FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Full Profile

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Full Profile

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FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

Full Profile brings transparency, efficiency, and trust to farmers and the post-farmgate ecosystem through our AgriDigital agri-blockchains and commodity-management software.

Features:

  • Help growers get paid immediately and save buyers and brokers time and money
  • De-risk financing for banks
  • Enable paddock-to-plate transparency for consumers

Why it’s great
This harvest, we are launching the first ever global pilot application of blockchain in physical agri-commodities.

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Emma Weston, Founder
Weston has extensive career experience as a lawyer, agribusiness executive, start-up mentor, and executive coach. She brings a wealth of strategic and operational expertise to the team at Full Profile.
LinkedIn

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: TransUnion

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: TransUnion

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FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

TransUnion’s Prama puts the power of big data and analytics at your fingertips to make better decisions at the speed your business demands.

Features:

  • On-demand access to seven years of depersonalized credit data
  • Easily configure metrics to answer your specific questions
  • Benchmark your performance against the market and peers

Why it’s great
Prama is an intuitive, web-based solution that provides self-service access to more than 350 billion rows of depersonalized consumer credit data, facilitating faster decisions and strategy adjustments.Screen Shot 2016-08-08 at 12.45.57 PM

Presenters

Paul Siegfried, SVP, Financial Services
Siegfried leads the financial services card vertical and is charged with product development, business development and market strategy.
LinkedIn
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Ginny Gomez, SVP, Product Management
Gomez leads U.S. product management and is responsible for delivering innovative new solutions and driving increased value for our clients across markets and verticals.
LinkedIn

EyeLock’s New Launch Improves Iris Recognition Tech

EyeLock’s New Launch Improves Iris Recognition Tech

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There are plenty of reasons I stopped using my bank’s finicky iris-scanning mobile-authentication technology to log in and check my account balance. Plagued with issues caused by glasses, glare and sunlight, I switched to using a 4-digit PIN for the foreseeable future. This week iris authentication company EyeLock released a new technology to remove some of the friction associated with the technology and boost adoption rates.

The New York-based company’s new technology authenticates at a distance of 60 cm and works with glasses, contact lenses, and even in bright daylight, making EyeLock even more user-friendly. EyeLock CEO Jim Demitrieus refers to the new technology as a “significant scientific breakthrough.” In a press release, Demitrieus added that it “solves the usability and security impediments that have long been an obstacle for mass-market adoption.”

EyeLock owns and controls the entire software and algorithm stack, which helps it to create a more secure solution. Founded in 2006, the company has raised $3 million in funding. At FinovateFall 2014 the company debuted myris, a USB-powered identity authenticator that converts a user’s iris into a unique, encrypted code for secure website access.

Earlier this year, EyeLock opened an IoT Center of Excellence to further develop and expand the distribution of its iris-scanning technologies. In late 2015 the company teamed up with Diebold to create a new concept ATM that connects to the user’s smartphone instead of using a PIN pad, card reader, or screen.

Prosper Closes in on $5 Billion Commitment for New Loans

Prosper Closes in on $5 Billion Commitment for New Loans

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P2P lending platform Prosper is in talks with a group of investment firms to sell around $5 billion worth of loans over the course of the next two years.

Interested firms include Fortress Investment Group LLC, Soros Fund Management LLC, Third Point LLC, and Jefferies LLC. Some of these firms are in talks with banks about borrowing money to support the purchases. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The loans would be bought at face value, but the firms are also in discussions to receive equity warrants in Prosper as they make the purchases.”

Once finalized, this deal will help to quiet naysayers of P2P lending platforms, an industry which has faced increased scrutiny since Lending Club’s CEO was forced to resign and Prosper laid off 28% of its workforce. The loan purchase agreements are expected to be complete in the coming weeks.

News was also released that Prosper has already started selling loans to BBVA Compass, a bank whose VC arm took an equity stake in Prosper in 2015.

Aside from the aforementioned layoffs and a 12% drop in lending volume in the first quarter of this year, Prosper has issued relatively positive news over the course of the past six months. In March, the company appointed a USAA executive as its new CFO, rebranded its recently purchased BillGuard app to Prosper Daily, and teamed up with HomeAdvisor to improve access to home financing. In June, Prosper launched an all-new interface for investors, simplifying the view of portfolio diversification.

Founded in 2005, Prosper presented at FinovateSpring 2009 as well as the inaugural Finovate in 2007.

Azimo Launches Money Transfers on Facebook Messenger

Azimo Launches Money Transfers on Facebook Messenger

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With its new launch today, Azimo is making global money transfers as easy as sending a message. The London-based company now lets customers send money to 190+ countries via Facebook Messenger, which counts one billion users.

Azimo’s integration with Facebook Messenger reaches customers in the channel they’re already using. It makes transferring money easy: No IBAN number, contact details, or other info is required.

Azimo’s users (iOS or Android) simply select who they want to pay, how much to send, and request the recipient’s details on Facebook Messenger. Within the Facebook app, the recipient enters their details to complete the transfer. Azimo offers the option of transferring the money to their bank or to one of its 290,000 brick-and-mortar pick-up locations.

Here’s a video tutorial from Azimo:

https://youtu.be/LN8U_28-uEw

This news comes just over a month after the company launched its Facebook Messenger chatbot, which uses AI and machine learning to create a natural, human-like conversational chat experience.

Founded in 2012, Azimo has raised a total of $40 million; its estimated value is $100 million. The company debuted its global money transfer platform at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

Lendio by the Numbers: $250 Million in Loans to 10,000+ Small Businesses

Lendio by the Numbers: $250 Million in Loans to 10,000+ Small Businesses

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Small business lending marketplace Lendio released its second quarter financial results this week. The Utah-based company reached a milestone, having matched 10,000 small businesses with $250 million in loans since its 2011 launch.

In Q2 ending 30 June 2016, Lendio facilitated $55+ million in loans, $4+ million of which came through Lendio’s partnership with Staples. The $55 million represents an 86% increase over the $30 million in loans it facilitated in Q2 2015. Lendio CEO Brock Blake noted that despite “pessimism in the market” Lendio’s growth remains “strong and steady.”

Additional Q2 ’16 highlights include:

  • 2,400 new businesses funded, a 2.3X increase over Q1 ’16
  • Record number and volume of loan renewals
  • Loans funded in all 50 states
  • Top 10 states: California, Florida, Texas, New York, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado
  • Top industries: construction, transportation, retail, healthcare, restaurant, manufacturing and automotive
  • Lendio was certified by Great Place to Work

Lendio works on behalf of small business borrowers to match them with the right loan, helping the 75 lenders on its platform reach qualified borrowers. The company partnered with American Express in April to power its merchant financing offering. In 2015, the Utah-based company facilitated $128+ million in financing to more than 5,100 businesses. Lendio debuted at FinovateSpring 2011.

PayNearMe Powering Cash Payments for Comcast

PayNearMe Powering Cash Payments for Comcast

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Starting today, you can pay your Comcast bill in cash thanks to digital cash transaction network PayNearMe.

As an added feature on Comcast’s XFINITY My Account mobile app, PayNearMe increases the number of brick-and-mortar locations where Comcast consumers can pay their bills. The 5% of Comcast customers who prefer to pay in cash can still do so at 500 XFINITY stores and now have the option to pay at 7,700+ participating 7-Eleven stores, most of which stay open 24/7. There is no word yet when payments can be made at PayNearMe’s other partnering franchises, Family Dollar and Ace Cash Express.

Users simply select the Cash via PayNearMe option in the mobile app, which presents them with a barcode to scan in-store at 7-Eleven and XFINITY for a $1.25 fee. Payment is credited to the user’s account within 48 hours of the transaction.

The new partnership adds to the 17,000 billers, including AAA, AT&T, and Toyota Financial Services, that accept cash payments via PayNearMe.

Founded in 2009, PayNearMe enables consumers to pay bills using cash at 17,000+ 7-Eleven, Ace Cash Express, and Family Dollar retail stores across the U.S. by scanning a barcode on their smartphone. Most recently, the company acquired financial management and billpay app Prism Money to empower enterprise clients with a customized bill presentment app. In April, the company partnered with the Internal Revenue Service to allow underbanked consumers to pay their taxes in cash. It also struck a deal with Dallas Area Rapid Transit to facilitate bus fare purchases on its platform.

PayNearMe presented at FinovateSpring 2013 and at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014. The company plans to continue expanding its flagship cash-payment service by increasing retail partnerships.

7 Alum Leaders Named U.K.’s Coolest People in Fintech

7 Alum Leaders Named U.K.’s Coolest People in Fintech

BritishFlagBusiness Insider rounded up the 40 most exciting people in fintech in the United Kingdom. As it turns out, Brexit isn’t enough to shake the fintech scene in the U.K. In fact, according to KPMG, British fintech startups raised $962 million in 2015. Of that amount, London companies raised $743 million.

The list includes these seven leaders from Finovate and FinDEVr alumni:

Taavet Hinrikus, CEO and cofounder of TransferWise

Marta Krupinska, General Manager and cofounder of Azimo

Nikolay Storonsky, CEO and cofounder of Revolut

Giles Andrews, Executive Chairman and cofounder of Zopa

Peter Smith, CEO and cofounder of Blockchain

Usman Khan, CTO and cofounder of Algomi

Nick Hungerford, CEO and founder of Nutmeg

Check out all 40 leaders who made the list. Wonder how Business Insider made its selections? Here’s how the publication described its process:

We looked at who’s done cool and interesting things in the past year, including companies that have raised money or grown rapidly. We’ve also tried to include some of the less obvious names—the people doing great things behind the scenes—as well the faces out front.

Fiserv Adds clearXchange P2P Payments to its Offerings

Fiserv Adds clearXchange P2P Payments to its Offerings

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Financial services technology company Fiserv and Early Warning have partnered this week. Fiserv will leverage the partnership to provide a turnkey solution for banks to implement Early Warning’s P2P payment solution, clearXchange.

clearXchange was created in 2011 by Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo and was acquired by Early Warning in January. Fiserv will market the real-time P2P solution, helping Early Warning to reach 6,000 banks and credit unions, including the 40 largest U.S. financial institutions. clearXchange will be available through its NOW Network, which connects financial institutions, billers, small businesses and consumers to facilitate the exchange of money and information in real time.

Early Warning’s CEO Paul Finch says, “Our mission is to enable all banks and credit unions to offer a broad range of real-time payment solutions to their customers,” and adds, “Our relationship with Fiserv will expand our ability to deliver Early Warning’s trusted and secure payments solutions through financial institutions of all sizes nationwide.”

Fiserv is one of the newest distribution partners for the service, along with Mastercard, which announced this week that its Mastercard Send U.S. debit cardholders can send and receive money through the clearXchange network.

It’s unclear what effect this will have on Fiserv’s existing P2P payment service, Popmoney, which it began offering after acquiring Popmoney creator CashEdge in 2011. For now, the Atlanta-based company made it clear it will offer both services.

Fiserv last presented at FinovateSpring 2016 where it debuted its mobile account opening solution targeted toward millennials.

FinDEVr APIntelligence

FinDEVrSV16-withdateOur FinDEVr New York developer showcase was a success! FinDEVr Silicon Valley will be held 18/19 October 2016 in Santa Clara. Register today and save.

On FinDEVr.com

  • From the Tech Side: Interview with Checkbook.io CTO PJ Gupta

The latest from FinDEVr New York 2016 presenters

  • Q2 Leverages MX Technology to Launch Contextual PFM
  • France’s Groupe BPCE Acquires Munich-based Fidor Bank
  • Venmo named a Breakthrough Brand on Interbrand’s 2016 report

Alumni updates

  • Pennsylvania State Employees CU implement account origination module from Temenos.
  • Envestnet | Yodlee Forges Strategic Partnership with United Capital
  • Token opens new London office.
  • Trulioo earns top honors for ID verification in 2016 Global RegTech report.
  • PC Magazine labels Xero the fastest accounting-software innovator.
  • Entersekt to bring its 2FA technology, Transakt, to Nigeria via partnership with First Authentication Services Ltd (FASL).

Stay current on daily news from the fintech developer community! Follow FinDEVr on Twitter.

Finovate Debuts: Cyberfend’s BotFender Detects Attacks in Real-Time

Finovate Debuts: Cyberfend’s BotFender Detects Attacks in Real-Time

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Cyberfend’s security solution detects account takeover, payment fraud, and stolen credentials. By blending human cognitive science with machine learning, the company’s fraud-detection system has nearly eliminated false positives or false negatives.

At FinovateSpring 2016, Cyberfend CEO Sreenath Kurupati demoed BotFender, software that offers real-time cyber-attack detection invisible to end users.

In his demo, Kurupati explains that hackers continuously evolve their patterns to circumvent new security implementations. Hackers even use machine learning to train bots to enter data in a human-like way to trick behavioral analytic security engines. So BotFender doesn’t block transactions by looking at the attack pattern, and instead applies algorithms and human-applied cognitive science methods that examine the integrity of the interaction to detect the usage of stolen usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers.

Company facts and figures:

  • Founded in 2014
  • Headquartered in Santa Clara, California
  • Protects nearly 1 billion transactions per month
  • Protects 200 million users across 50+ countries

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After Cyberfend’s demo, we interviewed the company’s CEO and cofounder Sreenath Kurupati (pictured above) to learn more about Cyberfend.

Finovate: What problem does Cyberfend solve?

Kurupati: Every other week we hear of a massive security breach at a large website. Through these back-end breaches, hackers steal millions of user credentials (including usernames, email addresses, passwords, credit cards and other personal information). Hackers know that most users reuse their login, password and other credentials across multiple web sites and services. So, hackers then replay these stolen credentials across the web (on all other web properties) in sophisticated attacks on login and payment pages.

Cyberfend protects web properties (and mobile applications) from stolen credential usage and fraud. They do so by detecting sophisticated attacks in real-time to prevent monetary fraud, account take-over and malicious new account signups.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Kurupati: Every website and mobile application with a login or payment form (or any form) can use Cyberfend’s service—as they are vulnerable to credential-based attacks.

Cyberfend’s customers include leaders in multiple verticals such as ecommerce, file sharing and payments. Beyond these, we are also working closely with firms in banking, healthcare, cloud services, and education.

We currently protect more than a billion login and payment transactions every month, protecting more than 200 million user accounts, seeing traffic from 50+ countries. We are a fairly new startup (less than two years old) and this is indicative of the efficacy of our solution as well as the strong need in the market.

Finovate: What kind of metrics or facts about Cyberfend can we share with our readers?

Kurupati: Cyberfend provides a comprehensive bot/automation detection service. We do so with near zero false positives (this is unique and unprecedented in the security industry). In an industry lacking real metrics, Cyberfend makes a strong claim of near zero [for] both false negatives (hackers don’t get through) and false positives (good users never blocked).

Commercially today Cyberfend protects more than 200 million user accounts accessing services from 50+ countries. We see about 1 billion login and payment transactions using our services every month. One reason for the rapid growth in the use of Cyberfend is its efficacy in detecting sophisticated attacks.

GraphBot traffic is up to 3x that of human traffic

Publicly, we hear about some large attacks once every few weeks. However, it is relatively unknown that every consumer facing website is getting large numbers of bot attacks every day. The above chart is an example. You can see the green line indicating good human users on the site. It follows a specific circadian rhythm. The red line (bot attack traffic) within a day also shows a wide range of attacks—not a single continuous attack, but a continuous series of attacks. Also, it is interesting to note that bot traffic is sometime twice or thrice genuine user traffic. This is primarily the result of millions of stolen user credentials available in hands of fraudsters who also have sophisticated tools to launch such widespread attacks.

GlobeCyberfend’s dashboard

Cyberfend also provides customer dashboards for post-processing, management reports and also custom search analytics. These tools empower Cyberfend’s customers to make proactive decisions with their help.

Cyberfend

When a bot-detection solution like Cyberfend’s BotFender is deployed (in PoC or production), customers first notice to their surprise the level of bot attacks hitting them. Once the customers start actively blocking bots, based on BotFender’s recommendation, the attack volume starts to reduce. Hackers first try to increase their sophistication or change their attack methods of scripting stolen credentials. Soon, they move away to other targets.

Finovate: How does Cyberfend solve the problem better?

Kurupati: The stolen credential abuse problem is a hard problem. The attack scripts used by hackers tend to be fairly sophisticated. Furthermore, solving the problem with zero false positives makes this really challenging.

Cyberfend is using a different approach: cognitive science coupled with advanced machine learning and novel signal-processing methods. (As a security service company, we cannot reveal our solution. You can reach us to learn more: info@cyberfend.com).

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Kurupati: Our first large customer implementation was illuminating and something we remember very well. They are a sophisticated, large, cloud-service customer with a strong security and technical team.

The moment we got turned on, we immediately saw quite a bit of malicious login traffic. A lot of other security products don’t see action—they work more as insurance—and efficacy is not clear because attacks are rare. With web security, on the other hand, almost-constant attacks [are] happening, most of which go undetected. To see our product immediately catch these was very fulfilling.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Kurupati: The problems we are solving (login-password attacks, account takeover, stolen credit-card fraud) are unusual in an interesting way. There is no single way in which attackers hit a website, and furthermore, the attacks are constantly evolving. Tackling this problem requires expertise across multiple disciplines which is not typically found in many companies. Cyberfend’s team has this multifaceted background which has proven to be very helpful. The expertise includes security, machine learning, algorithms, CPU and machine architectures, networking, payments and computer vision.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Cyberfend that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Kurupati: Cyberfend was in stealth until Finovate in San Jose (May 2016), but we were quietly working with some of the largest web companies on their web and mobile-security challenges. At Finovate, we demonstrated our core product, BotFender, a comprehensive bot/automation detection solution.

In the coming month, we hope to be present at various industry events—including conferences talking about our security approach and learnings—that can be applied widely to benefit the financial industry.

Finovate: Where do you see Cyberfend a year or two from now?

Kurupati: Cyberfend’s product is live and in full production deployment for nearly a year now.

In the near future, we hope to see widespread adoption of Cyberfend to protect login and payment transactions–both on web and mobile–across prominent financial services, ecommerce, and health care providers.

 

Ping Identity Acquires UnboundID

Ping Identity Acquires UnboundID

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Identity security solutions provider Ping Identity has acquired UnboundID, its former partner, for an undisclosed amount. Austin-based UnboundID offers customer identity and access management solutions. The deal is expected to help Ping expand from identity management into customer engagement.

This comes two months after Colorado-based Ping Identity was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $600 million. That acquisition, Ping noted, provided the resources it needed to accelerate its platform by purchasing UnboundID, a move that “wouldn’t have been possible” prior to being acquired by Vista Equity Partners.

Today’s acquisition gives Ping access to UnboundID’s “impressive list of big enterprise customers,” including global brands such as Chick-fil-A, Wells Fargo, Target, Boeing, Cisco and NBC. Perhaps more importantly, it also gives Ping its own identity-data store. In an interview with TechCrunch, Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand said, “At the end of the day, UnboundID has one of the world’s best customer-facing user directories.” Durand added, “Once we incorporate this into our platform and have capabilities to store user profiles, it allows us to innovate in ways we couldn’t before.”

Additionally, Ping anticipates Unbound will help it accelerate its “directory- and user-management capabilities by providing customer identity and access management across all channels and devices.”

Specifically, Ping mentions that the addition of Unbound’s capability will bolster:

  • User experience
  • Personalization
  • Privacy management
  • Partner-identity management

Unbound was founded in 2007; its employees, including CEO Stephen Shoaff, will join the Ping Identity team.

Founded in 2003, Ping Identity upgraded its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform to improve security and ease of use for end users. At FinovateEurope 2012, the company showed how banks can increase conversion rates and reuse existing infrastructure by implementing social networking logins. Prior to being acquired in June 2016, Ping had raised a total of $128 million in funding and counts Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank among its investors.