Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

A Framework for Your 2019 Fintech Strategy

A Framework for Your 2019 Fintech Strategy
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2018

FinovateFall is going beyond the demos again this year to bring you more content. In addition to two days of live demos from 80 fintech companies, we’ll have an extra discussion day to help you break down and digest some of the new technologies. You’ll also have a chance to present your own thoughts and questions to fintech thought leaders.

The discussion day will take place on September 26, following two days of demos on September 24 and 25, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York. These are the conversations that will shape your bank’s 2019 strategy, so be sure to register.

Here is just a handful of topics we’ll cover:

The future of payments

Payments have changed since the dawn of fintech. However, many old habits, such as writing checks and swiping magstripe credit cards, have not changed. Other ideas, such as mobile wallets and tap-to-pay technologies have struggled to gain ground. We’ll discuss these thoughts, as well as voice-driven payments, new technologies, and how millennials are determining the future of digital payments.

Digital transformation

Is digital transformation simply a buzzword or is it a requirement for success and survival in 2019? Digital Transformation involves a broad scope of banks’ operations and we’ll have a chance to hear the experts break down what it means to them and why they think it’s worth paying attention to.

Cybersecurity and risk management

In order to stay one step ahead of hackers, techniques in cybersecurity are constantly advancing by leveraging technologies such as AI and the blockchain. We’ll host a team of analysts, bankers, and hackers as they discuss the threats and opportunities in this space.

Voice banking

AI, natural language processing, conversational banking, and chatbots have bubbled to the top as some of the hottest new fintech trends this year. Voice has been called the next user interface and there’s been plenty of discussion on how consumers will usher in the new era of conversational banking. We’ll hear from banks, analysts, and successful startups on developments they’ve seen in this space and advice they have on where to invest for the future.

Blockchain uses and crypto exchanges

It wouldn’t be a fintech conference without a blockchain discussion– and for good reason. The enabling technology has opened up new possibilities for old banking ideas such as currency, payments, contracts, audit compliance, and more. If you’re feeling behind on leveraging blockchain opportunities, be sure to tune into one of these sessions. And don’t miss discussions on crypto exchanges– because the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are way more than just bitcoin.

Building partnerships

While we can’t settle the build vs. buy dilemma for you, we will offer up our thoughts on the importance of partnerships in banking and fintech. Most fintechs need banks to survive, and many banks thrive off the new ideas and capabilities that fintech companies open up for their institutions. These sessions will capture ideas on how to create a win-win partnership that focuses on utility and efficiency.

Data

From its role in alternative credit scoring technologies to the latest robo advisory tools, data has a place across the fintech sector. As evidenced by the title of our data session, Data as Oxygen, we think it’s a pretty important resource. We’ll hear from top-tier banks, startups, and other financial services companies as they discuss how they use data and where they see the data revolution headed next.

Financing

As a staple banking activity, lending will take one of the starring roles in our discussion day. While lending basics have remained the same, new enabling technologies have recently opened up new opportunities in the space. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed the way underwriters look at risk and credit scoring, while point of sale financing technologies have advanced far beyond layaway thanks to real-time risk analyses. These are just some of the topics that will be featured on the Digital Lending Stage at FinovateFall next month.

We’ll also feature highlights such as:

  • Analyst all-stars
  • Debates on the future of digital financial services
  • Accelerator showcase

And be sure to check out our loaded list of 80 demoing companies that will take the stage on September 24 and 25. On the Finovate blog, we’re highlighting select companies in our Sneak Peek series to give you an advanced look at what to expect on stage.

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Mint Brings User Interface into 2018

Mint Brings User Interface into 2018
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mint

The last time I covered Mint was in 2014. And the company’s last press release was in 2016. So it was good to see an update from Mint today, even if that update is slightly underwhelming– an announcement of a refreshed user interface.

The Intuit-owned company has updated the design of its iOS app to offer a sleek design as well as a simplified view of important changes in users’ finances. Mint listened to user feedback and brought financial data to the foreground, requiring fewer clicks to find it.

Along with these changes, the company is also rolling out Mintsights, a new feature to help iOS users stay on top of their budget. The tool leverages users’ financial data to offer data-driven insights and money saving offers. Mintsights will be launched to iOS users in the next few months and the company reports that updates to its Android and web interfaces are coming soon.

Founded in 2006, Mint found early fintech success when it was acquired by Intuit in 2009. The company’s founder, Aaron Patzer, demoed the budgeting technology at the very first Finovate conference in 2007. While Mint has remained fairly quiet since its introduction of Mint Bills in December 2016, the company has stayed focused on the consumer-facing side of its business, publishing blog posts and adding investment, credit, insurance, and lending offers targeting millennials.

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Entrust Datacard Sees Fruit from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Entrust Datacard Sees Fruit from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard

Identity authentication and secure card issuance company Entrust Datacard announced enhancements to its Mobile Smart Credential solution this week. Overall, the changes help guard against security threats without compromising the user experience.

The Minnesota-based company’s main enhancement to its password-free mobile login experience is the addition of Bluetooth login support. The Mobile Smart Credential solution’s Bluetooth enhancement offers proximity-based VPN and workstation admittance, as well as access to cloud applications, legacy applications and physical door access. Instead of  passwords or two-factor authentication, the user’s mobile device is their key.

Ryan Zlockie, global vice president of authentication solutions for Entrust Datacard, called mobile devices “an extension of our identity.” He added, “Like a mobile wallet for payments, Mobile Smart Credential is a virtual employee ID that provides unfettered access to all of the digital and physical places where employees need to do their job. And, by removing friction to the authentication process, organizations are able to streamline operations, increase productivity and provides a better user experience for their employees, which leads to greater overall employee satisfaction.”

The Bluetooth functionality, which Entrust Datacard sees as another step in its journey to “zero-factor authentication,” is the result of the company’s collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In December of 2017, Entrust Datacard participated in an advanced authentication lab at JPL to test authentication experiences that increase security.

Entrust Datacard was founded in 1969 and presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. Jason Soroko, Security Technologies Manager, and Matt Rose, Technical Sales Consultant, spoke to the audience of developers on Safeguarding Your Banking Applications. Last month, the company acquired cloud security firm SMS Passcode and made a strategic investment in cloud security expert CensorNet.

With 2,200 employees in 34 locations across the globe, Entrust Datacard is a privately held company headquartered in Shakopee, Minnesota. The company issues 10 million+ identity and payment credentials daily and manages billions of transactions on an annual basis.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BBVA, Entrust Datacard, InComm, Taulia

On Finovate.com

  • Entrust Datacard Sees Fruit from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Around the web

  • Taulia releases a record-breaking $6 billion in early payments for suppliers in the second quarter – up from $4.5 billion in the previous quarter.
  • BBVA enhances security by enabling customers to manage security levels on their smartphones from a single point in the app.
  • InComm launches Google Play gift cards in Thailand as it celebrates its 10th anniversary in the Asia-Pacific region.

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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Deutsche Bank Takes Equity Stake in Modo Payments

Deutsche Bank Takes Equity Stake in Modo Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Modo Payments

Payments technology company Modo Payments announced this afternoon it received an equity investment from Deutsche Bank. The amount was undisclosed. Prior to today’s announcement, Modo had raised a total of $11.3 million since it was founded in 2010.

The German bank plans to leverage Modo’s technology to expand its digital business-to-business and business-to-consumer payments. Specifically, Deutsche hopes to extend its payment capabilities into non-traditional channels, such as the mobile wallets and peer-to-peer networks of Alipay, Paypal, M-Pesa, and WeChat.

John Gibbons, head of global transaction banking at Deutsche Bank, refers to payments as the “bloodline of banking.” In the press release, he noted that Modo will give Deutsche “more flexibility” in facilitating non-traditional transactions. “Going forward, we will be able to directly process payments to mobile wallets and app-based payment solutions,” Gibbons added.

“The Modo team is focused on doing the most good for the most people by reducing friction in payments. That is why we do what we do every day, and this partnership with Deutsche Bank is a great opportunity to work with one of the world’s largest payment providers that can implement our technology on a global scale and further our reason for being” said Bruce Parker, founder and CEO at Modo. “We’re excited to see where this relationship can take us and how we can continue creating interoperability between payment systems around the world.”

Modo exchanges payment data across platforms on behalf of banks, payment networks, and providers, enabling them to store, share, and track payment event data. The company presented at FinovateFall 2016, where it showcased its Modo Digital Payments Hub. Late last year, Modo appointed former CEO of Klarna North America, Brian Billingsley, as its Chief Revenue Officer. More recently, the company earned top honors at the ETA TRANSACT Payments Pitch-Off earlier this year.

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PaySimple Adds New Integrations for Targeted Email Marketing

PaySimple Adds New Integrations for Targeted Email Marketing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: PaySimple

Service commerce platform PaySimple announced its latest integrations today, unveiling partnerships with MailChimp and Constant Contact.

By integrating with these email marketing platforms, PaySimple is enabling its merchant clients to automatically synchronize their customer records from PaySimple reports. Merchants can leverage their customer purchase data to segment customer lists, create targeted marketing campaigns, and make more informed marketing decisions.

“We designed this integration to help our merchants promote their businesses, keep their customers engaged, and generate more sales by leveraging powerful payment data in their email marketing,” said PaySimple President, David Sharp. “Ultimately, this is part of PaySimple’s mission to empower SMBs to reach their full potential.”

Founded in 2006, PaySimple focuses on making enterprise-scale efficiencies available to small businesses at a reasonable cost. The Colorado-based company offers technology to help businesses accept payments, manage customers, and automate billing.  PaySimple is making today’s integrations available as a part of its PaySimple Pro account offering.

The company serves 17,000 clients in a range of industries, from fitness to professional services. At FinovateFall 2012, PaySimple CEO Eric Remer demonstrated how the company uses early payment incentives to help small businesses get paid faster. Earlier this spring, PaySimple launched a real-time data integration with Quickbooks Online to offer business owners a better view of their business’ financial health.

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Crypterium

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Crypterium
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Crypterium, FinovateFall 2018, FinovateFall 2018 Sneak Peek

FinovateFallA look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 24 through 26, 2018 in New York. Register today and save your spot.

Crypterium, the world’s first cryptobank, will help you to spend your crypto holdings with the same ease as cash. Pair your crypto account with the virtual card in Crypterium’s app and pay with it as you go.

Features

  • Spend cryptocurrency at over 42 million points of acceptance
  • Transfer money worldwide in seconds using just the recipient’s phone number
  • Buy cryptocurrency instantly with your bank cards

Why it’s great
Crypterium believes cryptocurrency is the future of money, and it’s time to make it go mainstream. With its app, you’ll be able to pay with crypto anywhere in the world.

Presenters

Marc O’Brien, CEO
O’Brien is former CEO of Visa U.K., the company’s second most important market. He is also a key advisor on some of the most exciting startups in the U.K., including Revolut, Britain’s first digital bank unicorn.
LinkedIn

Austin Kimm, COO
Kimm is former CEO of Renaissance Life and Pensions (in Russia and Ukraine) and CEO Renaissance Insurance Group. The company was sold for approximately $200 million in 2013.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Round Pegs

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Round Pegs
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2018, FinovateFall 2018 Sneak Peek, Round Pegs

FinovateFallA look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 24 through 26, 2018 in New York. Register today and save your spot.

Round Pegs’ early stage validation of digital opportunities unlocks corporate innovation in a result-driven approach, connecting corporate assets with the startup way.

Features

  • Validate digital opportunities as a startup would
  • Reach executive consensus and avoid larger investments
  • Co-create your product with beta users

Why it’s great
From increasing your digital channels engagement to creating your own fintech, Round Pegs has enabled companies to reach consensus in digital innovations valued at over $45 million.

Presenter

Pedro Donati, CEO
Donati was a former IT director at the largest e-commerce in Latin America and was former channels director at Itau Unibanco, the largest non-government owned bank in Latin America.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Sezzle

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Sezzle
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2018, FinovateFall 2018 Sneak Peek, Sezzle

FinovateFallA look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 24 through 26, 2018 in New York. Register today and save your spot.

Sezzle is an interest-free installment product designed to financially empower young ‘prime-to-be’ consumers at retail checkouts.

Features

  • No ‘hard’ credit checks for new users
  • Four automatic and interest-free installments per checkout
  • Simple user signups and one-click repeat user checkouts

Why it’s great
Sezzle’s simple and easy-to-use payment system enables consumers to get what they desire today without any additional interest or fees.

Presenter

Charlie Youakim, CEO
Youakim is a serial tech entrepreneur who has founded two successful payments companies that have raised over $68 million in venture capital. His first company was Passport. His second is Sezzle.
LinkedIn

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Crypterium, DigiByte Holdings Limited, Fiserv, Modo Payments, PaySimple, Round Pegs, Sberbank, Sezzle, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • PaySimple Adds New Integrations for Targeted Email Marketing.
  • Deutsche Bank Takes Equity Stake in Modo Payments.

Around the web

  • US Alliance Group looks to Fiserv Debit Gateway and Accel Network partnership to support growth.
  • Xero opens new Americas HQ in downtown Denver.
  • Sberbank becomes Founding Partner of World Economic Forum Centre for Cybersecurity.

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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Shoeboxed Acquired by Earth Class Mail

Shoeboxed Acquired by Earth Class Mail
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Shoeboxed

Receipt and business card digitization company Shoeboxed unboxed some major news today. The North Carolina-based company sold to Earth Class Mail, after having raised $2.5 million since it was founded in 2007. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2004, Earth Class Mail offers a postal mail scanning and forwarding service to help businesses and frequent travelers clear paper clutter. The Texas-based company receives, processes, and digitizes clients’ paper mail. It then enables users to view, access, search, and share the cloud-hosted, digitized versions. After processing the paper copies, Earth Class Mail either stores physical copies on premise or shreds the paper, if the client prefers. Additionally, Earth Class Mail leverages integrations with third parties to automate actions required. For example, if the piece of mail is an invoice, it will send it to Bill.com or sync it to cloud storage. The company will even deposit a check on the user’s behalf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=38&v=ASi6EAJNzi0

With the acquisition of Shoeboxed, Earth Class Mail will help users get rid of another source of pesky paper– receipts.  Another benefit Earth Class Mail gains with the acquisition are Shoeboxed one million customers in 90 countries, half of which are small businesses in the U.S.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Shoeboxed CEO and co-founder Tobias Walter said, “The combined power of our two companies will be a massive shift for small businesses to finally become paperless and say goodbye to old workflows that cost them hours of their productivity. I could not be happier with the new home we found for the company, the team and our customers!”

At FinovateSpring 2015, Shoeboxed won Best of Show for demonstrating how banks can leverage the company’s receipt capture platform. In the demo, Walter showcased how banks can use Shoeboxed to help clients view line item data from email receipts, receive reminders about product return deadlines, product recall information, and more. Last August, the company launched Fetch, an “expense-report-free” expense reporting solution for small businesses.

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eToro Adds IOTA Cryptocurrency to Platform

eToro Adds IOTA Cryptocurrency to Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: eToro

After launching its cryptocurrency exchange earlier this year, social trading platform eToro has bolstered the number of the cryptocurrencies it offers, adding IOTA to the roster.

IOTA was launched in 2015 to provide fast communication and transactions for internet of things (IoT) platforms and has a market capitalization of $1.4 billion. The currency shows promising use as an IoT platform and, as eToro states in its blog, has received “quite a bit of attention” from the blockchain and cryptocurrency communities.

The addition of IOTA to eToro’s platform boosts the Israel-based company’s total cryptocurrency count to 12. This is up from the 10 cryptocurrencies eToro announced when it launched the exchange in March.

eToro CEO Yonni Assia, along with the company’s VP of Product, Tal Ben-Simon, demonstrated CopyFunds for Partners at FinovateEurope 2017. Since then, the company announced that clients can now invest directly in shares on the platform and it has gone on to raise a $100 million in Series E round in March, more than doubling its funding to $162 million.

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