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HelloWallet is a PFM with Deep Philanthropic Roots

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 22, 2011
Categories: HelloWallet

We all know that sticking to a budget is important, but it's not easy. HelloWallet's online

personal financial management (PFM) is designed to help. Users can track long-term goals and spending through interactive graphs and personalized notifications. In addition, the startup's philanthropic efforts make you feel even better about using the $8.95/mo advertising-free service. Washington, D.C.-based HelloWallet was founded in 2008 by former Brookings scholar Matt Fellows to provide financial guidance for Americans who lack access to professional advisors. The service originated with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation intended to help low-income Americans create a budget. Web Traffic (Note: The traffic below does not reflect users who access the service through their employer. The footnote* at end of the post reflects those numbers.)

(Retrieved June 22, 2011 from compete.com) The company has expanded its horizons and now looks to help consumers at all income levels. In fact, HelloWallet is…

Is Prepaid the Durbin Antidote?

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 22, 2011
Categories: Credit/Debit Cards, Debit Cards, Prepaid/gift cards, Strategies

Prepaid cards have been a bit of an afterthought for most banks and card issuers. Sure, they make the occasional appearance on banking sites in December as holiday gifts. But mainstream they are not.

But that was before traditional debit cards suddenly became unprofitable (note 1) thanks to the upcoming U.S. debit interchange price controls (see Durbin rant, note 2) combined with with last year's reining in of overdraft fees.

It's pretty easy to predict what happens next. Banks will do what any business would do when offering a popular, yet unprofitable product. Raise prices with new monthly/annual/transaction fees. And for customers that are fee adverse, banks will offer two alternatives:

Credit cards for the credit worthy Prepaid cards for everyone else

Bottom line: Prepaid bankcards are about to become much more popular. Here's why:

More interchange revenue to the issuer Easier to sell…

FinovateSpring 2011 Demo Videos Available Now

By finovate Posted on June 21, 2011
Categories: FinovateSpring 2011

The demo videos from FinovateSpring 2011 (last month in San Francisco) are now available for your viewing enjoyment -- free of charge -- in the Finovate Video Archives.

The spring conference was our largest conference ever, with 850 financial executives, venture capitalists and industry leaders watching 64 innovative fintech companies showcase their latest and greatest products. (FinovateFall in NYC in September promises to be even bigger, register now if you haven't already!)

If you missed the spring event, then be sure check out these fast-paced 7-minute demo videos from all our presenting companies. These hot young startups and leading established companies are innovating on everything from tablet interfaces to P2P payments to financial education to mobile bill capture to PFM to merchant-funded rewards to biometric security and much more. It's inspiring to see all the new ideas being launched!

FinovateSpring 2011 was sponsored by: The Bancorp, Tier…

FinovateSpring 2011 Demo Videos Available Now

By finovate Posted on June 21, 2011
Categories: FinovateSpring 2011

The demo videos from FinovateSpring 2011 (last month in San Francisco) are now available for your viewing enjoyment -- free of charge -- in the Finovate Video Archives.

FinovateSpring 2011 was sponsored by: The Bancorp, Tier…

Alumni News — Week of June 13, 2011

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 20, 2011
Categories: AcceptEmail, Balance, BancVue, BankOns, BillShrink, BrightScope, CheckFree, ClairMail, Doxo, Dwolla, Enloop, eRollover, eWise, Kiboo, Lending Club, mFoundry, Mitek, Monitise, peerTransfer, Prosper, SafetyPay, SmartyPig, Tagit, ThreatMetrix, Tyfone

AcceptEmail AcceptEmail partnered with WorldPay to launch an e-billing and online payment service. Link Balance GeekWire interviewed Balance Financial CEO, Devin Miller. Link BancVue BancVue executives won Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Link BankOns Examiner.com referred to BankOns as the new GroupOn. Link BillShrink BillShrink was featured in The New York Times. Link BrightScope Forbes reported on BrightScope's list of exchange-traded funds held in America's 401k plans. Link
CheckFree CheckFree expanded its functionality to support account-to-account and peer-to-peer transfers. Link Clairmail Clairmail joined the RSA Secured Partner Program to provide secure access to mobile banking. Link doxo doxo CEO explained paperless billing in a video interview, highlighting the mobile app. Link doxo was featured on the Top Productivity Apps website. Link Northwest Innovation reviewed doxo's mobile app. Link Dwolla TechCrunch reported that Dwolla hit a milestone of $1M in transactions per week. Link Enloop Business News Daily interviewed…

Is ING Direct to Capital One what PayPal was to eBay?

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 16, 2011
Categories: Capital One, ING Direct

Given that ING Direct had to be divested (by agreement with the Dutch government), it couldn't have gone to a more interesting buyer. Capital One was my favorite banking company in the pre-Internet days as it was an absolute direct marketing machine (and still is).

But Capital One has not leveraged the Internet to the extent I'd expected and as recently as last November, didn't even have a mobile app for the iPhone.

ING Direct is the opposite. Much of its 7.6 million customer base and $82 billion in deposits can be attributed to an innovative brand optimized for remote delivery.

Will ING Direct's online chops boost growth at Capital One like PayPal did for eBay when it introduced epayments into the online marketplace? Wall Street gave it a modest thumbs up, sending Capital One shares up more than 2% on a day when financials were flat. That's a $0.5…

Prosper is Back in the Game, Lands First Private Equity Lender

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 15, 2011
Categories: E-Loan, Lending Club, Loans & Credit, P2P Lending, Prosper

A few weeks ago, I caught up with Chris Larsen, CEO & founder of Prosper. I've been a huge fan of his work for more than a decade. His ventures,
E-Loan and Prosper, have been pioneers in the lending space, both earning OBR Best of Web awards and Prosper also taking Best of Show in our first Finovate in Oct. 2007 (note 1).

But it's been a rocky few years for Prosper (see Netbanker archives), as it's been for most consumer lenders. The company even lost its lead in the U.S. P2P loan space to Lending Club, which is currently originating about three times as many loans.

But Prosper survived and appears to be back on a path to live up to its name. Some recent milestones:

Its first private equity lender (updated 16 June, 2011, per comment below) is coming on…

Andera Launches Fortifi, Networking 500 Clients Together to Thwart Online Accounting Opening Fraud

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 13, 2011
Categories: Account opening, Andera, Security

I've opened about 40 to 50 accounts online in the past decade and rarely has the experience been satisfactory (see note 1). The best experience yet was opening a PNC Virtual Wallet early last year. And I didn't know until after I'd published the blog entry, that the app was powered by Andera (note 2).

So I pay attention when the Rhode Island-based tech company introduces a new feature. The company already had fraud algorithms that stopped most attempts. But there is no such thing as perfect security. So to make it even more robust, Andera is adding real-time monitoring of the application flow across its entire 500-client network to do an even better job of catching criminals.

Under the new Fortifi system, criminals simultaneously applying at multiple financial institutions (on the Andera platform) are indentified in real-time and stopped. Andrea believes the new system…

Alumni News — Week of June 6, 2011

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 13, 2011
Categories: Andera, ChargeSmart, Check Point, Currensee, Doxo, Dwolla, Enloop, Expensify, FreeMonee, FTRANS, GoalMine, Jemstep, mFoundry, Mitek, Monitise, Prosper, Robot Dough, SecondMarket, Silver Tail Systems, Striata, Sybase 365, ThreatMetrix, TradeKing, UBank, Zopa

Andera Andera launched FortiFI, a new fraud prevention system. Link Andera CEO Charlie Kroll discussed the release of FortiFI. Link ChargeSmart ChargeSmart launched ChargeSmart Direct to provide customers with additional access to support staff. Link Fox Business News highlighted ChargeSmart and PlasticJungle's gift card trading service as a way to make savings fun. Link Check Point Software Technologies Check Point announced the 2012 version of ZoneAlarm. Link Currensee

Forex Crunch outlined the benefits of Currensee, describing its profitability as "significantly high". Link The Street highlighted Curensee as a startup that "rocks" the financial house. Link doxo Chicago Tribune discussed doxo's step toward a paperless society. Link TechCrunch & VentureBeat featured the launch of doxo's mobile app, a mobile digital filing cabinet. Link and Link Macworld took a closer look at doxo's new app. Link Dwolla

Dwolla released Grid,…

What’s Inside eWise’s Secure Vault Payments?

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 10, 2011
Categories: eWise

Have you ever cringed when entering credit card information into an online checkout form?

Maybe you were wondering, "Who is on the other side of this transaction? Where is my information going? How do I know this is secure?" It can also be tedious keying in all of the information, especially on a mobile: credit card number, password, user name, and CVV code. Fortunately, there are solutions such as Secure Vault Payments (SVP) by eWise to help solve these problems.

SVP launched in late 2009 as a new player in alternative payment solutions. It allows you to pay for goods and services directly through your online bank account. There are close to 50 banks (and counting) participating in SVP's service and with US Bank as a new partner in this service, the availability has increased dramatically.

How It Works When checking out at a participating retailer, select the Secure Vault…

Op Ed: Thoughts on Google Wallet

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 10, 2011
Categories: Citibank, Google, Mobile Payments

This guest post was written by Daniel Thomas, a 25-year strategy and product development veteran of the financial services industry. He is a principal consultant with Mindful Insights LLC.

Google's announcement two weeks ago certainly raised a few eyebrows in the mobile payments arena and took a giant leap toward putting to rest the debate about the use of NFC.

However, there's an interesting twist that hasn't been explored in the many articles written in the aftermath of the announcement. How will Google's effort impact revenues from the merchant-funded rewards programs (see note 1) banks hope will increase loyalty while softening the blow of the now-certain Durbin Amendment losses?

But has Google just killed banks' dreams of grabbing a share of the online advertising pie ?

Merchants today are offering higher discounts and rebates to bankcard users because the banks, via various rewards vendors, are letting…

Chase Bank’s Jot App Shows the Future of Mobile Transaction Processing

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 8, 2011
Categories: Chase Bank, Credit/Debit Cards, iPhone, JP Morgan Chase, Mobile Banking, Small Business

I've been waiting for something like Chase Bank's Jot (see note 1). It's part of the "second wave" of mobile apps that demonstrate why mobile banking will soon be better than online banking.
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Mobile banking phase 1: 2008 through 2011
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Mobile's first wave was all about porting the most-used online functions, balance inquiry and statement viewing, to a smaller screen. That was convenient for smartphone owners on the go, but it didn't add much to the overall user experience.

The test of whether you've nailed the mobile UX is if that even if you are within arm's reach of your laptop, you still pick up the mobile to perform a function. Most mobile banking systems fail that test, i.e. you only use mobile banking when online access is inconvenient or insecure.
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Mobile banking phase 2: 2011+
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The second wave is much more interesting.…