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Today, Wikinvest launched Wikinvest Portfolio HD, an iPad version of its portfolio tracker. The app aggregates accounts from more than 60 of the largest U.S. brokerage firms.
As I watch the discussion of the EU’s (and the world’s) financial state in the media these days, I can’t help but see tremendous entrepreneurial opportunities. From helping individuals to manage their money more confidently to helping banks to find new revenue streams to helping small businesses with alternative lending options and much more, there has never been a better time to be innovating in financial technology.
As I write this, our team is hard at work on our next showcase of the companies that are on the cutting-edge of those opportunities — FinovateEurope 2012 — which will take place February 7th in London. Over the last two weeks, we’ve begun screening the applicants that want to demo their latest fintech innovations at the event and it’s shaping up to be an incredible roster of companies.
If you’d like join us in London and watch the future of financial and banking technology debut on stage via our fast-paced demo-only format, please get your ticket soon. Tickets for the event are selling strongly — well ahead of last year’s pace when we sold out weeks ahead of the conference — and registering now is the only way to guarantee your spot and the affordable super early-bird ticket price!
FinovateEurope 2012 is sponsored by: BlueRock Consulting
FinovateEurope 2012 is partners with: Deutsch Startups, The Financial Services Club, and the Financial Services Innovation Centre
Yesterday, American Banker dissected Weemba’s loan listings since the startup launched four weeks ago. Here is the breakdown of 150 loans requested so far:
- Health care: 55% of loans
- Small business financing: 12%
- Automobile, motorcycle or other vehicle: 12%
- Mortgages and home improvement projects: 10%
- Student loans: 6%
- Other: 5%
To learn more about Weemba, watch its demo from FinovateFall 2011.
Geezeo signs three more referral engine clients.
Last week, we looked at how Square makes a single webpage look great across various mobile platforms. Today, we look at the exact opposite problem. How to showcase your various mobile apps on a single webpage.
Pageonce does it as well as we’ve seen, using a single showcase panel that includes all five of its mobile app platforms across the top: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows. Users can scroll horizontally to see two sets of screenshots for each platform.
The company also includes version number, date of the last update, and app size in the lower right corner. And of course, there’s a link to download the appropriate marketplace to download the app. The Android page uses a QR code instead of a link.
In other news, Pageonce added bill payment to its iPhone and Android app today, moving ahead of Mint in the features arm race. The new Gold service, which we haven’t tested yet, is priced at $4.99/mo, good news for fee-starved online financial providers. Mint says it has bill payment coming too. It will be interesting to see if they put a fee on it.
Relevance for Netbankers: The addition of transactional services such as bill payment makes third-party PFMs, or virtual banks such as BankSimple, bigger threats to mainstream banks and credit unions. As uber-consultant Richard Crone always says, "He who enrolls, controls."
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Pageonce iPhone app
iPad
Android
BlackBerry
Windows
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Note: We cover mobile banking and payments periodically in our Online Banking Report (subscription).
Earlier this week, American Banker described the science that FinTech companies use to learn the spending habits of consumers, the Payments Genome.
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Earlier today, Pageonce launched a mobile bill pay service that provides consumers more flexibility when paying bills:
“Now Pageonce gives users the option to pay immediately from their choice of accounts with a few taps on their smartphone. Pageonce makes paper bills, checks and stamps, and logging into several different websites for online bill pay, obsolete — helping users save time and avoid annoying late and overdraft fees.”
Here’s how it works:
Pageonce collects information about a user’s bills, including due date, amount due and itemized details, and presents them in an easy-to-read format on a smartphone. Before a bill is due, users get an alert that allows them to pay in three steps:
1. Select how to pay2. Enter the amount3. Tap Pay
This service is available on Apple and Android platforms for $4.99 per month.
South Florida Business Journal covers Weemba’s borrower-lender matching service.
- “Record September originations of $7.4 mil, up almost four-fold from $2.0 mil last year
- 11% compounded monthly growth rate over the last 12 months
- Currently, providing a 10.7% “seasoned return” to investors
- Actual annualized loss rate of 5.5%, beating forecast loss rate of 7.1%
- High credit-quality consumer loans: 737 average Experian Scorex PLUS credit score for first-time Prosper borrowers.”
After being acquired by Taulia, billFLO announces its services will be shutting down Dec 1, 2011.
To my knowledge, ING Direct is the only major U.S. bank blocking third-party PFM access. But users can direct their PFM around the gate with a special "read-only" access code.
How it works
It’s not particularly easy to find, buried three levels deep in MyAccounts | Preferences | Access Code.
The default setting is Blocked, as you can see in the first screenshot below.
But once you find the page, it couldn’t be simpler to set up. Simply press the blue Create Access Code button in the upper right, and in a split second, you have created a read-only access code and opened your account to PFM access.
To change back, you merely click the "Block" button in upper right.
The only thing missing is an explanation of what to do with the Access Code. Is it the username or password? While that’s explained in an link from the first page, it’s not on the second page where you need it. (BTW, it’s the password).
The bank also confirmed the new code via email right away (third screenshot).
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Access code main page (20 Oct 2011)
New access code
Email confirmation
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Note: OBR subscribers can access our previous reports on security at OnlineBankingReport.com (published in 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008).