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If you’re in need of a little distraction, we have good news. The demo videos from FinovateEurope 2015 have been released. All 72 videos from last month’s conference, along with the full history of Finovate demos, are publicly available on the Finovate video archives page.
To get started, here are the seven Best of Show winners, in alphabetical order:
Feel free to download, embed, and tweet the videos to share your favorites from the conference, whether you were in attendance or not.
Card-linked offers company, Linkable Networks, welcomed some extra cash today. The Boston-based company pulled in $11.7 million in Series E funding from existing investors BlueChip Ventures, CommonAngels, and Kepha Partners.
Since its first seed round of $1.5 million in 2010, Linkable Networks has brought in a total of $40.4 million to date.
The company is also welcoming three new executives to its leadership team:
Tom Burgess founded Linkable Networks in 2010 under the name Clovr Media. The startup changed its name to Linkable Networks in 2011.
Linkable Networks demonstrated its MasterCard solution at FinovateFall 2012.
Your Daily Distraction: FinovateEurope 2015 Demo Videos Now Available.
Fintech Finance, a company that creates video episodes each month focusing on what’s hot in fintech, produced a two video summary of FinovateEurope earlier this month.
The compilation features attendees and presenters as they relay their thoughts about their favorite aspects of each day.
FinovateEurope 2015 day one
FinovateEurope 2015 day two
Thanks to Ali Paterson for creating and sharing the videos. You can contact Ali at ali@fintech.finance or on Twitter at @AliPaterson.
Small business owners searching for office supplies at Staples.com can now apply for a loan while filling their virtual shopping carts.
Yesterday Staples announced a partnership with Lendio, a startup that specializes in matching small business borrowers with lenders, to power the new loan offering.
Borrowers in search of funding will begin the process on Staples’ website:
Next, they are taken to a Staples-branded section of Lendio’s site to finish the application:
From there, borrowers choose from:
- Line of credit
- Small Business Association loan
- Term loan
- Cash advance
- Equipment loan
- Commercial real estate loan
Lendio offers loans from $2,500 to $1 million and handles the entire transaction.
Lendio is based in Salt Lake City, UT. It debuted at FinovateSpring 2011 in San Francisco.
InvestUp (known simply as Up) launched at FinovateEurope earlier this month. The UK-based startup offers investors a single place to search for, invest in, and track multiple investments across numerous crowdfunding sites.
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Up’s clean user interface offers many benefits to investors:
1) Provides a single place to access crowdfunding deals hosted on multiple sites
2) Saves time by minimizing paperwork. Investors have just one account and a single portfolio that aggregates all crowdfunding investments
3) Completely free
The screenshot below shows how the filtering capability (located at top) narrows results of available campaigns that fit the user’s specifications:
When the user selects a campaign they’re interested in, they see more details, and can add it to their Wishlist. To invest, they select Get Access:
The 13 crowdfunding sites aggregated on the Up platform benefit by free access to more investors. The startup generates revenue from financial services advertising.
What’s next?
Up currently offers business loans and will soon launch equity and personal lending options. Eventually, it plans to build an auto-invest feature, offering a “set it and forget it” approach that automatically invests users’ cash, according to their preferences.
Up debuted its crowdfunding supermarket at FinovateEurope. The live demo video will be available in the Finovate video archives later this week.
Finovate Debuts: How Trunomi Shares Customers’ Personal Info while Maintaining Their Privacy.
There are special requirements banks must abide by when handling customers’ personal identifiable information (PII) data. Trunomi helps banks safely use PII so that they can tailor services to customers and provide a better overall experience.
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Trunomi’s TruLink serves as the background architecture that powers TruMobile, a system that verifies the customer’s identity on their mobile device and enables them to share PII securely.
When a bank wants to use customer PII, regulations specify that customer consent:
TruLink generates certifications that prove all of the above. Additionally, it authenticates user identity and validates questionable transactions.
Trunomi benefits both the financial institution and the end customer:
Bank benefits
Trunomi’s live demo video from FinovateEurope 2015 will be available on the Finovate video archives page this week.
Between the risk involved with lending and the number of resources needed, it can be costly for banks. Nostrum Group is helping banks on both fronts with a set of tools that reduce friction in the lending process.
At FinovateEurope 2014, Nostrum Group showed off Virtual Collector, a system that automates loan delinquency management. This year it applied for FinovateEurope and was selected to debut a new iteration of its core system that aims to make lending cheaper, faster, and safer.
Richard Carter, CEO, has an extensive background in the credit and lending space. We interviewed him recently about Nostrum’s loan platform:
Finovate: In addition to its Virtual Collector, Nostrum offers loan application technology. What role does big data have here? What role do you see big data taking on in the lending industry in the future?
Carter:
That’s right, in fact at FinovateEurope 2015 we launched our new Virtual Finance platform, which is our fully digital loan management platform. This platform enables lenders to completely automate the loan application and servicing process, including delinquency management, which is where Virtual Collector fits in.
My entire career has been spent working in technology in financial services, specifically in the lending industry. So I’m a subject matter expert and I’ve got experience and relationships that span three decades. I’ve been at the heart of the industry through boom and bust periods, and some of the most pivotal innovations the market has experienced including telephone banking, internet banking, and most recently the dawn of the cloud, social media, smartphones and tablets.
I think what really helps me to add value to our clients though is the simple fact that I’m a consumer myself, and one who is fascinated by technology and gadgets, and obsessive about customer service. I follow innovations and success stories across consumer industries with great interest and these have been the source of many sparks of inspiration for our own technology.
I can sit down with our clients and talk to them from combined perspectives of a technology provider, a lending industry expert, and an active and passionate consumer. I think it’s a combination they value.
Nostrum Group is self-funded and is based in the UK. Check out the debut of Virtual Collector at FinovateEurope 2014. Its FinovateEurope 2015 video will be available on the demo video archive pages later this week.
In what amounts to almost double its previous funding round, Betterment has pulled in $60 million in VC investment. The series D round was led by Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures and Northwestern Mutual also contributed.
The new installment boosts Betterment’s total funds to $105 million and will be used to speed transactions and rollovers for its 65,000 customers, as well as enhance branding for advisor apps and services.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Betterment is now valued at $400 to $500 million. In comparison, competitors Personal Capital and Wealthfront are valued at $250 million and $700 million, respectively.
In a conversation with Investment News, Betterment CEO, Jon Stein, stated, “We didn’t need to raise the money today,” He says it still has $20 million in the bank from its last funding round. However, he goes on, “We’re getting a lot of interest from investors.”
Betterment, which manages about $1.4 billion in assets, fits in the “robo-advisor” category; it seeks to disrupt the wealth management space with specialized algorithms and tools that use automation to lower the cost of a personal advisor service. CB Insights reports that robo-advisors raised a cumulative $290 million in funding last year, double the amount raised in 2013.
Betterment demonstrated its Multiple Goals Feature at FinovateFall 2011.
InComm to offer Hip Digital access to selection of gift cards and delivery options.
Finsphere, a company that uses mobile phone location data to authenticate a consumer’s identity, announced $1.8 million in new funding last week. The new round is internal, with an additional contribution from an unnamed investor. Its funding now totals $33 million.
More notably, the Bellevue-based company partnered with Visa to offer what the credit card company is calling Mobile Location Confirmation. Visa will use Finsphere to ensure the GPS location of the customer’s smartphone matches the location their credit card is swiped. This helps eliminate unnecessary purchase declines, while ensuring the purchase isn’t fraudulent.
In a dovetail announcement this week, Finsphere also reported that it will bring retail banking executive Deanna Oppenheimer on board as a strategic advisor.
Finsphere demonstrated its identity security service at FinovateEurope 2012.
