PayPal Pays $280 Million for Paydiant

PayPal Pays $280 Million for Paydiant

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Mobile payments innovator Paydiant has been acquired by PayPal in a deal believed to be worth $280 million. The acquisition, announced in March, closed today.

A specialist in white-label, cloud-based mobile payment, cardless ATM access, and offer-redemption and -loyalty solutions, Paydiant gives merchants, FIs, and processors the ability to provide and run their own mobile solutions under their own brands.

Welcoming Paydiant to the PayPal family in the company blog, PayPal President and CEO Designee Dan Schulman highlighted the role Paydiant played in helping businesses like Capital One and Subway launch mobile payments and rewards programs. Schulman also reminded readers that Paydiant provides the white-label, mobile platform for MCX’s CurrentC mobile wallet, which is supported by many of the largest retailers in the world, including CVS, Exxon, and Walmart.

According to Schulman, the goal of the acquisition is to offer merchants the opportunity to build their own branded wallets. He explained that this “will accelerate mobile-in-store payments … and drive consumer engagement through loyalty, offers, and the prioritization of preferred payment types, such as store-branded credit cards and gift cards.”

Paydiant was founded in 2010 by Chris Gardner and Kevin Laracey. Headquartered in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2013 in a joint demonstration with FIS.

Finovate Debuts: Telenor Banka’s Synergy of Telco and Banking Brings Financial Innovation to Serbia

Finovate Debuts: Telenor Banka’s Synergy of Telco and Banking Brings Financial Innovation to Serbia

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Telenor has leveraged its success as a telecommunications company to build the first fully online and mobile-direct bank in Serbia, Telenor Banka. For its Finovate debut, the company teamed up with Asseco SEE to demonstrate its Automated Online Handset Loan powered by ASEB Multichannel Solution.

The solution enables customers to easily apply for a loan to purchase a new mobile device. Using a combination of banking and telecommunications transaction data, offers are customized, relevant, and likelier to be used.

Telenor Banka facts:

  • Opened in September 2014
  • Has 130 employees
  • Part of the Telenor Group with 186 million mobile subscriptions in 13 markets

The story

The “Tele” in Telenor stands for Telco, which is a large part of what Telenor Banka brings to the table. The bank was founded in 1996 as ALCO bank, but changed its name and ownership to Telenor Banka in 2014, when it became a member of Telenor Group. The goal was to provide the citizens of Serbia with modern and innovative mobile and online financial services through Telenor Banka.

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At left: Martin Navratil, chairman of the executive committee for Telenor banka, presented at FinovateEurope 2015.

The presented innovation platform enables Telenor Banka’s customers in Serbia to get customized offers by two industries in one place— telecommunications and banking. The demo version of the solution is an example of a fully automated and personalized online offer of purchase loans for smart devices, personalized to the customers’ needs in real time.

While the company anticipates adding other service providers to this centralized dashboard, the current technology already offers customers conveniences such as a bill pay solution called “Bills on Click”; P2P payments to a phone number or email; and, launched in Dec 2014, the interest-free loans for purchasing smart devices from Telenor.

And in partnering with Asseco SEE, Telenor Banka has extended this service a step further with its Automated Handset Online Loan. The access to banking and telecommunications data alerts the platform that a bank customer may be in the market for a new smartphone. Moreover, the platform can extend a loan to the bank customer that not only offers rates and terms that are compatible with the customer’s financial situation, but also personalized telecommunications services and products that would make the most sense given the customer’s history.

Moving back and forth between the Telco and the banking functions of the platform is seamless for both the customer on the front end and the bank on the back end. Credit scoring, AML and KYC all take place on the platform, and relevant agreements and contracts from both the telecom and the bank are generated immediately for the consumer.

The future

Telenor Banka followed up its Finovate debut with a major milestone: the company celebrated its 50,000th account opened, making Telenor Banka one of the fastest-growing banks in the CEE region. According to Martin Navratil, chairman of the executive board and managing director, Telenor Banka is “focused on providing easy-to-use financial services and shifting from traditional banking to innovative, customer-oriented mobile solutions.” The technology demonstrated in February is scheduled to be available in the second half of 2015.

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Seven months after its launch, the company has enjoyed growth of more than 50% a month, and sees its future very much focused on continuing to serve the Serbian market. “We will probably see examples of other services expanding to a smartphone user-interface as well,” Navratil said. “The more players joining the arena, the faster the market will develop and move forward.”

Read our Finovate Debut feature of Telenor Banka’s FinovateEurope 2015 partner, Asseco SEE.


See Telenor banka’s live demonstration from FinovateEurope 2015.

Multifactor Authentication Specialist Toopher Acquired by Salesforce

Multifactor Authentication Specialist Toopher Acquired by Salesforce

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(Left to right): Toopher co-founders CTO Evan Grim and CEO Josh Alexander demonstrated their multifactor authentication technology at FinovateFall 2014.

When word hit the Finovate office that Austin, Texas-based, multifactor authentication specialist Toopher had agreed to be acquired by Salesforce, we all had the same question in mind:

Will Salesforce get the drone too?

What’s certain is that the purchase of Toopher will give the cloud-computing innovator a powerful solution to offer customers looking for multifactor authentication.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Including $200k in debt financing raised in March, Toopher’s total is $3 million.

According to the Austin Business Journal, Toopher’s seven workers will remain in Austin as employees of Salesforce. The Journal also notes that conversations between Toopher and Salesforce began a year ago, with “acquisition discussions” starting in 2015. The company has discontinued selling its own products as it makes the transition (although Toopher’s”pre-acquisition” developer portal remains open).

Writing at the Toopher blog, CEO Josh Alexander explains the move in his typically colorful fashion:

We here at Toopher have a standard question we ask new Toopherarians: ‘If you could have a superpower, what would you choose?’ Even with the normal, attractive archetypes, the most common response from a Toopherarian is to be able to provide even greater levels of security without affecting the user experience.

And with the Salesforce acquisition, Toopher now considers itself appropriately “superpowered.”

Toopher was founded in September 2011 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company demoed its technology at both FinovateFall 2014 and FinovateFall 2013.

Finovate Debuts: Asseco SEE Brings Real-time Big Data Processing to Multichannel Banking

Finovate Debuts: Asseco SEE Brings Real-time Big Data Processing to Multichannel Banking

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In some parts of the world, telecommunications companies have aggressively worked to disrupt financial services. This is very much the case in Central and Southern Europe where companies like Telenor Banka and Asseco SEE have teamed up to address relatively low adoption rates of online and mobile banking, despite the region’s high levels of connectivity.

Along with Telenor Banka, Asseco SEE made its Finovate debut in February 2015 (read Our Finovate Debut post on Telenor Banka here), unveiling their Automated Online Handset loan offer and technology solutions that made it possible. Asseco SEE is the largest provider of proprietary software solutions in the SEE (South Eastern European) region and offers end-to-end solutions that include core banking, multichannel (including ATM), and a fully native mobile app.

Asseco SEE facts:

  • Founded in 2007
  • Headquartered in Warsaw, Poland
  • Asseco SEE has more than 1,400 employees
  • Piotr Jelenski is President of the Management Board

The story

Asseco’s business lines include production of software solutions for banking, telecommunications and government, complete payment solutions (ATM and PoS implementation and services), as well as system integration.

Asseco SEE’s partnership with Telenor Banka provides a complete end-to-end solution for banking, and also a mature and flexible system that helps identify the right offers at the right time.

In addition, Asseco SEE provides a fully automated process to support the development of new products.

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(Left to right): Asseco Group President of the Management Board, Piotr Jelenski, and Telenor banka Chairman of the Executive Committee, Martin Navratil

The solution, in large part, was Asseco’s ASEBA Multichannel Hub. The hub includes services for a variety of channels (web, mobile, ATM, branch, call center, etc.), as well as fundamental business operations that can be integrated with external legacy back-end systems. Thanks to this ability of integrating with external systems, Telenor Bank achieves the kind of “synergy” between telecom and the bank that makes the latter’s service unique: a customized loan offer created from data derived from two different companies.

The future

Asseco SEE is confident that the SEE region will experience the digital transformation of banks that is taking place elsewhere in Europe and around the world. Moreover, the company is confident that it will play a major role in making this happen, saying it has the experience, know-how, and full potential to help banks and other FIs make the transition.

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The ASEBA Multichannel Hub is an example of this know-how. By creating an integrated e-banking solution, Asseco SEE has made it possible for banking services to be distributed over alternative channels, e.g., mobile. This provides new opportunities for financial institutions to better engage current customers and attract new ones with more personalized services.

Read our Finovate Debut feature of Asseco SEE’s FinovateEurope 2015 partner, Telenor Banka.


See the live demonstration with Asseco SEE and Telenor Banka from FinovateEurope 2015.

YapStone Closes $60 Million Debt Financing Deal

YapStone Closes $60 Million Debt Financing Deal

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Just a few weeks shy of its Finovate debut, YapStone has secured $60 million in debt funding courtesy of Comerica Bank and Bregal Sagemount. The online- and mobile-payment technology specialist plans to use the capital to support growth in existing markets, as well as to support initiatives in new markets and new verticals.

“Our mission since we founded the company has been to change how the world pays in huge vertical markets,” said YapStone CEO and Chairman Tom Villante. “I strongly believe we’re just scratching the surface.”

Previous to this most recent round, YapStone had raised just over $50 million in equity capital via a venture round in 2009, and another in 2011.

Comerica Bank has had a long relationship with YapStone, more than a decade according to Alan Jepsen, Comerica SVP and managing director for technology and life sciences. Bregal Sagemount, by contrast, is a newer partner. Speaking of his company’s new relationship with YapStone, Clayton Main, head of credit at Bregal Sagemount, says that YapStone has “established itself as the go-to provider for payments in several massive vertical markets and online marketplaces.”

YapStone was founded in 1999, and is headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. The company’s platform drives electronic payments for marketplaces such as HomeAway and VRBO, and is used in a variety of verticals ranging from apartment and vacation rentals to nonprofit organizations. The company processes more than $14 billion in payment volume each year, and has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the Fastest Growing Private Companies for each of the last seven years.

Come see and meet YapStone at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose. The conference is held 12/13 May 2015. Early bird savings are in effect through Friday, so visit our registration page and save your spot today.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Finovate Debuts: mydesq Helps Wealth Managers Save Time and Boost Engagement
  • YapStone Closes $60 Million Debt Financing Deal

Around the Web

  • Xignite recognizes innovative uses of its market data API at Capital One People & Money Hackathon.
  • CashStar teams up with IDT Telecom to expand digital gift card distribution among the underbanked.
  • Ingo Money closes acquisition of Fuze Network.
  • The Guardian Business profiles CurrencyFair co-founder Brett Meyers.
  • CSI globalVCard earns two finalist spots at the 2015 SIIA Software CODiE Awards.
  • Robust Tech House takes a look at the differences and similarities between Quantopian and QuantConnect.
  • Tibco updates Live Data Mart software with embedded predictive analytics and support for the internet of things (IoT) and in-memory data-grid technology.
  • Mozido to use SimplyTapp’s HCE technology to bolster payment platform.
  • Callcredit partners with Trulioo to power AML/KYC verification services. Come see Trulioo’s live demo at FinovateSpring in San Jose.
  • Notre Dame FCU to open full-service insurance agency powered by Insuritas.
  • Forbes talks to Trulioo about solving AML/ KYC for startups. Come see Trulioo at FinovateSpring.
  • Valid Soft deploys voice biometrics solution to a large U.S.-based corporation, its first U.S.-based customer.

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.

ReadyForZero Acquired by Avant in Cash and Stock Deal

ReadyForZero Acquired by Avant in Cash and Stock Deal

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San Francisco-based debt-management platform ReadyForZero has been acquired by newly rebranded Avant, a direct personal lender out of Chicago. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A FinovateFall 2011 alum, ReadyForZero specializes in helping people pay down personal debt, and includes debt from credit cards, student loans, and mortgages. The company’s platform aggregates the user’s debts, and then recommends a repayment plan. Alerts help debtors stay on track with payment due-date reminders, spend-or-save comparisons, and other notifications. And with regular reporting of on-time payments, the technology helps users bolster their credit scores.

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Above: ReadyForZero CEO Rod Ebrahimi presented at FinovateFall 2011 in New York.

ReadyForZero says it has helped users pay down more than $240 million in debt since inception. The service is free, although there are paid premium options that provide features such as credit monitoring and automation. The company partners with Yodlee, Experian and others for data, and has lending partnerships with both Lending Club and Prosper. ReadyForZero was founded in 2010 by Rod Ebrahimi, CEO, and Ignacio Thayer, CTO, and is headquartered in San Francisco. The company has raised a total of $4.8 million in capital as of its latest completed round in 2011.

The acquisition will enable Avant to add ReadyForZero’s debt-management technology to its own big data credit-scoring platform, and move beyond lending toward a more complete consumer finance company. Founded in 2012 as AvantCredit, Avant has funded more than 175,000 personal loans worth more than $400 million, and earned a #6 ranking in Forbes’ America’s Most Promising Company’s list in January. The company has been a magnet for investor capital, raising $225 million from Tiger Global Management and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel last December, giving Avant more than $330 million in equity financing, plus more than $700 million in debt financing.

Finovate Debuts: mydesq Helps Wealth Managers Save Time and Boost Engagement

Finovate Debuts: mydesq Helps Wealth Managers Save Time and Boost Engagement

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Wealth management is a people business. The biggest evidence of that is the amount of technology devoted not only to managing assets, but also managing people.

That’s one of the biggest takeaways from the new platform for wealth managers demonstrated by mydesq during its Finovate debut in February. By putting more information at the fingertips of wealth managers—no simple task—mydesq makes it easy for managers to know more about their clients, their investments, their financial behavior, their goals, and ultimately, what it will take to build the strongest, most valuable client/manager relationship possible.

The stats

  • Founded in July 2014
  • Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland
  • $1 million in funding raised
  • Milan Vora is CEO

The story

mydesq makes available on tablet everything a professional wealth manager needs to work with a client. This gives wealth managers the ability to do their jobs on the go. But the real value of the technology lies in the speed and ease at which it delivers relevant information.

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What’s relevant can range from a client’s current investments to the weather forecast at the client’s location. Whatever it takes for a wealth manager to get up to speed quickly with a given client—for example, handling an unexpected phone call from an old client eager to do business—can be easily seen: Each account is divided into six key areas displayed graphically with donut charts. These areas, including assets, account performance, risk profile, even customer-engagement metrics like frequency of contacts from the manager, are located at the top of the account page and can be analyzed further individually. mydesq even displays how much the manager is earning from the client’s business.

And because it’s built on a tablet, navigation is a matter of simply tapping the screen.

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The platform helps wealth managers handle the basic tasks of handling wealth as well. The technology’s investment-suitability engine makes sure that proposed trades and investments are consistent with the client’s assets, investment risk profile versus product risk, and other factors. For compliance, the disclosure documents, educational materials and suitability letters are all available due to the platform’s proprietary rule engine. And location is no obstacle: “Any regulations in any combination,” Vora said. “We timed at a Swiss bank how long it took a wealth manager to do this trade and all these other things manually.  It took them 17 minutes. Here you can do it in 30 seconds.”

The technology also allows wealth managers to show their clients walk-forward, risk analysis models of how the portfolio will be affected by various stressors and potential market conditions.

The future

Reflecting on mydesq’s Finovate debut, Francis Groves of MyPrivateBankingResearch was especially impressed by the platform’s ability to keep wealth managers compliant. “This not only enables advisors to keep up-to-date with regulations in multiple jurisdictions, but also seamlessly introduces all necessary compliance-related changes to the adviser’s work processes,” Groves wrote. The technology was also among the FinovateEurope 2015 favorites of DataMonitor Financial Senior Analyst Bartosz Golba.

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Adding new features, such as Liquidity Projections and KYC is among mydesq’s top priorities, as is keeping the brand visible via participation in events like the recently held Digital Banking Summit in Barcelona.

From the Finovate stage, mydesq CEO Vora explained  his company’s technology as more than just putting a wealth manager’s Bloomberg, CRM, portfolio analysis, MIS, and more all in one place and “fit it onto an iPad.” The goal is to make wealth managers more proactive, more compliant with regulations, and more efficient through automation and other technologies. For wealth managers who share this goal, mydesq may be a worthwhile first step.


See mydesq demo its technology live at FinovateEurope 2015.

Yodlee Launches Business Cash Flow with Forecasting FinApp

Yodlee Launches Business Cash Flow with Forecasting FinApp

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Cloud-based app-innovation platform Yodlee unveiled its Business Cash Flow with Forecasting FinApp today. The technology gives businesses the ability to see and analyze current cash flow, as well as read a forecast of cash flow for the coming three months.

The final app includes three main features:

  • Cash Flow Chart and Table: Provides graphic and numerical current and forecast cash flow data
  • Cash Flow Processing Wizard: Enables review of year-over-year data by income and expense, as well as editing of forecasts
  • Cash Flow Report: Shows actual versus forecast data by category

“Having a strong pulse on cash flow is incredibly critical to the success of business owners,” said Nitin Gupta, Yodlee VP for business banking and global strategic initiatives. “Yodlee’s Cash Flow with Forecasting gives business owners immediate insights into their financial health, allowing them to make more informed spending, investing, and borrowing decisions.”

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Above (left to right): Avi Lele, CEO of Stockpile; Jon Petz, product evangelist, Yodlee; and John Bird, product marketing, Yodlee, presented Yodlee’s APInnovation at FinovateFall 2014.

The launch comes on the heels of word that Yodlee will be recognized at the Monarch Innovation Awards for its ability to help “Internet innovators and financial institutions provide state-of-the-art tools to their business customers,” said Irene Waldman, general manager of business services at Yodlee. The Monarch Innovation Awards are sponsored by Barlow Research, and will be presented on April 10th.

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Yodlee is multiple-winner at Finovate’s Best of Show. The company was most recently on our stage last fall as part of the FinovateFall 2014 conference in New York and, as Yodlee Interactive, presented at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014 last October. Anil Arora is president and CEO.

Finovate Alums Win Leading Vendor Honors from MyPrivateBanking Research

Finovate Alums Win Leading Vendor Honors from MyPrivateBanking Research

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eMoney Advisor, MicroStrategy, Yseop. What do these three companies have in common? In addition to being Finovate alums, all three were recognized by MyPrivateBanking Research as “leading vendors” in the field of digital solution providers for wealth managers and financial advisers.

The three companies join 12 others in MyPrivateBanking Research’s latest report “Digital and Mobile Solutions for Financial Advisers 2015”. The report focuses on innovations and technical contributions to the wealth management industry that take the form of “mobile apps, digital communications, and analytical and social media solutions.”

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Swiss-based MyPrivateBanking Research has for over a decade provided analysis on how financial services companies use the Internet, social media, and mobile to engage customers. The judging process for the report included looking at 45 different potential features for mobile apps, 15 factors in assessing digital communications technology, and eight features for social media solutions. The report includes analysis of each company and its technology, as well as “individual recommendations for each vendor on how to improve its offerings.”

From the report’s executive summary:

We see that traditional wealth managers cannot defend their business model against robo-advisers and other digital do-it-yourself tools by merely pointing out that their advisers offer a ‘human touch’ and specific banking know-how. They need to reinvent their business model from the ground up in order to arrive in the 21st century.

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eMoney Advisor was highlighted in the report in the mobile app category. eMoney Advisor made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014, introducing a “reboot” of its wealth-planning system for financial advisers, EMX. The company was founded in 2000, and is headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Last month, eMoney Advisor announced that it had been acquired by Fidelity Investments for $250 million. Read our Finovate Debut post for eMoney Advisor.

Founded in 1989 and based in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, MicroStrategy specializes in enterprise software. The company’s solutions range from its Business Intelligence (BI) platform to its Mobile Platform and Applications to Usher, the mobile identity network MicroStrategy unveiled at its Finovate appearance in San Francisco in the spring of 2013. Like eMoney Advisor, MicroStrategy was also recognized by MyPrivateBanking Research for its mobile app development platform.

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Yseop may seem an unlikely member of this trio; however, the company distinguished itself as a resource for financial managers in the “analytics, natural language generation and other solutions” category. An innovator in the field of putting artificial intelligence to use to support business operations, Yseop has developed technologies like Yseop Sales Force Productivity Suite (demoed at FinovateSpring 2014) and Yseop Financial Suite (demoed at FinovateFall 2013). The company was founded in 2008, and is headquartered in both Dallas, Texas, and Lyon, France. John Rauscher is CEO.

Also noted in the report were Finovate alums Crealogix (mobile apps), Temenos (mobile apps), and Narrative Science (analytics, natural language generation, and other solutions).

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Alums Win Leading Vendor Honors from MyPrivateBanking Research”
  • Last Chance for FinovateSpring Early-Bird Tickets… Save $100″
  • “ReadyForZero Acquired by Avant in Cash and Stock Deal”
  • “Wallaby Launches Wise Bread Rewards Maximizer”

Around the web

  • Nomis Solutions announces new partnership with Tangerine.
  • blooom wins Kansas City’s InnovateHER pitch competition.
  • PYMNTS.com MPD CEO Karen Webster interviews Todd Doherty, TSYS senior director of analytics.
  • Tech City highlights TransferWise and Azimo in its look at the remittance industry.
  • GMC Software named Xplor’s Technology of the Year for its Inspire Dynamic Communications solution.
  • “D+H to Buy Payments Firm Fundtech for $1.25 Billion”
  • Google Cloud Platform launches Cloud Console for Android.
  • Bluefin Payment Systems and Phoenix Managed Networks partner to provide Bluefin’s Decryptx P2PE Solution to clients of Phoenix Managed Networks.
  • Xero reaches 200,000 customers in Australia.
  • Prosper reaches record loan originations for March, surpasses $3 billion in lending.

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 Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “CardFlight Unveils EMV-Ready Chip Readers for SwipeSimple”

Around the web

  • Sonavation launches its IDKEY biometric security key that uses 3D Surface Scan Ultrasound technology.
  • CMSWire interviews Michael Laurie, co-founder and VO of product strategy at Silanis Technology.
  • iExpats takes a look at Azimo in a column on the costs of foreign currency transfers.
  • Arxan Technologies Security Solutions architect Matt Clemens talks mobile app security on Federal News Radio.
  • PaymentsSource’s look at “strange mobile security methods” features EyeVerify and Bionym.
  • IntelliResponse wins bronze at 9th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.
  • Jack Henry & Associates to be honored at Cedar Falls Business & Industry Association event.
  • Now Digital Network reviews Kashoo in column on ways to streamline small business accounting.
  • Computing U.K. features TransferWise and its use of big data to drive its social media marketing.
  • The CoinFront reports on Klarna’s “experiments” with bitcoin.
  • AMP Credit Technologies wins “Highly Commended Award for Best Initiative in Financial Inclusion” at the 6th Retail Banker International Asia Trailblazer Awards in Singapore.
  • TIO Networks now has 1+ million registered members in its direct-to-consumer user base.
  •  Taulia names Cedric Bru as new CEO.

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.