Finovate Debuts: PayItSimple’s Financing Tool Gives Customers Extra Time to Pay for Goods, Interest-Free

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is PayItSimple, which demonstrated its point of sale financing solution at FinovateFall 2014.

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With PayItSimple, customers use their existing credit card to divide an expensive purchase into multiple, smaller payments over time.

PayItSimple automatically bills the charges to the customer’s credit card each month. Unlike most financing products, PayItSimple is interest-free and the customer does not need to wait to receive the product, as with layaway.

The PayItSimple option at checkout shows consumers the maximum number of installments allowed. In the case below, the customer pays $120 per month for 10 months instead of $1,200 up front.

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Stats

    • 12 employees
    • $4.3 million in funding
    • Founded August 2013
Secret sauce

Merchants do not take on any risk associated with allowing customers to pay over time. The initial authorization from the customer’s credit card company guarantees the full amount.

PayItSimple’s technology automatically processes the customer’s payments over time. It also handles the authorization.

Consumer use
PayItSimple is fast, with no need to apply or fill out paperwork. Users simply choose their payment schedule and then purchase just like a regular credit card transaction (see below).

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Benefits for end customers:

    • Provides the ability to buy expensive items when they may not have cash up front
    • Makes purchases interest free
    • Does not come with layaway delays
    • Can pay by credit card to collect card rewards
    • Does not require a credit check, making the process as fast as a regular transaction

Merchant use

By listing products with a more digestible price (see below), goods are more appealing and the small installments are affordable for more customers.

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Merchant benefits:
    • Higher conversion rates
    • No additional risk
    • Average ticket price increases
    • Higher customer satisfaction
    • Full payment received at time of purchase
    • No need to change payment gateway

Merchants can either embed PayItSimple’s code into their website or use its API for a seamless checkout experience.

The fine print
While the customer pays no fees or interest, there is a small fee to merchants.

Also, not all credit card holders are eligible to use PayItSimple, but the approval rate is over 95%.

PayItSimple is also available for mobile interfaces and for brick-and-mortar stores. Its official U.S. launch was at FinovateFall 2014.

Finovate Debuts: BlueVine

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is BlueVine, which demonstrated its credit line for small businesses at FinovateFall 2014.

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BlueVine provides small businesses (SMBs), who often have uneven cashflow, with financing to manage operations. By automatically connecting with the SMB’s accounting software, BlueVine furnishes cash for business’ unpaid invoices in as quickly as a day.

Stats

    • 17 employees
    • $5.5 million in funding
    • Founded July 2013

Top 3 benefits

1) Fast funding
To minimize manual input, BlueVine connects to the small business’ accounting software to access unpaid invoices.

The screenshot below shows the user dashboard, which lists all invoices available for instant financing, indicated by the Get paid now button on the right.

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The first time the SMB requests funds, they indicate where to send the money, which can arrive as quickly as 24 hours. Subsequent funding requests take only minutes.

2) Simple and transparent
BlueVine’s payment calculator is an example of its simplicity. It requires only two inputs, the amount of the invoice and the due date.

It also shows the advance payment, which equals 85% of the invoice, and is the maximum amount they can receive upfront, alongside the rebate, the amount the SMB receives once the invoice is paid.

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BlueVine has no set up or subscription dues, and is transparent about its fees. The Funded section of the dashboard details the cash advance, repayment history, and total fees.

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3) 100% online; no paperwork
The BlueVine application process requires two forms, one for business details (see below) and another with personal information.

BlueVineBusinessform.jpgSMBs upload additional information, such as bank statements, online.

BlueVine demonstrated at FinovateFall 2014, check out the video here.

Alumni News– November 21, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgUmbrella.co.uk migrates client base of 1,000+ freelancers and contractors to the FreeAgent platform.
  • Uber helping drivers manage and pay back their student loans by partnering with Tuition.io.
  • Actiance recognized in Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving.
  • Bloomberg: CAN Capital to weigh IPO with up to $2 billion value.
  • Intuit’s Quickbooks and Xero coming to Square App Marketplace.
  • PayStand sets flat fees for e-check payment option.
  • Virtual Piggy, provider of Oink, launches the Oink Discover prepaid card for teens.
  • Fiserv links its Popmoney P2P payment solution to charitable giving.
  • Yodlee wins top honors at Citi Mobile Challenge Latam 2014.
  • Bazaarvoice announces plans to relocated to new corporate HQ in North Austin.
  • Kashoo announces enhancements to its web app, including more P&L options and increased security.
  • VoiceTrust launches strategic partnership with German biometric cloud security company, BioID AG.
  • The Washington Post features Bionym’s Nymiband.
  • Accenture mentions Thinknum as an innovation that is helping to change the banking industry.
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.

Advanced Merchant Payments Brings in $5 Million in First Funding Round

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Yesterday, as we began looking forward to FinovateEurope, we heard news from a 2014 alum, Advanced Merchant Payments (AMP).

AMP, a company that provides banks with alternative lending options for small-and-medium (SMB) businesses, pulled in a fresh $5 million this week. The funding, a first for the Hong Kong-based company, comes from SBT Venture Capital.

AMP operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, and has recently expanded into the UK, participating in London’s Level39 fintech accelerator. It plans to use the funding to further internationalize and scale the business.

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Founded in 2009, AMP helps financial institutions offer financing to small business customers by managing some or all stages of the loan process, including:

    • Qualification
    • Verification
    • Credit scoring
    • Approval
    • Disbursement
    • Daily repayment
    • Risk monitoring

AMP debuted its small business lending solution for banks at FinovateEurope 2014.

FinovateEurope 2015 Presenting Companies Revealed. Get Your Ticket this Week for Very Early Bird Pricing!

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In eleven weeks, more than 70 companies will step onto the FinovateEurope stage at Old Billingsgate Market Hall in London to demo the freshest solutions in fintech.

Come join us on February 10 and 11. Right now, you can save £200 on a ticket with Very Early Bird pricing.

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This has been our most competitive show outside the U.S. so far. The tall stacks of quality demo applications made it difficult to decide who should showcase their newest technology at FinovateEurope.

Without further ado, here are the presenting companies for FinovateEurope 2015:


AdviceGames develops gamified tooling based on data models, specialized in motivational risk games.
Aire is an alternative credit score to help people without any past credit history.
Akamai provides cloud services for delivering, optimising and securing online content and business applications.
AlphaPoint powers the top global digital currency exchanges with its white-label technology platform.
Avoka delivers SaaS-based customer experience management, enhancing multi-channel digital transactions around financial products and services.
Backbase is launching Backbase Journey Manager, giving banks insight and power to optimize omni-channel customer journeys.
Barzahlen – Cash Payment Solutions replaces traditional banking branches through offering consumers to cash-in / cash-out at 3,400 POS or 15,000 cashiers nationwide.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is Australia’s most customer-connected bank.
BizEquity is the ultimate lead generator for banks and 
financial advisors serving small business owners.
C24 is a “smart” digital money platform for managing your bills, transfers and wishes.
CashSentinel enables secure, large payments with mobile phones, all in real time.
CoinJar makes digital currency accessible and simple, for the everyday, and the extraordinary.
CPB SOFTWARE’s expertise, creativity and flexibility are the bases to solutions for its partner banks.
CREALOGIX offers digital banking with added value for the customer and the bank.
Delta Bank is a fast developing Ukrainian bank with a focus on universal payment services.
ebankIT is a software banking company, specialized in multichannel innovation – mobile banking, internet banking on wearable tech, among others.
Encap Security is the only internet scale, device-based, banking-grade authentication platform provider in the world.
eRipple redefines mentorship. We change the fabric of corporates by helping talent and experts connect.
EVRY’s Spendific is the personal trainer for your finances. Know your money. Spend Freely.
Financial Media Solutions brings financial content and analysis to life, in a mobile world.
Fiserv continues to lead the way in digital banking and electronic payment innovations.
Five Degrees invigorates banks with Matrix; banking out-of-the-box and in the Cloud.
FOBISS develops Artificial Intelligence-powered technologies that drive smarter business decisions within the retail banking industry.
IDmission offers the modern enterprise an identity-initiated means of engaging with their customers and partners.
Intelligent Environments provides secure mobile and online solutions for financial service providers.
investUP is the future of crowdfunding, ensuring that investors never miss out on debt and equity deals.
InvoiceSharing enables improved invoice processing and cash flow by sharing free electronic invoices.
iSignthis keeps your identity secured, your payments made safe.
Ixaris Systems provides the components and tools needed to build complex payment solutions rapidly and cost-effectively.
Jumio is a next-generation payments and ID software-as-a-service company utilising proprietary computer vision technology.
Luminous solves problems for banks, its aim is to drive transformation and innovation in banking.
mBank & i3D mBank is the third Polish retail banking group with over 4.5M customers – consistently deemed as a financial sector innovator.
Meniga is the European market leader of white-label PFM and next-generation online banking solutions.
Mobino enables mobile payments for 5 billion people, from any phone, no credit card required.
MoneyHub empowers users to make better financial decisions and plan more effectively for their future.
mydesq provides solutions for wealth managers. It powers your success.
NICE Systems gets you closer to your customers, analyzing every interaction and transaction to build a detailed picture of the customer journey.
Nostrum Group’s technology makes lending cheaper, faster and safer.
Novabase strives to make people’s lives simpler and happier through technology and a co-creative design approach.
onlinepay.com enables users to securely and quickly transfer or share money with their friends on social networks, such as Facebook.
PhotoPay is the easiest way to pay bills and enter payment data on mobile devices.
Pirean is a leading software and services provider for people-focused Identity and Access Management solutions.
Quantitative Credit Research delivers next generation technology for smarter credit risk management.
Quisk enables banks to offer cash-less transactions for anyone with a mobile phone number.
Revolut is your personal money cloud.
SAS Games develops TiViTz College $avings Game-a-thon – a fully-automated, activity-based, fundraising tool for financial savings vehicles.
Sedicii delivers strong authentication for mobile and web enabled services without ever exposing your password.
Smart e-Money’s LockByMobile is the world’s first mobile-based anti-fraud security solution for prepaid, debit, ATM and credit card accounts.
SOFORT Banking is the leading non-bank Online Banking ePayment system in Europe and works instantly.
Strands is a global provider of personalization and recommendation solutions that empower banks to offer a superior customer experience.
StreetShares.com is a social-lending marketplace where retail and institutional investors compete to fund loans to U.S. small businesses.
Taulia transforms supply chains, enabling organisations to create a healthy relationship between suppliers and buyers.
Telenor Banka powered by Asseco will present an innovative financial product offering, driven by telco-bank synergy, powered by Asseco SEE digital banking technology.
Temenos is the market leading provider of banking software systems to financial institutions across the globe.
Topicus provides premier innovative, cloud-based banking software, under the guiding principle: we challenge, you win.
TradeRiver Finance is a secure, non-bank, online solution which finances and executes global trade transactions. 
TransferTo enables value remittance across borders.
Trunomi’s innovative B2ME technology transforms the Know Your Customer market using secure online identity management.
VIPERA is a market leading enabler of mobile financial solutions and customer engagement.
Wipro is leading IT, Consulting and Business Process Services company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better.
WS Integration solves complex data processing issues in the post-trade execution.
Xignite provides real-time and reference financial market data to fuel FinTech innovation.
Xsolla is re-inventing e-commerce.

Yoyo is the first app that seamlessly blends payments, loyalty, and discovery – done right.

We’ll announce several stealth companies as we get closer to the event. And be sure to stay tuned for our Sneak Peek series to get to know each company in advance of the show.

Join us in London! Get your ticket to FinovateEurope before November 21 for Very Early Bird savings.


FinovateEurope 2015 is sponsored by: Life.SREDA and more to be announced.

FinovateEurope 2015 is partners with: Bank Innovators Council, BankersHub, bobsguide, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Datamonitor Financial, The Trading Mesh (formerly HFT Review) and more to be announced. 

Finovate Debuts: Minetta Brook’s Knewsapp

The Finovate Debuts series introduces new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is Minetta Brook, which demonstrated Knewsapp at FinovateFall 2014.

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Minetta Brook aims for Knewsapp to change the way investors stay informed of news relating to stocks in their portfolio. The web-based news discovery application surfaces topics before they become trending news, giving researchers a tool superior to Google.

The stats

    • $2.4 million in funding
    • 10 employees
    • 100+ firms in beta
    • 100,000+ news sources searched
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Knewsapp

Traditionally, when seeking information that may effect a stock in their portfolio, investors search Google, Yahoo or other investment info sources. But typical search engines measure the importance of an article based on popularity.This method elevates content that could be days old, and buries stories investors actually need to read.

For traders, risk management professionals, and research analysts that need real-time news, search engines are not the best tools for content discovery. Knewsapp’s content-based model finds the information investors need to make important trading decisions.

Aside from simply serving up news, Knewsapp also helps investors know what news may effect their investments. It uses a proprietary scoring method to suggest content they should read to be informed, based on their portfolio.

Knewsapp launched on Bloomberg in May. Here’s what the full integration looks like:

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Features
>>Top tickers

Knewsapp continuously scans Twitter and more than 100,000 sources of news and blogs for unusual activity. The result is a list of stocks with the most relevant and fastest developing news, based on their score and velocity.

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Ticker and/or topic combination search
With this function, users search a ticker symbol by itself or in combination with key word(s). The result shows headlines of relevant news stories, sources, scores and similar topics.

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Additionally, a filter capability enables users to see news in specific markets or sectors.

Portfolio monitoring
With hundreds of stocks in a portfolio, it can be difficult to know which terms to search. Knewsapp simplifies this by displaying the score, along with the rate the news is developing, for each stock in a portfolio.

When users filter by the score or velocity, they see which stocks are receiving above average coverage in the news or on Twitter. The right-hand panel displays news stories corresponding to stocks in their portfolio.

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Story DNA
The Story DNA section word cloud displays a quick view of topics and themes within a selected news story.

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Minetta Brook debuted the public web version of Knewsapp at FinovateFall 2014.

Financeit Brings in Fresh Funding After U.S. Launch

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What do wonders of the world, deadly sins, the Harry Potter series, and Financeit’s funding have in common? They all come in sets of seven (at least for now).

Financeit’s seventh round of funding comes from BEST Funds, which is adding an undisclosed amount to the $21.4 million Financeit has raised since its 2007 launch.

Previous rounds include $13 million in November 2013, along with $8.4 million in angel funding received in five rounds from 2007 to 2012.

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The new installment comes a few months after the Toronto-based company launched its point of sale financing solution in the United States. This is no small feat, given the hurdles of complying with U.S. regulations. Financeit plans to use the funds to expand growth in the new market.

Check out the live demo of Financeit’s U.S. launch, along with its partnership with FIS, at FinovateFall 2014.

Another +1 For Host Card Emulation: SimplyTapp Garners $6 Million

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Host Card Emulation (HCE) solutions company, SimplyTapp, is making it easier for banks to place their own tap to pay functionality in customers’ hands.

To further this mission, two investors, Blue Sky Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, recently contributed $6 million in Series B funding to the Austin-based startup.

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Other funding rounds include a $1.4 million Series A round last November and a $200,000 seed round in February of 2013. Its total funding now tallies just over $7.5 million.

Check out SimplyTapp’s video from FinDEVr San Francisco 2014, where it explains HCE.

Alumni News– November 14, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgIntelliResponse acquired by [24]7 for its customer service suite.
  • Another +1 For Host Card Emulation: SimplyTapp Garners $6 Million.
  • Financeit Brings in Fresh Funding After U.S. Launch.
  • Payfone selected as “Best Revenue Creator/Enhancer” for Mobile Network Operators in the 2014 Fierce Innovation: Telecom Edition Awards.
  • InComm & PayPal collaborate to offer digital gift cards.
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.

Alumni News– November 13, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgKili acquires NFC microSD pioneer DeviceFidelity.
  • American Banker lists Currency Cloud, BioCatch, Linqto, VerifyValid, and Rippleshot as top 10 tech companies to watch.
  • Fintech in the fall: themes and company updates from CAN Capital, Encap Security, Fuze Network, Guardian Analytics, Larky, Ripple, and Xpenditure.
  • American Banker examines 2015 plans for FIS, Fiserv and Diebold.
  • Forbes looks at the success of RoboAdvisors: Betterment, Wealthfront, Personal Capital, and SigFig.
  • Forbes examines Kantox’s P2P FX trading technology.
  • TSYS partners with FICO to deliver a marketing product for card issuers called TSYS Targeted Messaging.
  • Digital Insight enters reseller agreement with Guardian Analytics to deliver anomaly detection services to financial institutions.
  • Trulioo wins 2014 Canadian Technology Companies to watch award from Deloitte.
  • Huffington Post interviews Andrea Gellert, SVP Marketing at OnDeck.
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.

Fintech in the Fall: Themes and Company Updates

Fall is in full swing and there has been plenty of news to keep the fintech world busy.

I spent last week at Money20/20 where the themes centered around Apple Pay, Bitcoin, and Millennials. In between listening to industry experts on these and other topics, I sat down to chat with seven Finovate alums. Here are a few notable updates:

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CAN Capital (fka Capital Access Network) has supplied just over $4 billion in funding to more than 55,000 small businesses. It continues to expand, reporting double-digit growth from last year.

CAN’s financing works well for small businesses who cannot obtain funding through traditional bank loans. Its 60%+ approval rate is made possible by the robust tech and big data analytic capabilities that enhance market insight. This ultimately broadens CAN’s access to prospective clients and enables it to provide customers with a lower priced loan.

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In June, it launched the beta version of CAN Connect, a set of 4 APIs. One of these APIs is called CAN Instant Quote (IQ). It pulls data from software that a small business uses frequently, such as scheduling or accounting software, to pre-approve them for instant financing.

In November, CAN announced a partnership with Yodlee to extend funding through its small business offering. This will enable Yodlee’s financial institution clients to offer customers access to funding via CAN’s Instant Quote API. The service will be available by Q1 of 2015.

While fixed term loans are still CAN’s core product, it is currently looking into offering flexible payment terms in 2015.

See CAN Capital’s demo from FinovateFall 2013 where it debuted Mobile Funder.

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Encap Security offers Smarter Authentication, a seamless way for banks to authenticate users across multiple channels, without disrupting the user experience.

Several weeks ago, Encap partnered with Feedzai to leverage its analytic engine that authenticates users. When the customer’s identity is in question, they are sent challenges to authenticate themselves, rather than being shut out of the system entirely.

Other partnerships are in the works, but all are confidential at this point.

Additionally, Encap has recently integrated Apple’s Touch ID to replace users’ PINs. While Encap’s Smarter Authentication will still be the underlying technology, Touch ID will help authenticate the user at each point of interaction.

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The company plans to incorporate other biometrics in the future.

Watch Encap demo Smarter Authentication at FinovateSpring 2014.

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As we tweeted last week, Fuze was recently acquired by Ingo Money, a company that specializes in mobile check cashing services for underbanked consumers. Ingo enables customers to instantly deposit checks onto a prepaid card, bank account, or mobile wallet.

The acquisition will combine Ingo’s mobile check cashing with Fuze’s swipe-to-pay and swipe-to-load features to give users more control over their money. Ingo will also leverage Fuze’s existing network of more than one billion cards, which includes:

    • 50 million prepaid cards
    • 459 million debit cards
    • 576 million credit cards
    • 531 million private label cards
    • 137 million other types

Ingo is also working on solutions to help users avoid late fees by enabling them to send funds to a location of their choice, such as their landlord. Additionally, it plans to expand the number of retail locations where customers load cash and move money from card to card.

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The terms of the acquisition, which is set to be finalized by the end of this year, were undisclosed.

Fuze Network last demonstrated at FinovateFall 2011 where it debuted Swipe2Pay.

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With a swell in data breaches this year, security has become a hot topic with the half-billion personal identities stolen in the last 8 months.

The increasing number of new solutions and capabilities banks now offer has opened up fresh opportunities for fraudsters to compromise users’ identities. To combat this, Guardian Analytics has added capabilities that gather user reputation data, such as their IP address.

Guardian Analytics is working with more than 300 financial institutions and has expanded its partnerships outside of banks. In the last year and a half, it has partnered with two non-bank institutions, Fiserv and Digital Insight.

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In the future, the California-based company plans to expand its analytics-based security solutions, since rules-based security is failing under the ever-expanding number of requirements needed to protect institutions.

Guardian Analytics debuted FraudXCHANGE at FinovateFall 2012.

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Larky, a company that provides card-linked discounts and offers on a mobile platform, signed six new financial institution clients across Alabama, Michigan, and New York in October.

Each new client is using a white-labeled version of Larky’s platform coupled with a package of local offers and rewards. The offers not only save users money, but also drive traffic to local business, and increase card usage.

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Check out Larky’s demo from FinovateFall 2014.

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Open source payments protocol, Ripple,announced a partnership with Yantra, which specializes in electronic payment systems. Specifically, Ripple will use Yantra’s risk management capabilities.

The Ripple network increases the speed and velocity of transactions, which add to its risk. To mitigate the liability, it leverages Yantra’s technology to create context and conditionality to its money movement processes.

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Yantra will augment the data collected about transactions and is adding new tools, such as custom search fields, to better analyze the data, and all within seconds.

Ripple debuted at FinovateSpring 2013.

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When we last spoke with Xpenditure at the beginning of this year, the company had $2.2 million in Angel funding and 15 employees. By the end of 2014, it will have raised $3.5 million in total funding and expects to have 25 employees.

It is also expanding its operations. It recently opened offices in São Paulo and New York City. In fact, the U.S. is its fastest growing market and accounts for 30% of its customers.

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In late October, it launched a partnership with MasterCard and its expense management system will be available as a part of MasterCard’s Business Owner ToolBox in Canada.

Check out Xpenditure’s demo from FinovateEurope 2014.

Alumni News– November 12, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgGuardian Analytics introduces FraudMAP ACH-RDFI to identify suspicious transactions.
  • Zumigo named finalist in Mobile Excellence Awards for Best Mobile Retail/Commerce Solution.
  • Pando Daily: BillGuard was the first to notify many affected consumers of the USPS security breach.
  • Yodlee Interactive introduces selected companies to participate in its incubator program.
  • AsiaOne Business features PlayMoolah co-founder, Lee Min Xuan.
  • ReadyForZero launches ReadyForZero Insights, a new dashboard to help users understand their debt.
  • MetaIntelli and Arxan Technologies partner to provide developers a way to mitigate security and privacy risks in mobile apps.
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.