Toshl’s Latest Infographic Reveals 2013 Earners and Spenders

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Forget about who’s been naughty or nice. This holiday season Toshl Finance wants to give you the lowdown on the biggest earners and spenders of 2013.

Known for their ability to apply eye-popping graphics (and not a little bit of humor) to big data, Toshl Finance’s latest infographic is an interactive look at who is doing the spending and who is bringing home the big bacon among its user base. The data is available in both US dollars as well as in euros.

Click here for the full infographic.

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Toshl Finance is among the companies that will be debuting their latest innovations at FinovateEurope in February. To find out more about our upcoming event in London, visit our FinovateEurope page here.

Klarna Acquires Sofort to Become 10% of Europe’s $100 Billion E-Commerce Market

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In a deal reported to be worth $150 million, mobile payments company Klarna is acquiring German rival, Sofort.

The purchase will make Klarna one of the bigger fish in Europe’s payment industry pond. The company estimates that the acquisition will result in a 10% share of an e-commerce market valued at $100 billion.

A few more metrics on the new Klarna:
  • Operates in 14 countries
  • Serves 43,000 merchants and 25 million users
  • Earns $200 million in revenues annually
  • Expects to process $10 billion in transaction value in 2014
The new Klarna will combine the company’s current strength in northern Europe with Sofort’s market reach in Germany and Austria. Both companies will be operated separately, and the acquisition will require approval from Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority.

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Klarna has been a favorite of major industry investors, racking up $250 million in funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital. Sequoia was credited for originally suggesting the partnership with Sofort.
A leading mobile payments company in Europe, Klarna’s Checkout solution lets consumers make online purchases and pay after delivery. This approach, according to Klarna, helps merchants increase conversion rates and limit cart abandonment. At the same time, consumers appreciate the frictionless process and flexibility that allows them to pay later by email in full or in installments.
As founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said during his FinovateSpring appearance in 2012: “We think of ourselves as a new rail, a new infrastructure for payments. One that is safer and simpler for consumers, but at the same time safer for merchants because (having) sub 1% losses allows us to take all the default and fraud risk for merchants.”
For European consumers and merchants (Klarna has yet to make its mark in the U.S.), today’s news is another big step in this direction.

FinovateAsia 2013 Best of Show: IND Group

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Best of Show: IND Group

“Shaping trends, pursuing innovations and our enthusiasm in e-finance are what make us capable of creating and delivering state-of-the-art solutions. 

The fact that we were named among the 100 best global vendors shows that IND has reached the top.”
–Balazs Vinnai, CEO, IND Group.
Who knew that IND Group was just one inspired Finovate demo away from even further accolades from the fintech community? Within weeks of earning its first spot on the Fintech 101, IND Group was returning home from Singapore with their very first Finovate Best of Show award.
People will rightly talk about IND Group’s laugh-out-loud demo, a skit that used an imagined wild night on the town with a cast of crazy characters to help showcase the company’s mobile banking and personal finance management app, Essence
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But what also won fans is the way Essence is designed around both basic banking functions like checking an account balance or a transaction history, while at the same time providing modern features like the ability to send and receive money through Facebook.
The result is a very efficient user experience and a new channel through which financial institutions can engage their customers. 
To see IND Group’s Best of Show winning demo, click here.

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Why They Won:
  • Mike Tyson jokes and gorilla suits aside,  IND Group’s presentation of Essence reminded our FinovateAsia audience how much our spending and saving says about us. Essence also showed us how we can use that information to guide us to our goals, or even just from one end of the day to the other.
Bottom Line:
  • A funny and memorable presentation, a powerful and practical personal finance and banking app, and the support of and industry veteran like IND Group suggest a major new entry in the race for the perfect PFM.
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Interview with Viktor Balint, Marketing and Communications Director, IND Group

Finovate: With more than a wink and a nod at the hit comedy film, The Hangover, the team from IND Group made sure their demo would be memorable. Can you tell us a little bit about how a “slice of life” demo (albeit one that was over the top) helps tell the story of how people can manage the little slices of their own lives via your mobile PFM app, Essence?

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Viktor Balint: With our demo we not only wanted to wake the audience up and enjoy a presentation that was something different, but to reflect how our mobile bank, Essence, is part of our everyday lives. Essence is all about the customer, their real life experiences and needs. 
The most successful companies are those that build up their structure, processes and products purely from the customer perspective. People don’t want to do banking. They want to live their lives, managing their goals and achieving their dreams in the most comfortable way. We wanted to create a mobile bank that helps them do just that, quickly and easily.
Finovate: At the beginning of the year at FinovateEurope, you showed us “Story of My Finances” which merged  online banking and PFM. Is Essence the fully-realized version of that vision?
Balint: “Story of My Finances” differs from traditional PFM tools that can be complicated and boring to use. That is the reason banks get disappointed when their customers don’t get excited about PFM modules. As in all IND products, our PFM’s starting points are a customer’s life situations and their financial health. Instead of functions and features we have developed stories that are real life events with financial impact (like “expecting a baby”). 
Our new mobile banking product, Essence, includes PFM features (or as we call our new approach: PFP – personal finance planner) we invented for “Story of My Finances”, such as goal setting and third party offers, but it is a complete mobile banking solution based on the uniqueness of mobile usage. Essence aims to make mobile banking simpler and more enjoyable by concentrating on the basic functions that people require when banking on the move: balance enquiry, money transfers and transaction history. Just like our PFM, via excellent customer experience it increases usage and so boosts sales and revenue for the banks.
Finovate: IND Group was recognized as one of the Fintech 100 by American Banker magazine. Fifteen years after the company was founded, what does earning this recognition mean to you and your colleagues?
Balint: This recognition is another clear sign of how much we have reached. IND was founded by three college friends in 1997 and now we are servicing 40 clients in 18 countries and continuously entering new markets. For several years now our clients have won numerous innovation awards with our solutions. FinTech 100 proves that we are not only a great innovator but also a global front runner in digital banking. 
Ovum, one of the most influential financial analyst firms also confirmed this in its latest report that gives a wide picture of the leading global digital banking vendors and we are proud that IND Group is among the vendors it recommends.
Finovate: We in the West hear and see so much innovation in banking come from Eastern Europe. What is it that Eastern European innovators are doing that the rest of the world could learn from?
Balint: Eastern Europe as always hosted a large-scale work force, and thus been a great place for outsourcing. The region has also shown potential to become Europe’s Silicon Valley. It is the human assets and the excellent educational background of the region that make it a major player in technological innovation.
We have indeed been called the fastest growing technological company in Central and Eastern Europe. This is thanks to our software developers that are talent professionals and we are constantly looking for more creative people to work with. We also invest a lot in keeping up-to-date with customer demands and researching what people want from banking. That is do
ne by IND Labs, and we think this is one of the most important ingredient of our secret sauce for success.
Finovate: What’s next for IND Group? What can we look forward to seeing by way of further innovation in Essence and mobile banking?
Balint: IND Group’s vision is to reinvent every unloved aspect around banking and to give people a chance for an easier and healthier financial life. Our next innovation will be launched in February at FinovateEurope. Our new internet and tablet banking platform, Foundation, is built on the idea that online banking can be more intuitive and efficient – and maybe even fun. 
Our solution focuses on usability and ergonomics and we are convinced that this will lead to more engaged and happier online banking users, providing the implementing bank with a real competitive advantage. With this approach we believe also new customer segments can be engaged in digital banking: both young and older generations, people that would love to manage their money digitally, you just need to provide them with the right solutions!

Check’s New iOS7 App Puts Payments Front and Center

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A new, simpler design is the easiest way to describe the iOS7-inspired makeover of Check’s bill pay and personal finance management app. But users won’t have to look long to find other ways that Check has worked to make it quicker and more efficient to make payments via smartphone.

“People want to know first and foremost three things,” said Guy Goldstein, Check CEO, in a conversation yesterday. “What you have, what you owe, and when bills are due.” To this end, the redesigned app not only puts payment functionality on the home screen, but also features enhanced navigation that makes it easier for users to manage bills, view reports, and change settings.

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The redesigned app is the company’s first major initiative since raising $24 million in funding in September. The goal is to evolve a solution that began as a PFM app into a real payments application. “Our vision is to be a mobile payments company,” said Goldstein.
Check has also worked to create a more visually appealing app, both in terms of overall design, as well as in the way the app communicates with the user. For example, positive visualizations accompany periods when no bills are due. 
Check thinks features like this help combat the negative psychology that often accompanies paying bills and managing personal finances. “People have so much stress about their money, especially in the U.S.,” said Goldstein. 
The app will be available at the iTunes App Store by the end of the month.
Check was launched in 2008 and has nearly 10 million customers. The company processes bill pay volume of more than half a billion each year for a run rate of $2 million a day. Check (as Pageonce) demoed its technology as part of the FinovateFall show in 2010.

Innovations at FinovateEurope 2014: Part 2

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A week ago we introduced you to half of the companies that will be demoing their technologies on stage for FinovateEurope 2014.

Today we’re providing the second half of our scheduled roster for February.

For more information, and to get your tickets, visit our Finovate Europe 2014 page here.

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Luxoft’s iStockTrack is an innovative iPad solution providing mobile banking services for private and premium banking clients.

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Matchi is an innovative matchmaking platform for banks and innovators to establish collaborative relationships that deliver increased ROI for innovators and banks alike.

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Meniga is Europe’s leading white-label PFM provider. The company helps banks improve their businesses through data-mining, cross-sales, and improved retention.

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Mobino enables mobile payments for 5 billion people, from any phone, no credit card required.

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The Moneyer is the future of online Personal Finance Management.

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Money on Toast delivers independent and whole of the market, FCA-regulated financial advice online via its algorithm-powered adviser.

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MyOrder provides a m-commerce mobile app that serves businesses in parking, catering, and entertainment.

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myWishBoard is the first crowdfunding platform for personal dreams and wishes.

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NF Innova’s Personal Experience Module, a part of iBanking product suite, enables banks to offer their customers a truly unique and tailored user experience.

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Nostrum Group has built a virtual collection product that automates and optimizes the delinquency management process.

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Nous.net’s Spark Feed is a real-time financial data service that helps you understand and predict the markets.

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payworks is the provider of a mobile POS, Software-as-a-Service platform that lets developers quickly build payment functionality into their shopper and merchant apps.

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PhotoPay’s technology allows users to extract data from any document, paper or electronic, enabling billpay on mobile devices.

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Pixeliris’s CopSonic is the first universal contactless mobile payment system powered by our unique technology based on sonic communication.

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Plutus Software’s KreditAja credit scoring system is designed to better serve the unbanked and underbanked in Asia.

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SaaS Markets is an enterprise cloud marketplace company whose MarketMaker platform helps FIs deploy their own branded, cloud-based business app store.

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SmartEngine stands for personalization and target marketing. As pioneers in the field of customer loyalty, Smart Engine is a driver of innovation and a leader in personalized target marketing.

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SoftWear Finance’s HACU PLATFORM enables banks to provide customers with the best possible user experience on any platform or device.

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SQLI’s Augmented Banking is a new take at Online Banking. It is aimed at positioning a bank at the very center of people’s digital lives.

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Temenos’s Treasury Management Dashboard tablet app has been developed for Microsoft Windows 8 and enables the transformation of treasury operations.

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Tink is a free personal finance service that allows you to follow your money, where ever you are.

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Tootpay’s solution is a mobile financial solution for payments, banking, telecommunications, and remittance industries.

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Top Image Systems has leveraged its deep recognition and imaging expertise to develop a powerful suite of image processing applications for mobile devices.

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Topicus Finan is a software vendor specializing in enterprise-level financial analysis. Its solution enables banks to provide self-service business lending processes for SMEs.

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Toshl Finance is a personal finance manager made fun. Find out where your money is going, keep on top of bills and spending, and set up budgets.

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Truphone, the innovative mobile operator, introduces the only global network-based recording solution for the Financial Industry.

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Trustev provides a new approach to fraud prevention through a real-time, online identity verification platform, which ensures that merchants know exactly who they are selling to.

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Yseop Sales Force Productivity Suite and its email writing application (YseMail) support financial advisors through the entire sales cycle.

FinovateAsia 2013 Best of Show: Kofax

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Best of Show: Kofax

Turning smartphones and tablets into “powerful customer engagement platforms” is the project of mobile capture specialist, Kofax. 

It is also the technology for which the company was awarded its first Best of Show trophy at FinovateAsia in Singapore in November.

Kofax Mobile Capture puts the company’s innovations in image perfection, data extraction, and validation technology to work at what the company calls the “point of origination.” By leveraging the camera technology on the average smartphone or tablet, Kofax empowers users to capture a diverse range of documents and data – including photographs – and transmit them securely and safely to business apps and workflows.

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To see Kofax’s Best of Show winning demo, click here.

Why They Won:
  • In an era of shoppers taking photographs of newly-empty cans and jars instead of scribbling out an old-fashioned grocery list, audiences see Kofax Mobile Capture and they get it. Finding new ways to put our precious smart devices to use will be a winning plan for innovators in the fintech space for some time. 
Bottom Line:
  • The big question for Kofax is how will they continue to leverage the functionality of smartphones and smart devices to make information and data travel more efficiently for consumers and businesses. Fortunately, the company provided a few clues in their demo – and a few more in our interview below.

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Interview with Drew Hyatt, Senior Vice President, Mobility, Kofax
Finovate: Why do you think Kofax won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2013?
Drew Hyatt: Kofax Mobile Capture technology won because it’s a very unique solution that gives consumers the ability to turn the cameras on their smart phones into advanced, real-time scanning/input devices. 
This was the first time the solution was shown to the financial community in Asia and the response was incredibly positive. Attendees were very impressed with how the solution can scan a driver’s license or other forms of ID and documents, extract that data, send it back to consumers for validation, and then insert it into the systems of record or whatever type of workflow the financial institution is using. Once they saw the entire process in action, it all made sense.
Finovate: One of the concepts emphasized from the stage in Singapore was the idea of the expanding capabilities of smart devices, especially smart phones, as a key innovation driver, from document capture to authentication. Is there smart device functionality that has been overlooked and has yet to be tapped into?
Drew: Yes. What we’ve developed is still in the very early stages of implementation. Right now the camera is primarily being used to get information from documents and IDs. But in the future, we’ll be able to capture and extract critical data from images of objects and goods and services. 
We’ll also see more applications evolve as the processors in the mobile device become more powerful. Essentially everyone will have a very powerful laptop or server in their hands, which will enhance the types of features that financial institutions are able to offer customers.
Finovate: From the stage in Singapore, you teased a few features that you were not able to demo in the allotted time. Can you elaborate on some of those features and use cases?
Drew: One of those use cases was giving customers the ability to pay bills or enter bill information into the bank’s payment system. There’s a growing segment of consumers who don’t like to type information on computers and who just want to tap on options on their mobile devices. 
Kofax is eliminating the need to read, copy and type information from bills and enter data manually into fields. The technology is enabling consumers to automate the process and save time by simply capturing and extracting the information with one photo.
Finovate: What can we look forward to from Kofax over the next 3-6 months?
Drew: Kofax has a wide range of products it will be introducing in the near future. Most of these innovations center around expanding the use of consumers’ cameras to make their lives easier while making data capture and data management processes for financial institutions shorter, more efficient and more cost effective.

Finovate Alumni News– December 12, 2013

  • Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgMasterCard collaborates with Samsung, Commonwealth Bank of Australia to enable contactless payments via NFC.
  • Heckyl Technologies announces more than $3.5 million raised in Series B funding.
  • NetBanker: Mobile payments specialist Loop raises $10 million in Series A round.
  • Striata announced as a finalist in the Best Use of Technology category at 2013 Debt Collection Awards.
  • miiCard to help power ID verification for myrentalcv’s tenant screening platform.
  • Updated Advisor Pages platform from BrightScope drops charge for online profile maintenance.
  • Mitek and Kony collaborate to Deliver Mobile Photo Bill Pay With Mitek MiSnap Automatic Image Capture.
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.

Mobile Payments Specialist Loop Raises $10 Million in Series A

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“We want to simplify things for the user. Loop is a secure, mobile wallet solution accepted nearly everywhere on day one.”

I’m near the end of my briefing with Damien Balsan. Damien is COO for LoopPay, a mobile payments company that is leveraging its expertise in magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology to make it easier for consumers to pay with their mobile devices.

We aren’t talking about the company’s upcoming announcement of a $10 million Series A, an oversubscribed round with participation from a number of undisclosed angel investors. And unlike everybody else in the city, we are also not talking about Seattle’s unseasonably frosty December (then again, LoopPay is a Boston-based startup…no weather sympathy there.)

What we are talking about, though, are things like the looks on the faces of the baristas as Damien pays for his latte with a wave of his smartphone. “It’s not just kids,” he said when I suggested that the excitement for the product among the under 30 set was a good sign. “Even the 70 year old clerk at the hardware store was amazed.”
Damien shows me his wallet, which like the wallets of most people is about the size of a Big Mac sandwich. This is Loop’s Public Enemy #1. And in its place Loop offers a way to load identification, credit, debit, gift, and other cards into a handful of alternative devices, from a finger-drive sized fob (Loop’s first “Appcessory”) now shipping to a variety of charge cases expected to be available in the first quarter of 2014.
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It’s worth underscoring that “mobile” does not only mean “mobile phone.” Loop’s technology involves a secure chip, located in the Loop fob or the charge case. This gives the user further options to pay: with the phone in hand, or simply via the fob. “At a restaurant,” Damien said, “you could simply give the fob to the waiter” and your phone stays at the table with you.
There are a number of compelling features that are likely to help Loop stand out in the increasingly crowded mobile payments space. But the company’s technology breakthrough: the ability to project a short-term magnetic field that impersonates the action of swiping a mag stripe through a card reader, appears likely to deliver on the contactless promise of NFC without the hardware adoption headaches of NFC.
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And NFC isn’t the only payments-related acronym Loop is challenging. Will Loop’s technology survive the transition to the EMV standard in a few years? 
EMV stands for “Europay MasterCard Visa” and is a technology standard commonly used in Europe. EMV swaps out the kind of magnetic stripes Loop’s technology has mastered for a chip-and-PIN approach to initiating transactions (and, arguably, doing a better job at reducing fraud). 
While not overly specific, Damien suggested that Loop is already looking at a number of solutions, including the use of a more dynamic field that would be compatible with the EMV standard (cards are typically held in the reader in the EMV case, rather than quickly “swiped” through).
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Loop’s business plan is largely B2C, though the company is looking to build relationships with phone makers, and to have those manufacturers include Loop in their units.
The company was founded by Will Graylin and George Wallner, both long-time veterans of the payments industry. Will was previously founder and CEO of ROAM Data, a mobile POS and mobile payment solutions provider bought by Ingenico. George had founded and served as CEO of Hypercom, a leading global POS provider eventually acquired by VeriFone.

Heckyl Announces More Than $3.5 Million in Series B Funding

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In a round led by IDG Ventures India, Heckyl Technologies raised more than $3.5 million in new capital. Also participating in the round were Seedfund Advisors, a previous investor, and angel investor, Rajiv Dalal. The company’s total funding now stands at $4.75 million.

Heckyl Technologies provides real-time financial information and analytics for researchers, traders, and investors. Their platform includes news, market, sentiment, and predictive data analysis, covering more than 35,000 companies and more than 3,500 non-listed entities around the world.

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The company made headlines earlier this year for taking first place at the UK Trade & Investment contest in June. Heckyl also was named the fastest growing enterprise startup in the Indian brokerage industry.

Founded in 2010, Heckyl Technologies demoed its FIND 2.0 (Financial In News & Data) technology at FinovateEurope 2013. See the company in action here.

FinovateAsia 2013 Best of Show: BehavioSec

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Best of Show: BehavioSec

“Nice! BehavioSec is the most interesting bit of fintech so far today, but the day is still young! #finovateasia”

–Paul A. Chapman via Twitter (@pchap10k)

In winning Best of Show for a second time (the first was at FinovateSpring 2012 in San Francisco), Neil Costigan’s BehavioSec revealed that it has plenty to show – and tell.
As a specialist in the field of biometric authentication, BehavioSec has leveraged its “continuously authenticating” algorithms to provide security solutions for e-merchants and mobile commerce.
And as a crowd-pleasing presentation of security technology, BehavioSec’s keystroke and gesture pattern-based authentication demonstrates just enough of the “wow” factor to make audiences feel they are seeing tomorrow’s technology today.
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To see the video of BehavioSec’s Best of Show winning demo, click here.

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Why They Won:
  • Removes friction from the end user’s experience
  • Uses biometrics in a practical way that doesn’t require expensive, additional hardware
  • Adds a layer of security that transcends beyond the traditional PIN
Bottom Line:
  • BehavioSec emphasizes removing the burden of security from the shoulders of end users, and gives technology the ability to improve over time due to continuous authentication provide a unique solution in the security space.
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Interview with Neil Costigan, CEO, BehavioSec
Finovate: When you won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2012, you said the single most compelling benefit of BehavioSec’s mobile security solution was “transparency” and a “fantastic user experience.” What has been the most significant development in BehavioSec that has led to winning Best of Show again a year later?
Costigan: I think our success in the market throughout 2013 has led to a “feedback loop” where we have really gained customer suggestions to enhance the technology.
I think it shows that we listen and improve, and that we speak more from real world experience now.
Finovate: Also a year ago you talked about how your technology helped “identify abnormal behavior” and that you hoped to expand the solution by offering to help customers decide “appropriate next steps aligned with the level of risk.” Have you continued down this path?
Costigan: Yes, we’ve opened up our APIs and formats and added the idea of policy triggers. We’ve also integrated more with the ecosystem that is around us.
Finovate: A point of emphasis for BehavioSec seems to be removing the burden of security from the shoulders of the end user. Why is this important?
Costigan: In security, the ‘user’ is actually the weak link. Make the security too much of a burden and the end user tends to ignore it, or subvert it for their own convenience. Think of password managers being like the user propping up a big safe door with a chair. The user expects the bank, payment service, or eCommerce site to solve the security issue, not be a part of it.
Finovate: What are some of the advantages of innovating in a country like Sweden? In what ways are Northern European markets different from those in other parts of Europe when it comes to security issues?
Costigan: Actually it can be a burden!
I’m not from the Nordics myself. I’m Irish. So I find this new market fascinating, how different it is from the rest of Europe.
What I have picked up over the last few years is that there is little to no fraud here. Hard to be selling anti-fraud solutions to people who don’t need them! I am half-joking. 
The Internet removes these barriers. I believe this Northern European market is a trendsetter for a technology update. What works here tends to mirror what will happen elsewhere. Our references here are taken as a good bellwether of what will happen in other markets.

Flint Raises $2 Million from Verizon Investments

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Add another $2 million in funding for mobile payments startup, Flint Mobile.

The company said on Tuesday that Verizon Investments was contributing to Flint’s Series B round of funding. The additional capital from Verizon Communication’s investment division boosts Flint’s total funding for this round to $8 million.

Flint also announced integration with Apple’s Passbook. According to Flint CEO Greg Goldfarb, the idea is to “enable little businesses that don’t have a lot of technology resources and no cash register to act with the efficiencies of bigger businesses.” The Passbook integration will allow coupons and offers to be added to digital receipts, which can be sent via email or stored in Passbook. Users will also be able to manage payments, send invoices, and receive payments online.

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Flint offers iOS and Android compatible mobile payments systems that requires no additional hardware or card reader. The technology makes it easier for smaller and nontraditional businesses to accept credit cards, and allows merchants to issue invoices and create customized receipts safely and securely.
The company made headlines in October with news that it had received $6 million in Series B funding from wireless service provider, Digicel. Flint demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2012 in San Francisco. See the company in action here.

Finovate Alumni News– December 10, 2013

  • Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgCapital Access Network changes its name to CAN Capital.
  • Compass Plus survey reflects declining support for NFC amid growing popularity of mobile channel.
  • CFA Institute’s Inside Investing takes a look at Motif Investing and “the secret revolution in finance.”
  • Gartner places NICE in leaders quadrant of the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Workforce Optimization.
  • Wealthfront announces new ability to harvest losses on stocks that comprise an index.
  • Flint Mobile raises $2 million from Verizon Investments.
  • Mint, Manilla, SigFig, Jemstep and Planwise featured in Kiplinger’s list of smart online tools to manage finances.
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.