occasions.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • TipRanks Takes Top Prize at IBM Watson Hackathon in Israel

Around the web

  • Greg Smith and Chris Costello of Blooom discuss simplifying 401(k) management with Fox Business News.
  • Nilesh Dusane, Ripple Labs VP for global sales and client relations, talks about distributed ledgers and the future of payments.
  • EZBOB announces Everline as the sole channel for intermediary businesses.
  • Nomis Solutions teams up with Oliver Wyman to help FIs boost profitability in their retail deposit portfolios.
  • Temenos opens new office in Helsinki, Finland.
  • The Financial Brand highlights the need for banks to compete with Mint, MX, D3, Yodlee, Meniga, Geezeo, and Strands.
  • Investopedia features FutureAdvisor’s use for college savings.
  • Ping Identity enhances partner program with new options, benefits and requirements for partners in three programs.
  • BCSG appoints Deutsche Telekom’s Simon Lunn as COO.
  • Strategic News Service FiRe tech conference names ValidSoft a 2015 FiReStarter Company.
  • ProfitStars Banno Mobile named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: North American Mobile Banking Software Solutions 2015 Vendor Assessment.
  • Huffington Post considers advice from Scott Cook, Intuit co-founder.
  • Remember, the application deadline for the Fall 2015 cohort for the SixThirty accelerator is Friday, 10 July 2015.

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.

Azimo Lands $20 Million Series B Investment Led by Frog Capital

Azimo Lands $20 Million Series B Investment Led by Frog Capital

Azimo_homepage_June2015

Happy International Family Remittance Day! And one international money-transfer startup is celebrating in style.

London-based Azimo has just secured a $20 million investment from a team of new and existing investors. The funding takes Azimo’s total capital to $31 million, and puts the company’s valuation at an estimated $100 million.

Frog Capital led the round, with participation from MCI Investments, e-ventures, Greycroft Partners, and other investors. Azimo said that it will use the capital to continue expansion in Europe and to enter markets in both North America and Asia.

“Azimo is just getting started on its mission to change the sector,” said company CEO Michael Kent. “But already we serve hundreds of thousands of customers and have built the most comprehensive global network of any digital money transfer business.”

Iyad Omari of Frog Capital pointed to the $600 trillion size of the global money-transfer business, and the fact that companies like Azimo were at the forefront of taking this business online and mobile. Frog Capital invests in IT, digital media, and resource efficiency startups that are growing more than 40%. Over the past five years, the London-based firm has exited companies with a total transaction value of more than €1 billion.

Azimo_MichaelKent_FEU2013

Azimo CEO and founder Michael Kent demoed his company’s international money-transfer service at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

Azimo’s platform has connected more than 5 billion people, helping transfer money to more than 200 countries in more than 80 different currencies. In addition to experiencing a five-fold, year-over-year increase in the number of money transfers, Azimo was a finalist at the Fintech Innovation Awards this spring; expanded its service to Romania, China, and Thailand in February; and expanded to eight West African countries and the Philippines in January.

Within the international remittance economy, the business of migrant workers sending money back home is a point of emphasis and distinction for Kent and Azimo. In his statement announcing the new investment, Kent acknowledged the International Day of Family Remittances, adding that “these funds will allow us to further expand our services and continue to give the world’s migrants a better deal.”

Founded in 2012, Azimo demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

Narrative Science Launches Quill Portfolio Review

Narrative Science Launches Quill Portfolio Review

NarrativeScience_homepage_June2015

According to Narrative Science, wealth managers today are challenged to provide better results for their clients, at a faster rate, and under tighter regulatory scrutiny than ever before.

Fortunately, help is on the way in the form of Quill Portfolio Review, a new solution from Narrative Science made available this week. Quill Portfolio Review leverages the company’s core technology to make it easier for wealth managers to engage with their customers in a far more personalized, efficient way.

Narrative Science CEO Stuart Frankel said, “With Quill, leading financial organizations are providing automated, fully compliant and custom communications for millions of clients that give them the power to understand investments and make financial decisions about their futures.”

 

NarrativeScience_FF2013_stage

From left: Tim Bixler, Credit Suisse managing director and global head of HOLT; Kris Hammond, Narrative Science chief scientist, demonstrated Quill at FinovateFall 2013.

Quill, the core technology behind the solution, was first introduced to Finovate audiences at FinovateSpring 2013. Quill takes structured data and “mines it for meaning and insight.” The platform then renders those insights in a natural language document that can be anything from a tweet to a major research document.

“As a horizontal platform, Quill is subject-matter agnostic,” Frankel explained. “Now we are focused on building specific products for specific problems.”

In the financial services space, Quill technology is being used to create institutional portfolio commentary, a solution they’ve been selling to large mutual funds and asset managers for the past year or so. Creating this material on a quarterly basis has been historically both very expensive and time-consuming. But Quill has turned this process from a matter of weeks to a matter of seconds. “It used to take an army of people” to put these together every quarter, Frankel explained.

NarrativeScience_NLdoc_sample

Pictured: A sample client letter from Quill Portfolio Review.

Narrative Science is now ramping up development of tools like the wealth-management-reporting solution being used for institutional portfolio commentary. Quill Portfolio Review is the latest example.

Frankel argued that the fundamental problem addressed by Quill and Narrative Science is how to turn all the data that we collect into truly actionable information. While infographics and 3-D visualizations can be illuminating, there is still no better way to convey data than through a story, a narrative. And that’s precisely what Narrative Science’s technology does.

StuartFrankel_NarrativeScience“Compare that with what happens today,” Frankel said. “You log into some proprietary interface, see a table, closing prices, up arrows, down arrows, pie charts, indices … And you either feel good or bad compared to a benchmark that you probably don’t understand.”

The result is the very definition of a poor user experience. “The idea to make consumers do more work doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Frankel. Instead, he suggests, “Why not actually pull out the information that the individual investor needs to make individual decisions and give it to them in a natural language document?”

As such, Quill Portfolio Review can be thought of as having two parts. The first is the personalized narrative communications for the client. The second is the portfolio analysis conducted in natural language for financial advisers. And in the same way that a better user experience is key to better engagement with the client, providing performance analyses and goal-based portfolio summaries is a major productivity enhancement for advisers.

There is a real compliance aspect to this solution, as well. He pointed out that financial advisers are talking with clients and each other on an ad hoc basis all the time, all day. “That’s a lot of interactions taking place outside the walls of the institution that could be running up against rules and regulations about various disclosures, privacy, etc,” Frankel said. Quill can be configured in a compliant way, reducing institutional risk.

Narrative Science will present Quill Portfolio Review at In|Vest with customer and investor, USAA, on Thursday, 18 July 18 2015 at the New York Hilton Midtown.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Narrative Science was last on the Finovate stage in the fall of 2013. Chief Scientist Kris Hammond was joined by Credit Suisse Managing Director Tim Bixler in demonstrating Quill.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Azimo Lands $20 Million in Series B Investment Led by Frog Capital
  • Narrative Science Launches Quill Portfolio Review

Around the web

  • INETCO teams up with Printec Partners to bring customer transaction data and analytics to FIs in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • MasterCard to provide tokenization support for private-label credit cards used in digital wallets.
  • Dwolla joins steering committee of Fed Fast Task Force dedicated to creating a faster payment system.
  • iSignthis partners with IPGPAY Ltd., bringing online identity-verification to clients in the Asia Pacific region.
  • Avalara acquires Belgium-based VAT Applications. Check out Avalara at FinDEVr on 6/7 October 2015 in San Francisco.
  • Kabbage partners with UPS Capital Partners to offer more SMBs access to a loan through UPS. Kabbage will present at FinDEVr in San Francisco this 6/7 October.
  • SandHill mentions SnoopWall as 1 of 5 cool, pre-VC cybersecurity startups.
  • First Data launches Clover Mini for accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, and other NFC-enabled wallets.
  • Thinking Capital announces new name, visual identity and tagline.
  • Insuritas partners with Gate City Bank to install insurance-agency solution in the North Dakota-based bank.
  • BizEquity signs distribution agreement with Four Seasons Financial Group, a wholesale insurance and investments provider for institutional markets.
  • Social Money and Sallie Mae Partner to Create New Digital Banking Solution.
  • The Coin Telegraph talks open source software and fintech innovation with Quantopian.

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.

Intelligent Environments to Enable Online Banking with Emojis Instead of Passwords

Intelligent Environments to Enable Online Banking with Emojis Instead of Passwords

IntelligentEnviroments_homepage_June2015

Do we dare call it “emoji-metric authentication”?

Courtesy of Intelligent Environments, online banking customers in the U.K. will soon be able to access their online banking accounts using emojis instead of passwords. The emoji-password technology is now a part of the Intelligent Environments online banking app, currently available on Android. Intelligent Environments says that it is in conversations with banks looking at making the technology and the app available to customers “within the next 12 months.”

Online banking customers will use a combination of four emoji characters (chosen from 44 different options) instead of PINs or alphanumerical passwords. Intelligent Environments says that its emoji-based passcode technology is more secure than traditional passwords, having “480 times more permutations … over traditional four-digit passcode.” The emoji passcode also has the benefit of being relatively easier to remember for many people compared to recalling traditional passwords.

IntelligentEnvironments_emojipasscode

“Our research shows 64% of millennials regularly communicate using only emojis,” said Intelligent Environments Chairman David Webber. “So we decided to reinvent the passcode for a new generation by developing the world’s first emoji security technology.”

See a video of the technology at work here.

Intelligent Environments demonstrated its AppSensorFS technology at FinovateEurope 2015. AppSensorFS helps FIs using Intelligent Environments’ multichannel banking platform, Interact, to identify and neutralize security threats in real-time.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Intelligent Environments to Enable Online Banking with Emojis Instead of Passwords

Around the web

  • KeyPoint Credit Union ($1 billion in assets) to deploy Architect Banking Solution from ACI Worldwide.
  • Misys welcomes Simon Paris, president and chief sales officer.
  • Wipro introduces its e-KYC solution based on its AI platform, Wipro HOLMES.
  • The 42 looks at Lending Club and Zopa in its feature on why people “should embrace P2P lending.”
  • EverSafe celebrates “World Elder Abuse Awareness Day” with its top tips to prevent elder financial exploitation.
  • Business Insider previews the looming competition between Stripe and Klarna as the former enters the Nordic market.
  • Pacific Life chooses GMC Inspire from GMC Software Technology to improve customer communication workflow.
  • IR Magazine highlights StockViews in a column on how innovations in fintech impact investor relations.
  • NerdWallet turns to Trulioo CEO Stepehn Afford on the topic of protecting small businesses from cyberthreats.
  • Renaud Laplanche of Lending Club wins spot among Glassdoor’s Highest Rated Small Business CEOs for 2015.
  • The Seattle Times profiles LendingRobot.

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.

Knox Offers Free, Premium Options and Easier API Integration

Knox Offers Free, Premium Options and Easier API Integration

KnoxPayments_homepage_June2015

What’s better than 18-cent ACH transactions?

For many users of the innovative, ACH-based payments platform from Knox Payments, the answer is “free.”

Knox Payments announced it is now offering both free and premium options for users of its payments platform. Users will be able to make up to 50 transactions a month for free. After that, Professional and Enterprise subscriptions will be available for $40 a month for up to 1,000 transactions a month for Professional, and $100 a month for unlimited monthly transactions at the Enterprise level. All subscribers get real-time reporting; top-tier bank access; PCI/US Patriot/SSAE 16 compliance; and a new feature, the Knox Button, that provides easy integration with the platform.

Knox_FS2015_stage

Knox CEO and founder, Thomas Eide demonstrated Knox Assured and Knox Verified at FinovateSpring 2015.

Professional and Enterprise subscribers will also get recurring payments functionality and API access. Enterprise-level customers also will be able to add features like balance updating and next-day deposits as well, for additional monthly fees.

Knox also offers a “Good Funds” subscription of 0.5% per monthly transaction volume. The rest of the feature-set for Good Funds subscribers is identical to what is offered at the Enterprise level.

Knox has demonstrated its technologies at both Finovate and FinDEVr conferences. The company’s most recent Finovate appearance was a demonstration of its Knox Assured and Knox Verified solutions at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose. See the company’s FinDEVr San Francisco 2014 presentation here.

Are you a fitness developer, builder, or hacker? FinDEVr returns to the Bay Area 6/7 October 2015 for two days of insightful presentations and high-caliber networking with some of fintech’s most innovative technical talent. Find out more at out FinDEVr page. Tickers are on sale now.

Klarna Hires Former American Express Exec as New CCO

Klarna Hires Former American Express Exec as New CCO

Klarna_homepage_June2015

Updated: Former American Express executive Michael Rouse will be joining Klarna as the company’s chief commercial officer. In his new position, Rouse will be responsible for new business development, revenue management, and global partnerships and solutions.

In a statement, CEO and Klarna co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski called Rouse a “perfect addition” as the company looks to expand its global reach. “We’re gearing up to become the world’s favorite way to buy,” Siemiatkowski said.

MichaelRouse_Klarna_croppedFor his part, Rouse called Klarna “the most exciting company in payments.” He pointed to the company’s ability to “leverage data from more than 35 million consumers” as key to Klarna’s ability to develop solutions that will improve the shopping experience for consumers and boost conversion rates for retailers.

Rouse’s seven years at American Express included executive responsibilities in global sales, business development, and marketing. In his final capacity at American Express, Rouse ran the company’s flagship loyalty program, Membership Rewards loyalty program, forging partnerships with companies like Amazon, Ticketmaster, and Uber.

Klarna was profiled recently in the Financial Times and The Independent, and the company’s head of expansion, Jens Saltin was interviewed earlier this month by StrategyEye. Klarna expanded operations to the United States in the fall of 2014, hiring Bill Billingsley away from Alliance Data to serve as Klarna’s chief executive officer for North America.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012 in San Francisco. Some of the company’s key metrics are below:

  • Commands 10% of the e-commerce market share for Northern Europe
  • Operates in 18 markets
  • Maintains 1,200 employees
  • Works with 50,000 merchants
  • Handles 250,000 transactions a day
  • Serves 35 million total end customers

Klarna acquired SOFORT in 2014. SOFORT made its Finovate debut the following year at FinovateEurope 2015.

Ixaris Launches Initial Phase of Open Payments Ecosystem (OPE) Project

Ixaris Launches Initial Phase of Open Payments Ecosystem (OPE) Project

Ixaris_homepage_June2015

In fintech, compliance and security concerns often trump the promise of developer-friendly, open technologies. Payments solutions provider Ixaris has launched the initial phase of its €4 million Open Payments Ecosystem (OPE) project to change that.

The OPE is made possible with the support of the European Commission’s Horizon2020. The goals of the project are twofold:

  1. To make it easier for developers to build payment apps for banks by embracing Open APIs.
  2. To make it easier for banks to safely access new payment technologies by providing resources like curated app marketplaces.

The project features six “sub-systems,” each representing a different stage in the life cycle of payment services.

  1. A developer environment for payments app development and testing.
  2. A payments application store.
  3. A secure execution environment that prevents the original developer from accessing live customer data.
  4. A compliance system for the life cycle of the app.
  5. The ability to add additional service offerings for payment service providers
  6. A comprehensive data warehouse for business intelligence

Alex Mifsud, Ixaris CEO, hopes to bring the innovation-driving power of Open APIs to the world of fintech. “Unlike in other industries, Open APIs have yet to emerge as a key driver of innovation in the payment industry,” Mifsud said. And while citing understandable compliance and security concerns, Mifsud believes OPE can provide a model of “how an open access approach to payments will create truly game-changing payment applications.”

Ixaris_FEU2015_stage

From left: Patrick Abela, product director, and Reno Scerri, pre-sales and solutioning manager, of Ixaris demonstrated Ixaris Payment Server at FinovateEurope 2015 in London.

EU Horizon2020 is dedicated to ensuring European technology competitiveness through innovation. The program will spend nearly €80 billion over seven years (from 2014 through 2020), as well as additional private investment, to help companies develop technologies that will ultimately lead to greater economic growth and more jobs.

Companies and organizations select projects from a wide variety of “calls for proposals” available for viewing online at the program website. Proposals are judged by an independent panel of specialists in the respective fields, and companies are typically informed of the funding decision after five months. A grant agreement is then provided specifyng the innovation or research to be pursued, duration of the project, and budget, including the European Commission’s contribution. Learn more about the process here.

The project Ixaris will be working on through mid-2017 is designed to meet the objective of an “Open Disruptive Innovative Scheme”, implemented through SMEs, that helps move innovative ideas in the ICT sector from initial harvesting through prototyping, real-world demonstration, and eventual market deployment. The goal is to increase profitability and growth of the SMEs using the technologies, to gain market penetration and distribution of the innovations, and to encourage private investment, either in the form of co-investment or follow-on investments in previously supported companies. The total cost of the project is €4.2 million with the European Commission contributing €2.5 million.

Founded in September 2000 and headquartered in London, Ixaris has demonstrated its technologies on the Finovate stage as recently as February at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is a specialist in developing apps based on open-loop prepaid card schemes such as Visa and MasterCard, and was named to the FinTechCity’s FinTech 50 in January. As of March 2015, Ixaris had raised $10 million in equity financing.

Looking for an opportunity to hear from and network with fintech’s most innovative developers? FinDEVr returns to San Francisco, 6/7 October 6. Don’t miss out: presale discounts for both builders and non builders are available. Visit our FinDEVr San Francisco page for more information.

And be sure to keep up with fintech developer news in our weekly FinDEVr APIntelligence developer-news roundup every Wednesday.

 

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • SumUp Unveils New Financing of Undisclosed Amount
  • FinDEVr 2015: First Round of Presenting Companies Revealed
  • Ixaris Launches Initial Phase of Open Payment Ecosystem (OPE) Project

Around the web

  • Prosper to charge fee for investors who bundle loans into bonds.
  • Spreedly now supports third-party tokens.
  • US Bank signs five-year renewal for Fiserv digital payment suite, including CheckFree RXP, Popmoney, and TransferNow solutions.
  • LendingTree announces new CFO, COO, CTO, and CRO.
  • PYMNTS.com interviews Jonathan Hancock, TSYS director of fraud-management solutions.
  • Lending Robot launches new, default ‘fully automated’ mode, that allows users to set a risk profile on a slider bar.
  • Lending Club partners with nonprofit Opportunity Fund to feed loans rejected by Lending Club.
  • Backbase set to launch its first hackathon, 19/20 June 2015.
  • EuroNews features Kabbage, Lending Club, and On Deck.
  • Actiance launches Actiance Trusted Communities to enable companies to communicate with counterparts while meeting regulations.
  • Blackhawk Network to acquire Achievers Corp.
  • Global Debt Registry makes Account Extinguishment Reports (AERs) available free to consumers using its Debt Lookup service.
  • Top Image Systems Achieves Certification with PaperStream IP Image Enhancement Solution.

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.