David Penn, Author at Finovate

According to blooom, Finovate is for 401(k) Fixing

By David Penn Posted on August 29, 2014
Categories: blooom

Kudos to online RIA innovator blooom for doing its part to get the word out about its “new way to 401(k)” and FinovateFall 2014, coming to New York on September 23 and 24 in this new video.

Join blooom and 69 other fintech companies for what is looking like our biggest FinovateFall to date. Get your tickets here.

Knox Payments Picks Up $625,000 in Venture Round Funding

By David Penn Posted on August 29, 2014
Categories: Knox

According to a S-1 filed at the SEC, Knox Payments earned an investment of $625,000 in venture round funding this month.

The venture round takes the company’s total capital raised to $1.6 million.

Knox Payments gives merchants the ability to accept payments via ACH without requiring disclosure of bank routing and account numbers. With instant account and “sufficient funds” verification, the service costs merchants less than twenty cents per transaction. Credit card companies, by comparison, charge as much as 30 cents per transaction, plus a 3% fee.

Knox Payments will make its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014 in New York September 23 and 24. To find out more about this year’s event – including how to get your tickets – vist our FinovateFall 2014 page.

Alumni News– August 29, 2014

By David Penn Posted on August 29, 2014
Categories: Diebiold, Dwolla, Heckyl Technologies, Lending Club, On Deck Capital, PayPal, Stockpile, SumUp, TextPower

Heckyl to provide real-time news and data analytics courtesy of new partnership with Marketware International.

Diebold brings deposit automation and cash recycling services to consumers and FIs in Brazil. See Diebold at FinovateFall in September.

Dwolla makes MassPay official, offers a simpler experience with increased stability, improved reporting, and increased transactions per batch.

PYMNTS talks with SumUp CEO Daniel Klein, to understand how it views innovation in the mPOS space.

PayPal launches tool, PayPal Demo, to help developers show merchants the difference between different PayPal payment options.

CNBC’s National Business Report interviews Scott Goldman, CEO of TextPower.

American Banker profiles FinovateSpring 2014 Best of Show winner, Stockpile.

CNET takes a look at Lending Club in the wake of the company’s IPO filing.

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.

FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 4

By David Penn Posted on August 28, 2014
Categories: FinovateFall 2014, FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek

Three installments of our FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek series are already in the books. But we’ve still got plenty of companies to introduce you to in the weeks leading up to what promises to be our largest FinovateFall event to date. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, click here to save your spot today.

Before we get started, here are some links to our previous Sneak Peeks to help get you up-to-date.

Part 1: BizEquity, Gremln, Hoyos, Knox Payments, HopSec, and Rippleshot

Part 2: Backbase, BioCatch, blooom, iBillionaire, Patch of Land, and Settle

Part 3: Algomi, FlexScore, HedgeCo Networks, Linqto, Malauzai, and My Virtual StrongBox

And now, meet FamDoo, iQuantifi, mCASH, PayItSimple, Toopher, and WorkFusion.

FamDoo develops life-ready kids one task at a time. The Modern Allowance is a proven loyalty-based system armed with current technology and strategic partnerships.

Features:

The Modern Allowance is an applied learning approach to financial literacy

New technology brings families together

Family currency rewards kids for a job well done

Why it’s great:

FamDoo is an exciting new tool for the family, raising the next generation of fiscal consumers now. Gain access through a strategic partnership with FamDoo.

Presenters:

1) Mark Lacek, Co-Founder and CEO

Co-developed, enhanced one of the first loyalty programs for the airline industry: Northwest Airline’s WorldPerks, frequent flyer program. Designed and managed additional global loyalty programs.

2) Mystery Guest

iQuantifi is a virtual financial advisor that provides comprehensive and personalized advice to users based on their goals and resources.

Features:

Helps you free up cash in your budget to fund your goals

Shows you multiple ways to accomplish your goals

Why it’s great:

We provide a comprehensive financial plan with investment advice that instantly adapts to your life as it changes.

Presenters:

1) Tom White, Founder and CEO

Tom has been a financial planner and investment advisor for over 17 years and in that time he has built and sold two investment advisory firms.

2) Karen White, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

Karen has been designing and building products for over 20 years with the majority of her experience spanning the financial and education fields.

mCASH is a unique payment infrastructure that connects banks, merchants and consumers in a real-time payment and information sharing network.

Features:

Built on FSA-approved Google Cloud infrastructure

Reduces cost for merchants, increases revenue for financial institutions

Users can pay in any scenario using any electronic funding source

Why it’s great:

Pay anyone, anywhere with the funding source of your choice.

Presenters:

1) Daniel R. Døderlein, Founder and CEO

Døderlein is a Norweigian serial entrepreneur with background from several IT and telecom startups. He is also a sought-after speaker in the field of payments.

2) Anders Nicolai Bakke, COO

Nicolai Bakke is a computer science graduate, turned management consultant before ending up in the startup world, At mCASH, he focuses on strategy, biz-dev, fundraising, people management, and structure.

PayItSimple‘s patented technology enables instant consumer financing without assuming any credit risk.

Features:

Merchants: increased conversation rates and ticket size; simple and secure to implement and use

Consumers: Seamless payments, improved cash flow, no credit application, no fees, and no interest

Why it’s great:

For the first time in the Unites States, merchants can offer their customers fully secured interest-free installments in their existing credit cards.

Presenters:

1) Alon Feit, Co-Founder

Feit has 25 years of experience in the credit card industry, both in Israel and Brazil.

2) Stacy Fassberg, Vice President, Marketing

Fassberg is a marketing professional with over 25 years of experience with global technology start-ups, specializing in marketing strategy, communications, branding and product marketing.

Toopher‘s multi-factor authentication platform uses the location awareness of a mobile device to automate logins/actions based on a user’s normal behaviors.

Features:

Highly usable: patented automation creates an invisible user experience

Highly secure: out-of-band auth mitigates endpoint attacks

Highly innovative: adds to convenience without sacrificing security

Why it’s great:

Toopher is the most usable and most secure multi-factor authentication solution available.

Presenters:

1) Josh Alexander, CEO and Co-founder

2) Evan Grim, Founder and CTO

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WorkFusion is a SaaS crowd computing platform that automates the sourcing, aggregation, and structuring of data by pairing machine learning with human intelligence.</div

Features:

Self-repairing automation pairs algorithms with human workers

30 million on -demand workers for performing tasks and training algorithms

50% reduction in cost
of creating financial content

Why it’s great:

The financial industry is filled with high-volume, repetitive data work, and WorkFusion cuts the cost of it by 50% through machine learning automation.

Presenters:

1) Max Yankelevich, CEO

Yankelevich founded WorkFusion to improve the productivity and efficiency of the data-driven enterprise by combining the power of cloud computing, crowdsourcing, and machine learning.

LinkedIn

2) Adam Devine, VP of Product Marketing

Devine has spent his career connecting the dots between steep business problems and great technology. The financial sector is his favorite problem, and WorkFusion is his favorite technology.

LinkedIn

Join us next Tuesday for another set of six fintech innovators that will be demoing their technologies at FinovateFall in September.

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Lending Club Files for $500 Million Initial Public Offering

By David Penn Posted on August 28, 2014
Categories: Lending Club

No beating around the bush about this one: we are thrilled to share the news that Lending Club has filed for an initial public offering. The alternative, peer-to-peer lender seeks to raise at least $500 million.

See Lending Club’s S-1 filing at the SEC for yourself here. Forbes reports that Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs will serve as lead underwriters.

The company has been understandably mum as it enters what is known in the business as its post-filing “quiet period.” But in its filing, Lending Club noted a trio of advantages over traditional lenders:

An innovative marketplace model that efficiently connects the supply and demand of capital

Online operations that substantially reduce the need for physical infrastructure and improve convenience

Automation that increases efficiency, reduces manual processes and improves borrower and investor experience

Additionally, the S-1 cited a few choice metrics about the company’s first half of 2014, including:

Net income: $86.9 million

Adjusted EBITDA (excluding some non cash charges): $5.9 million

Profit/(Loss): ($16.5 million)

Loans originated: $1.8 billion

In seeking to raise $500 million, Lending Club could become one of the “biggest ever stock market debuts” according to the New York Times DealBook. Lending Club has financed more than $5 billion in loans and paid investors more than $490 million in interest since inception. DealBook notes that the Lending Club prospectus does leave a few questions unanswered such as the price range for Lending Club shares, and the exchange on which the shares will trade.

For its part, Forbes’ coverage of the announcement includes excerpts from a spring interview with Laplanche in which the CEO explains both how Lending Club works and how he ensures that the “best loans” are not cherry-picked by savvy investors. “There are no best loans,” Laplanche said. “If we do our job well – and I believe we do, there is no loan that is better than others.”

You can check out our 2012 interview with Laplanche here.

Lending Club is the fourth Finovate alum to file for an IPO. Q2 went public in March. Cachet Financial Solutions and Yodlee made their IPO filings in early and late July, respectively. As one of the oldest Finovate alums, Lending Club participated in both our inaugural Finovate event in 2007 and again at FinovateStartup 2009. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and was founded in 2007.

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Alumni News– August 27, 2014

By David Penn Posted on August 27, 2014
Categories: BehavioSec, Bill.com, Bolstr, CashStar, EyeVerify, FutureAdvisor, IntelliResponse, Locaid, Monitise, Ripple, Wallaby Financial, Wealthfront, Xero

Monitise announces digital commerce and resourcing alliance with IBM.

ThinkAdvisor takes a look at the deal between the San Francisco 49ers football team and Wealthfront.

The Globe and Mail profiles David Lloyd and IntelliResponse as part of its Innovators at Work contest.

Fortune magazine column discusses Ripple and the “Internet of value exchange.”

ValueWalk: FutureAdvisor can be used as a free tool to rate your own investment decisions or a low-cost asset management service.

Chicago Tribune’s Blue Sky Innovation visits Bolstr for video interview.

Bill.com CEO and co-founder Rene Lacerte writes about the “new sharing economy” for Inc.com.

CashStar announces spot in Inc 500|5000 for a second year in a row.

EyeVerify opens new offices to accommodate recent growth.

Locaid partners with Danal to leverage location services in fight against financial fraud.

Wallaby Financial named finalist in Samsung Gear App Challenge 2014.

ZDNet: Xero continues march into U.S., launches partner marketplace.

The Independent looks at how BehavioSec uses behavioral biometrics.

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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Alumni News– August 26, 2014

By David Penn Posted on August 26, 2014
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Azimo, Banno, BizEquity, FIS, Holvi, Jack Henry, MasterCard, Mortgagebot, SecureKey

ACI Worldwide ranks #36 in Apps Run the Cloud’s Top 500 application vendors.

Startups.co.uk interviews Michael Kent, CEO and founder of Azimo.

TechCrunch profiles Finland-based startup, Holvi.

American Banker looks at how banks can use BizEquity’s app that enables small businesses to estimate the value of their company.

Wade Arnold, founder of Banno which was sold to Jack Henry & Associates, is 1 of 5 finalists honored in annual Silicon Prairie Awards.

SecureKey and Trustonic partner to enable SecureKey’s briidge.net Connect services to work with Trustonic in select mobile devices. Check out SecureKey at FinDEVr this fall.

Bank Mutual selects D+H’s Mortgagebot solution for end-to-end mortgage lending.

India’s Bank of Maharashtra deploys FIS payment platform.

The new Citi Wallet supports digital payments via MasterPass from MasterCard. See the company present at FinDEVr in San Francisco this fall.

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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Alumni News– August 25, 2014

By David Penn Posted on August 25, 2014
Categories: Betterment, BillGuard, Dynamics, Financial Guard, FutureAdvisor, Geezeo, inStream Solutions, Jemstep, Kabbage, Lending Club, Motif Investing, Moven, On Deck Capital, Prosper, SigFig, Top Image Systems, Wealthfront

San Antonio Federal Credit Union to integrate Geezeo PFM technology.

On Deck partners with Worldpay to provide access to financing for small and medium-sized merchants.

PaymentsSource features Dynamics ePlate among its list of “7 unusual emerging payments technologies.”

Drippler.com reviews BillGuard.

Top Image Systems announces patent for full page mobile image processing.

The New York Times profiles Financial Guard, Motif, Betterment, FutureAdvisor, Jemstep, SigFig and Wealthfront .

InStream Solutions launches comparison tool.

Moven expands internationally, signs deal with New Zealand-based Westpac.

HuffPo profiles Prosper, Lending Club, and Kabbage in column on the rise of online 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.

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Zumigo Raises $6 Million in Investment Led by Intel Capital

By David Penn Posted on August 22, 2014
Categories: Zumigo

Guess which fintech company’s just-completed, $6 million Series B round comes stamped “Intel Inside”?

On Friday, Zumigo announced an investment from Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment and M&A arm, along with participation from existing investors, including Aligned Partners. This Series B round brings Zumigo’s total funding to $7.7 million.

Zumigo’s CEO and Co-founder Chirag Bakshi says the new financing “validates our direction and success and will accelerate growth in our core business of providing mobile location and identity products to financial organizations and enterprises alike.”

In addition to growth in its core business, the company said in a statement that the funding also will help support investments in sales and marketing, as well as in new product development.

Yesterday we shared news that Zumigo will be one of three companies participating in the inaugural Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. The Accelerator is geared toward startups that are capable of delivering solutions for FIs ranging from security and fraud to payments and operations. The six-month program includes an equity investment between $50,000 and $500,000.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Zumigo demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2014.

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Alumni News, 22 August 2014

By David Penn Posted on August 22, 2014
Categories: BankBazaar, BlueVine, Check Point, Continuity Control, EyeVerify, Lending Club, Zumigo

EyeVerify raises $6 million in Series A round, joins Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator.

Find out more about the innovators of FinovateFall 2014 with Part 2 of our Sneak Peek Preview series.

Continuity Control announces $10 million investment.

Zumigo earns a spot in, and an investment from, Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator.

BlueVine brings in $1.5 million in funding. Check out BlueVine’s live demo at FinovateFall.

Four notable website upgrades on Bankbazaar.com.

Houston Chronicle features Lending Club success story.

Check Point Software Technology positioned as a Leader in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management.

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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FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 2

By David Penn Posted on August 21, 2014
Categories: Backbase, BioCatch, blooom, FinovateFall 2014, FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek, iBillionaire, Patch of Land, Settle

If you missed the first installment of our FinovateFall 2014 Sneak Peek series, click here for Part 1.

A few days ago we introduced you to BizEquity, Gremln, Hoyos Labs, Knox Payments, NopSec, and Rippleshot. Today we present another six companies that will be demoing on stage in New York in September.

FinovateFall 2014 is live in New York City on September 23 and 24. And with last year’s show a sell-out, we’re expecting even bigger things in 2014. So save your spot at this year’s show; click here to register today.

Backbase is a software company helping banks in the digital era.

Features:

Beautiful digital banking experience for end customers

Full control over the digital strategy by the bank

Backbase Marketplace to unite vendors and banks looking for fintech innovation

Why it’s great:

Backbase Engage helps banks regain control over their digital strategy.

Presenters:

Peter Chapman, Principal FinTech Strategist

Before joining Backbase, Chapman worked as VP emerging technologies at First Trade Union Bank. Frustrated by the lack of control of the banks to own their digital future, he joined Backbase to fix this.

LinkedIn

Jelmer de Jong, Global Head of Marketing

De Jong focused his career on helping companies get the most out of new technologies. He has a strong focus on startups, B2B, product management and marketing.

LinkedIn

BioCatch provides innovative online fraud-prevention solutions that dramatically reduce friction and fraud, giving customers confidence to expand their business.

Features:

The Cognitive Biometrics technology enables BioCatch to detect intruders, bots, and fraudsters.

Why it’s great:

BioCatch: Less friction. Less fraud.

Presenters:

Uri Rivner, Co-Founder and VP Business Development & Cyber Strategy

Rivner is recognized globally as an industry expert on Cybercrime and advanced threats. He is a regular speaker in the leading Security and Cyber conferences, and writes a cyber-security blog.

LinkedIn

blooom has developed a revolutionary way to open the eyes of 401(k) investors, by outsourcing the management of their 401(k) accounts, regardless of where custodied.

Features:

We don’t use complicated charts or line graphs with a gazillion indecipherable colors

We make it easy to operate (no Ph.D in Finance required)

We rebalance the account, rather than just make recommendations

Why it’s great:

Blooom allows investors to ditch their current strategy of ignoring-it, meaning-to-get-around-to-it, and hoping-for-the-best!

Presenters:

Chris Costello, Co-Founder and Certified Financial Planner

Costello has 20 years experience and builds the model used to generate 401(k) recommendations, allowing blooom users to tap into advice traditionally only available to investors with a gazillion dollars.

LinkedIn

Randy AufDerHeide, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

AufDerHeide handles all the fancy, schmancy IT stuff. If it involves computers, code, Internet stuff, he’s the guy. He also makes everythin
g work smoothly, helping deliver a great experience to bloom users.

LinkedIn

iBillionaire taps into the investment strategies of Wall Street billionaires and provides unique and exclusive data on investment activity and trends.

Features:

Provides insights into billionaire investment portfolios and stock picks

Sends real-time alerts on buys, sells, and prices

Allows users to track their own portfolios and the iBillionaire Index

Why it’s great:

With iBillionaire, anyone can invest like a billionaire.

Presenters:

Raul Moreno, Co-Founder and CEO

Moreno is a serial entrepreneur with a background in finance and tech. His previous ventures include social app discovery platform, Kinetik, and he previously worked as an analyst at GFG Capital.

LinkedIn

Patch of Land is a peer real estate (P2RE) lending marketplace presenting its real-time, due-diligence engine.

Features:

Proprietary risk and credit-modeling system increases accuracy of risk profiling

Full-stack integration with existing platform and processes

Significant scale and velocity of underwriting

Why it’s great:

We are creating an efficient, scalable system for underwriting and complex real estate lending transactions and pricing risk appropriately.

Presenters:

Brian Fritton, CTO

Fritton is a seasoned eCommerce expert who oversees the development of Patch of Land’s in-house platform and leads the research and implementation of our technology initiatives.

LinkedIn

Settle is a mobile-payment platform built to create greater customer loyalty by hastening the checkout process while improving the overall customer experience.

Features:

Bridge mobile payments and loyalty

Target marketing to consumers based on their paying behavior

Transfer P2P cash easily

Why it’s great:

Settle brings easy mobile payments to customers and allows merchants to make the most of customer data.

Presenters:

Stas Matviyenko, CEO

Matviyenko studied in Austria, worked for the Ukranian government (banking research). Founder at Advice Wallet (the biggest mobile loyalty program in CIS countries), believes in mobile payments, geek.

LinkedIn

Anna Polishchuk, COO

Polishchuk has a Masters degree in international business and is passionate about design and technology. She worked as Market Research Analyst at an international company and co-founded Advice Wallet.

LinkedIn

Our Sneak Peek series continues on Tuesday with another six companies that will demo their fintech innovations at FinovateFall 2014 next month.

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EyeVerify Raises $6 Million in Series A Round, Joins Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator

By David Penn Posted on August 21, 2014
Categories: EyeVerify, Zumigo

With participation from Wells Fargo, Qihoo 360 and Sprint, as well as existing investors, EyeVerify just announced that it closed a $6 million Series A funding round.

The investment takes EyeVerify’s total capital to more than $10 million.

In a statement, EyeVerify CEO Toby Rush pointed to the fact that the investors included “the largest security software firm in the world, the leading bank in the U.S., and a wireless network operator serving more than 50 million U.S. customers” to underscore what he called the strong “marketplace validation” of the investment.

And the good news comes in twos for EyeVerify, with the company announcing that it is part of the inaugural class of the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. EyeVerify will participate in the new, semiannual fintech bootcamp along with two other companies, including fellow Finovate alum, Zumigo. Participation in the program includes a “direct equity investment” ranging from $50,000 to as much as $500,000. The specific investment in EyeVerify was not immediately available.

EyeVerify’s innovation is the way it approaches eye-based, biometric authentication. The company’s technology uses the veins within the whites of the eyes to take an “eye print” that is as unique to the individual as a fingerprint. Eyeprints can be used in a range of authentication situations, from helping secure employee mobile devices to providing greater security for mobile banking customers. Kevin McGinnis, vice president of Sprint’s Pinsight Media+ division said, “With mobile security evolving beyond passwords, we are pleased to invest in EyeVerify and its easy-to-use, innovative biometric solution.”

Founded in 2012 and based in Kansas City, Kansas, EyeVerify last demoed its Eyeprint Validation technology at FinovateSpring 2014. See the company’s Best of Show winning demo here.

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