Finovate Alumni News– November 18, 2013

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgRentPaidOnline and PayNearMe partner to bring cash payments to its online platform 
  • Daily Finance interviews PaySimple CEO Eric Remer on Next-Gen Payment Processing.
  • ShopKeep POS releasing new version of its iPad-based sales mgmt system to cut checkout time in retail locations.
  • Novant Health launches on doxo to deliver bills & simplify the patient experience.
  • Lendio named one of Utah Business Magazine’s Best Companies to Work for in 2013.
  • Credit Sesame launches banking channel with new interest rate comparison tool.
  • Billhighway ranked no. 146 fastest growing company in North America on Deloitte’s 2013 Tech Fast 500.
  • Former U.S. Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions and Google SVP join Lending Club’s advisory board.
  • The Paypers reports SumUp extends to Latin America with launch of m-payments service in Brazil.
  • Lend Academy reports: Lending Club now valued at over $2 Billion.
  • Open Bank Project organizing the second edition of Hack/Make The Bank FinTech hackathon in Paris on Nov 30th.
  • EyeVerify competes tonight in Kauffman Foundation’s “Get in the Ring: The American Startup Clash”.
  • Texas Advanced Computing Center to test pilot Toopher’s Invisible Multifactor Authentication solution.
  • MasterCard opens office in Bangladesh.
  • Leaf featured in column on Boston-based mobile payment hardware systems.
  • The Points Guy compares new Coin card to Wallaby Card.
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.

FinovateAsia 2013 Best of Show Winners

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FinovateAsia 2013 was quite a success. We just finished up the second annual FinovateAsia in Singapore. 

After the show, the audience selected their favorite of the 35 demo companies. The top four companies were named Best of Show, and took home a trophy.

The winners (in alphabetical order):

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BehavioSec, for its behavioral biometrics-based authentication method 
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IND Group, for its Essence mobile banking app, with detailed financial management tools
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Kofax, for its omni-channel solution that accelerates and enhances the underwriting process
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Yodlee, for the international debut of TANDEM, an app that helps groups manage and discuss shared finances
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All of the demo videos will be posted on Finovate.com in a few weeks.

Many thanks to the great audience that participated in this year’s event. Also, thanks to the 34 innovative companies who demonstrated their newest tech from the FinovateAsia stage. Keep the tech coming!

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Notes on methodology:  
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.     
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.    
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”  
4. The four companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named Best of Show.  
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners. 

BlueKite’s Platform Helps Users Pay Utility Bills for Loved Ones Overseas

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Next, BlueKite demonstrated how its users can pay bills for family and friends living across borders:
“BlueKite’s real time bill payment platform is currently offered at affiliated Money Stores via a proprietary web portal (with our mobile application to be unveiled shortly) and is the perfect complement to traditional cash remittances.
Customers (typically “unbanked” immigrants) make billing enquiries and pay outstanding utility bills from U.S.-based stores for loved ones overseas. Immigrants gain visibility and control over the money they send home while relieving family members from the hassles associated with paying bills locally. BlueKite enables money stores to generate additional revenues and aids utility companies in reducing bad accounts and the administrative load of chasing receivables.”

Presenting 

Benny Hammond (Business Development Manager, US & Central America)

 and 

Toby Kennett (Head of Business Development, Asia)

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Product Launch: April 2012
Metrics: BlueKite raised $1.5M seed funding through Peoplefund, closed a Series A round of funding in October 2013, and currently employs 41 people across 6 countries.
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Consumer (B2C), Direct to Business (B2B), through other fintech companies and platforms & licensed

HQ: Miami, FL, USA
Founded: April 2012
Website: bluekite.com
Twitter: @bluekite_tm

BRIDGEi2i’s Cloud-Based Analysis Platform Brings Banks Insight Into Consumer Needs

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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BRIDGEi2i demonstrated how its Surveyi2i product can derive insight into the customer experience:
“Surveyi2i is a cloud-based one-stop shop for all analysis and reporting needs from survey data. Surveyi2i enhances productivity for analysts and researchers. Business managers can derive insights quickly without help from data scientists. Surveyi2i enables financial institutions to very easily implement data-driven customer and employee engagement strategies by understanding customer needs and experiences better at negligible costs.”
Presenting Prithvijit Roy (CEO & Co-Founder) and Pritam Kanti Paul (Director & Co-Founder)

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Product Launch: August 2013
Metrics: 35 member organization working with 10+ enterprises globally in Financial Services, Insurance and Technology. Surveyi2i has around 80 registered users and 2 paid clients since launch. BRIDGEi2i has around 2,000 website visits per month with 10,000 page views and 1,000+ followers in social media. BRIDGEi2i has featured among the top 10 analytics and big data start-ups in several coveted publications.
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B), through other fintech companies and platforms, and licensed
HQ: Bangalore, India
Founded: May 2011
Website: bridgei2i.com
Twitter: @BRIDGEi2i

App Annie Showcases Mobile App Analytics Capability with Three Products: Store Stats, Analytics, and Intelligence

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This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.
Next, App Annie stepped up to demo:
“The App Annie suite consists of three main products – Store Stats, Analytics, and Intelligence.
 
App Annie Store Stats is a free online service that has become the standard for app ranking analysis in the industry. It provides a range of charts visualizing on historical rankings, daily rankings, ratings, and featured placements broken down by countries and categories.
 
App Annie Analytics offers the ultimate sales analytics dashboard for app publishers that is easy-to-use and packed full of features. It allows publishers to track their app downloads, revenues, rankings, and reviews across multiple platforms in one safe place. And App Annie gives publishers the tools to access that data via web dashboard, daily email reports, export function, and API. 
 
App Annie Intelligence is our premium offering for those that need advanced market intelligence about the global app economy. It provides the most accurate market estimates available for app stores, helping big businesses inform their product, international, marketing & investment strategy.”
Presenting Junde Yu (VP, APAC)

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Product Launch: November 2013
MetricsVenture funded, series C; over $6B in app store publisher revenues tracked; 130 employees; 6 offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, San Francisco & London; 145,000 total App Annie users (all three products); 3.2 million store stats apps tracked; 300,000 apps tracked by App Annie Analytics; 90% of top iOS publishers (grossing) use App Annie; and 25 billion downloads
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B)
HQ: Beijing, China
Founded: March 2010
Website: appannie.com
Twitter: @appannie

CustomerXPs Debuts its Paperless Branch Banking

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Next, CustomerXPs debuted its Paperless Branch Banking solution:
“Our innovative Paperless Branch Banking solution works on mobiles, tablets and PCs and aims to revolutionize the way branch banking is conducted. This solution ensures that the branch is able to process customers faster and with minimum errors thus ensuring higher employee productivity and customer satisfaction – at the same time increasing the customer engagement and obviating the need for paper trail in the branch.”
Presenting Rivi Varghese (CEO) and Balaji Suryanarayana (COO)

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Product Launch: November 2013
Metrics: CustomerXPs is a 7 year old enterprise software products company. A Gartner Cool Vendor for 2012 and winner of the Red Herring Asia 100 award. We have about 90 million end customers through our customer banks.
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B), through financial institutions, through other fintech companies and platforms licensing
HQ: Bangalore, India
Founded: December 2006
Website: customerxps.com 
Twitter: @customerxps

TIBCO Launches Solution That Gives Context to Payments

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Next, TIBCO debuted its solution that helps banks and merchants unlock unstructured and big data:
“In this age of digital privacy there is an increased need to share temporary “in the moment” payment context. Ad-hoc digital encounters are the next forefront of a massive volume of micro transactions. Imagine a customer making a payment at a restaurant once the waiter “flicks over” the menu context to the customer, without the customer ever having to reveal any long-term impacting sensitive financial information. Once the “payment context” is over, no digital “remnants” remain. A total freedom of contextual interactions, not just payments, opens up a variety of digital services avenues for banks, their merchants, and customers. 
The massive volume of data transactions enables new analytical insight to both merchants and the banks, giving banks and merchants new perspectives into consumer behaviour through unstructured and big data.”

Presenting San Zaw (Director, Solutions Consultants, S.E. Asia) and 

Phil Scanlon (Director, Client Solutions, Asia)

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Product Launch: November 2013
Metrics: 2011 review: $920M, 70+ worldwide offices, offices in 25+ countries, 3,000+ employees, 4,000+ customers, 200+ partners
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B), through financial institutions, and through other fintech companies and platforms
HQ: Palo Alto, CA, USA
Founded: 1997
Website: tibco.com
Twitter: @TIBCO

Luminous Debuts its Virtual Safety Deposit Box, Data Vault

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Then, Luminous debuted how its Data Vault can increase page visits from customers:
“DataVault is an electronic safety deposit box that allows banking customers to upload, sort and store personal and business documents in one secure place. Now customers can bank online with important documents just a click away.”

Presenting Andrew Teversham (CTO) and 

Warren Bond (CEO)

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Product Launch: 2013
Product distribution strategy: Through financial institutions
HQ: Johannesburg, South Africa
Founded: 2009
Twitter: @luminousbanking

Intuition Intelligence Launches Smart Offers Solution

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Then, Intuition Intelligence launched its Smart Offers solution:
“The Smart Offers solution sources a huge volume of offers from the open coupons and deals networks. Merchants can upload offers via a merchant portal in the back end. There is also a bank manager portal that enables financial institutions to view, select, and approve offers they want delivered to their customers. Plus, banks and merchants will get offer analytics.
On top of that, Smart Offers’ iCube Super Relevancy engine learns user intent in click time and delivers super relevant offers at the right moment via digital channels without spam and friction. Thus, banks experience higher conversion on a scale never seen before, resulting in dramatic increase in revenue.
Smart Offers solution can be easily integrated to existing infrastructure, can be hosted on-premise or by software-as-a-service model.”
Presenting Arif Ansari (CEO) and Yusuf Ansari (COO)

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Product Launch: November 2013
Metrics: 20 employees in California & India
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Business (B2B), through financial institutions, through other fintech companies and platforms, and licensed
HQ: Dublin, CA, USA
Founded: October 2013

KlickEx Launches Crypto-Currency 2.0: A New Global Asset-Backed Currency

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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In the final demo before lunch, KlickEx debuted its crypto-currency for central banks:
“After extensive testing in the Pacific, KlickEx is pleased to announce the development of a new asset-backed and algorithmic crypto-currency for institutional and retail use. A stable, international, risk-free asset is a key foundation for efficient financial markets, and KlickEx’s award-winning interbank payment network has an exemplary track record in stability, and efficiency. Having eradicated the significant systematic deficiencies of Bitcoin, then bridged the portfolio limitations of the IMF’s SDR, the new base asset is a proactive response to recent negative public sentiment towards banking in general, and recent global events including the GFC, Euro-Crisis, BASEL II, III, and fiscal & political instability in Prime currencies. 
KlickEx believes in efficient, effective, and accessible financial markets. Our products enhance transparency, stability, inclusion, and systematic velocity by eliminating counter-party risks from central bank balance sheets, informal remittance networks, and mitigating cash inefficiencies for commercial banks, mobile operators and regulators. KlickEx has taken the best, and made it better.”

Presenting Robert Bell (Manager of Operations) and Brett Waterson (CTO)

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Product Launch: November 2013
Product distribution strategy: Distribution begins with use-case pilots, followed by structured phase-in programs with Central Banks and local (sovereign) government entities, then Commercial and Clearing Banks. Finally, KlickEx engages Mobile Telcos and then directly to retail users. The process usually takes 6-60 weeks to go through, depending on the country.
HQ: New Zealand
Founded: 2009
Website: KlickEx.org

Backbase Debuts Social Media Capabilities of Bank 2.0 Portal

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

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Next, Backbase launched the social media capabilities of its Bank 2.0 Portal:
“We are launching the all-new social media capabilities of our Backbase Bank 2.0 Portal. With the new social media features, it is possible to integrate directly with social networks such as Facebook, bring deeply integrated social capabilities to the bank’s secure internet banking platform and push the bank’s internet banking platform as an app to Facebook.
The new key features include Social Login, the ability to use social information to target users within the internet banking platform, or to retarget across platforms, the power to employ Friends’ information and behavior to promote special offers (10 of your friends also have this credit card, apply now!), and the functionality to create and manage Facebook apps directly from the Backbase Portal Manager.”

Presenting Edwin Koh (GM, APAC) and 

Jelmer de Jong (Global Head of Marketing)

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Product Launch: October 2013
Metrics: Privately funded, 150+ employees, offices in New York, Amsterdam, London, and Singapore
Product distribution strategy: Through financial institutions & licensed
HQ: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Founded: April 2003
Website: backbase.com
Twitter: @backbase

Tootpay’s mPod Mobile Payment Solution Helps Remove Barriers to Mobile Banking

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateAsia 2013.

Making their way to the stage next is the team from Tootpay with their mPod Mobile Payment Solution.
“Tootpay’s solution is based on an overlay chip for the customer’s mobile phone. The overlay chip is a stick-on solution that fits onto any standard SIM card of a GSM handset. A menu-based interface is deployed for simplicity and ease of use. It’s not internet or telco dependent and deploys with multiple authentication methods and end-to-end encryption to provide a high level of security for its mobile transactions. As such, barriers to mobile banking such as mobile phone handset incompatibility, dependency on telco service providers, non-existent mobile internet network coverage, fraud, and more are minimized.”
Presenting Balvinder Singh (MD) and Kok Hoong Choo (Application Development Director)

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Product Launch: January 2011
Metrics: More than 500,000 mobile users of banks in Indonesia, Malaysia & Thailand are utilizing Tootpay’s mobile payment solution.
Product distribution strategy: Through financial institutions and through other fintech companies and platforms
HQ: Singapore
Founded: November 2010
Website: tootpay.com