FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: AlphaBot

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: AlphaBot

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateAsia on October 29 and 30, 2018 in Hong Kong. Register today and save your spot.

AlphaBot is a novel tool for investment research, portfolio construction and execution for alternative investments, utilizing professional networking, cloud computing, and integrated analytics.

Features

  • Performance data easily accessible from multiple sources
  • Direct relationship between investors, managers, platforms, etc.
  • Integrated analytics from simple comparisons to portfolio optimization

Why it’s great
With AlphaBot it takes minutes instead of hours or days to find and analyze potential investments from cryptocurrencies to hedge funds and equities.

Presenter

Dmitri Alexeev, CEO
Alexeev has 20 years of experience in finance and investment management, starting from research analyst all the way up to Chief Investment Officer of a $1 billion fund of funds. He has a Ph.D in Mathematics.
LinkedIn

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • OnDeck Launches Subsidiary to Help Banks with Small Business Lending.

Around the web

  • Daon partners with Akbank, making the Turkish bank the first in the country to deploy facial recognition technology for mobile banking authentication.
  • YellowDog shortlisted for Tech Company of the Year honors at the 2018 U.K. Business Tech Awards.
  • Bluefin teams up with data security tokenization vendor, TokenEx, to boost payment security.
  • Finicity selected as third-party service provider for Freddie Mac’s automated income and asset assessment solution, Loan Product Advisor.
  • Zenmonics earns a spot in the 2018 IDC FinTech Rankings.
  • FinTech Global recognizes Insuritas as a 2018 InsurTech100 Company.
  • Lendio announces facilitating $1 billion in financing to more than 51,000 U.S. SMEs since inception in 2011.
  • Indonesia’s biggest telecommunications company, Telkomsel, picks Kinetica to support its accelerated analytics, location-based visualization and AI.
  • Blockchain innovator identitii to list on the Australian Securities Exchange this week with anticipated market capitalization of $41 million.
  • Atlanta Business Chronicle interviews Kabbage’s Kathryn Petralia, highlighting her as a 2018 Women Who Mean Business honoree.
  • Sara Berg appointed Chief Operating Officer of Trustly.
  • Expensify launches training and certification program for accountants.
  • Ping Identity launches new Quickstart Private Sandbox for Open Banking and PSD2
  • Openfinance signs data partnership with Refinitiv.
  • Trustly partners with Ingenico for online banking payments.
  • Moneynetint partners with Ripple to leverage instant payment rails.
  • Coinbase expands with new Dublin office.
  • Native American Bank selects Jack Henry’s SilverLake system.

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.

Roostify Teams Up with Ellie Mae to Boost Efficiency in Mortgage Lending

Roostify Teams Up with Ellie Mae to Boost Efficiency in Mortgage Lending

A bi-directional integration between Roostify and Ellie Mae announced last week is a boon for lenders who will be able to seamlessly pass information between the two systems. The partnership, in the words of Roostify VP of Products, Sandeep Aji, “makes it easier than ever for lenders to move loans forward faster with fewer manual touches, reducing operating costs and further improving the consumer experience.”

Applications created in Roostify will automatically appear in Ellie Mae’s Encompass platform thanks to the new integration, and documents created in Encompass can be read and signed in Roostify. Uploaded documentation such as bank statements also will be accessible on both platforms.

“We believe our customers will benefit significantly from this industry-leading integration that will improve the loan process for consumers and lenders alike,” Mark McLaughlin, SVP of Business Development for Roostify, said.

Founded in 2014, Roostify demonstrated its digital home lending platform at FinovateSpring 2018. The company’s solutions help firms from enterprise banks to independent brokerages close faster, reduce excess paperwork, and give mortgage consumers a smoother, end-to-end experience. Supporting digital customer acquisition with a self-service component that enables loan applicants themselves to fulfill much of the loan process, Roostify’s platform has transacted billions of dollars in mortgages and helped close thousands of home loans across the U.S.

This August, Roostify unveiled Adapt, a tool to help mortgage lenders with complex workflows to improve process management, and announced a new Chief Financial Officer, Eric Amblard. The previous month, Roostify partnered with Colonial National Mortgage, improving the online experience for customers of the Texas-based FI. Honored this spring at the MBA Insights 2018 Tech All-Star Awards, Roostify has raised $33 million in funding, and includes Cota Capital and USAA among their investors. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

A provider of cloud-based mortgage financing solutions, Ellie Mae processes 35% of all U.S. mortgage applications. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Pleasanton, California, the company participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2017. At the event, the company’s VP for Platform Engineering, Jeff Collins, introduced Ellie Mae Encompass Developer Connect, which enables developers to leverage RESTful APIs to access loan data, real-time web-hook notifications on the loan file, and launch Ellie Mae Network services.

In August, Ellie Mae announced a partnership with First Data to make it easier for Ellie Mae customers to securely accept payment for loan origination and other costs. In May, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum, Blend, which will integrate Ellie May’s electronic disclosure delivery technology. Other partnerships forged this year include pacts with Lender Price, Pacific Union, and COCC.

Ellie Mae trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “ELLI” and has a market capitalization of $2.8 billion. Jonathan Corr is CEO.

CardFlight Launches SwipeSimple Customers to Support Card Data Management

CardFlight Launches SwipeSimple Customers to Support Card Data Management

Merchants using CardFlight’s payment acceptance solution, SwipeSimple, now have an easy way to build customer databases and manage card data on file: SwipeSimple Customers.

CardFlight CEO and founder Derek Webster said the technology “reflects our team’s commitment to provide the right payment acceptance tools for an even broader range of merchants.” SwipeSimple Customers is available via both online dashboard and mobile app, and will give merchants the ability to schedule payments – including installments and subscriptions – store credit card data on file, and charge customers using that stored card on file.

John Shipley, SVP of Operations at Clearant, called the new solution “a way for us to offer even more value to existing users.” Shipley, whose firm has been a multi-year partner of CardFlight, praised the company as one that “always deliver(s) a winning product that just works.”

The release of SwipeSimple Customers follows the launch of SwipeSimple 5.0 last month, which provided features including the ability to pair cash drawers and receipt printers and a SwipeSimple Virtual Terminal with full Address Verification Service support for card not present transactions.

Founded in 2013, CardFlight demonstrated its payments acceptance technology, mobile payment infrastructure, and API/SDK at FinovateSpring 2013. The company includes 10 of the top 30 merchant acquirers in the U.S. among its clients, and more than 45,000 merchants in all 50 states use CardFlight’s solutions. CardFlight was recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 500 fastest growing companies in the U.S., and the fifth fastest growing company in the financial sector.

ezbob to Offer Financing for AMEX’s UK SMEs

ezbob to Offer Financing for AMEX’s UK SMEs

American Express has partnered with online financing platform ezbob to offer U.K. SMEs competitive access to finance, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Through the partnership, eligible American Express business clients will receive a referral to apply for up to £300,000 in financing from ezbob at a fixed annual interest rate from 3% per year.

Carlos Carriedo, senior vice president of Global Commercial Services at American Express, said: “We know agility is crucial for smaller businesses to help retain a competitive advantage, but accessing the financ(ing) needed to react swiftly to changing customer demands, or seize an opportunity, can be a challenge.”

Amex customers taking out a loan with ezbob will also benefit from a 40,000 Membership Reward points offer.

Ezbob will enable eligible American Express U.K.-based SME business customers to access quick and paper-free credit. The firm says companies can apply for a loan in ten minutes – and, if successful – receive funds on the same day.

The SVP continued: “We’re committed to helping U.K. businesses to ensure they can capture growth opportunities – whether that’s investing in headcount, optimizing seasonality, refurbing premises, or simply funding a large order.”

American Express and Oxford Economics recently conducted a global study of senior executives of 3,000 SMEs, which revealed that while U.K. SMEs remain confident, a significant number (24%) struggle to access finance to help grow and support their business.

The research highlighted that hidden fees, a lack of flexible repayment options and lengthy application processes are among the greatest challenges for small businesses looking to access finance or capital.

ezbob demonstrated its online application with automated lending decisioning and instant funding at FinovateEurope 2014. Founded in 2011, the company has raised more than $136 million (£103 million) in funding, including more than $50.3 million (£38.2 million) in equity funding. Tomer Guriel is founder and CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • CardFlight Launches SwipeSimple Customers to Support Card Data Management.
  • Roostify Teams Up with Ellie Mae to Boost Efficiency in Mortgage Lending.

Around the web

  • Experian and Close Brothers Retail Finance pilot Mobile for Credit service for U.K. gamers.
  • New Penn Financial goes live with Portfolio Underwriter from Loan Scorecard.
  • PasswordPing earns finalist spot in 2018 “Innovation Quotient” IQ Awards.
  • Ukraine’s Akhmetov Bank leverages Corezoid’s cloud-based operating system.
  • ebankIT and Enterprise Engineering forge strategic partnership for the North American market.
  • Bambu, Eltropy, Moxtra, and Onfido are among the startups selected for Plug and Play Singapore’s inaugural fintech and insurtech program.
  • TECHdotMN profiles Sezzle founder and CEO, Charlie Youakim.
  • Forbes Middle East highlights Ayasdi and ThetaRay in look at how AI is helping solve financial crime.

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.

Cryptocurrency Firm Circle to Acquire SeedInvest

Cryptocurrency Firm Circle to Acquire SeedInvest

Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency start-up Circle will acquire SeedInvest, an equity crowdfunding platform and broker-dealer, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The firm said this acquisition will accelerate its plans for a token marketplace that enables businesses and individuals to raise capital and interact with investors using open crypto rails and infrastructure.

This acquisition and planned new offerings are subject to the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) approval. Financial details have not been disclosed.

Headquartered in New York City, SeedInvest has the “largest” equity crowdfunding platform in the country. To date, SeedInvest has helped hundreds of start-ups raise capital online and has a network of over 200,000 investors.

In addition, the company has generated triple-digit annual revenue growth while reaching profitability.

Circle said the SeedInvest product includes capabilities needed for executing regulated crowdfunding, such as start-up due diligence, securities issuance, investor accreditation, payments, and securities custody.

With the merger and approval from regulators, these capabilities will be expanded to support crypto-denominated investments including using fiat stablecoins such as USDC, as well as issuing and offering tokenised securities.

SeedInvest will add 30 team members to Circle’s New York location.

Founded in 2012 by Ryan Feit and James Han, SeedInvest demonstrated its equity-based, crowdfunding platform at FinovateSpring 2013. During the demo, Feit and Han highlighted a number of key features of the platform, including its due diligence dashboard, virtual boardroom, and its Simple Invest technology which provides an instant identity check, legal document execution, and streamlined funds transfer.

Prior to the company’s acquisition, SeedInvest had raised $11.4 million in capital. Avenue A Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Scout Ventures, and Jumpstart New Jersey Angel Network are among the firm’s previous investors.

Lights! Camera! Demo! Check Out the Action from FinovateFall!

Lights! Camera! Demo! Check Out the Action from FinovateFall!

 

We understand completely. As the nights start to get longer and the coolness of autumn takes hold, that “curl up by the fire and watch demo videos from FinovateFall” feeling becomes almost irresistible.

That makes us all the more thrilled to announce that every minute of every demo from FinovateFall is now available for viewing – free of charge – in the Finovate Video Archives. Rewatch your favorite moments or check out some of the demos you might have missed!

By way of a sampler, here are the demo videos of the five companies that won Best of Show (as voted by the audience).

Banzai!

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/smvpw5bl0y

Bond.AI

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/l1annlgdi1

Bumped

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/w1w7yxq8xt

Golden 

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/92i7gyomzm

Meniga

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/0oblrajkhg

 

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Reuters: Mitek rejects takeover offer from hedge fund Elliott Management Corp’s software company ASG Technologies.
  • NetGuardians makes the Chartis Risktech Quadrant for enterprise fraud technology 2018.

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.

PayPal’s Walmart Partnership Makes a Move for the UnderBanked

PayPal’s Walmart Partnership Makes a Move for the UnderBanked

While many view Walmart as simply a retailer, millions of Americans rely on the company as their main source for financial products. Walmart offers a variety of debit and credit card options, as well as services such as money transfers, remittances, check cashing, tax preparation, and billpay. So it’s no surprise to see that PayPal has joined forces with the retailer today to fortify services for their joint customers.

As part of the partnership, PayPal users will be able to withdraw and deposit cash into their PayPal account at one of Walmart’s 5,000 brick-and-mortar stores. In addition, PayPal Cash Mastercard customers can access their cash balance using Walmart service desks, ATMs, and cash registers. This is the first time PayPal users have had the flexibility to transact in cash, but it comes at a cost. Each cash transaction is priced at a flat, $3 service fee. The parties have not disclosed how that fee is divided between Walmart and PayPal.

In a press release, Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal said, “We consider this a key collaboration for both PayPal and Walmart. We are committed to working together to make it simple and easy for people to use PayPal cash in and cash out money services at every Walmart location in the U.S. We look forward to working hand-in-hand to help people and families with their financial services needs.”

PayPal’s mobile app offers many of the same features as a traditional banking app, including PFM and money management tools, peer-to-peer money transfer options, and investment opportunities via its partnership with Acorns. Qualifying borrowers also have access to a line of credit. Today’s partnership with Walmart is likely a move to stave off the threat from Amazon, which has been rumored to further its lineup of alternative banking options via partnerships with traditional U.S. banks.

Tying cash into PayPal’s existing robust mobile infrastructure is a key way to target the underbanked population. Now that Walmart is serving as PayPal’s brick-and-mortar “branch,” what’s next for the payments company– mortgages?

Starting today, PayPal users are able to deposit cash at Walmart. The cash out feature will be available at all U.S. Walmart locations next month. Founded in 1998, the alternative banking provider showcased its Instant Account Creation feature at FinovateFall 2012. PayPal’s market cap sits at $90 billion.

Fighting for Customers: Will Tech Giants or Big Banks Win the Data War?

Fighting for Customers: Will Tech Giants or Big Banks Win the Data War?

For years, Chris Skinner, Chairman, Financial Services Club and publisher of the Finanser blog, sounded the alarm that financial institutions need to do more when it comes to winning “the data war.” This summer he wrote:

A big bank with legacy architecture can only tell customers what they’ve spent. Their back office systems are purely transactional ledgers of past payments. There is no intelligence, forecasting, predictive analytics or machine learning about customer behaviours, because the data is all fragmented across multiple, legacy, product-focused, silo-structured systems.

Skinner warned that this issue represented ” the big banks soft underbelly and a weakness that the young start-ups are clearly focused upon exploiting.”

In his keynote address at FinovateAsia later this month – If the Future is a Battle for Customer Data & Insight Will the Tech Giants Be the Victors? – Skinner will share his insights on how the market for customer data is creating opportunities for businesses across finance, technology, and fintech. To join us in Hong Kong, on October 29 and 30 for our upcoming conference, visit our registration page and save your spot.

How important is communication and engagement in winning the “hearts and minds” of customers whose data is key to both better services for consumers and bigger market share for businesses? And what does the rise of TechFin, “technology firms who happen to offer finance,” mean for both traditional banks and fintech innovators alike? We are looking forward to Chris Skinner’s insights on one of the most critical topics in our industry today – the role and power of data.

Chris Skinner is known as an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech through his blog, the Finanser.com, and as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank and its new sequel, ValueWeb.  He is Chair of the European networking forum, The Financial Services Club, and Nordic Finance Innovation, as well as being a Non-Executive Director of the Fintech consultancy firm 11:FS.

Skinner is on the advisory boards of many companies including iambank, Innovate Finance, Moven, and Meniga, and has been voted one of the most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal’s Financial News.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Fighting for Customers: Will Tech Giants or Big Banks Win the Data War?
  • PayPal’s Walmart Partnership Makes a Move for the UnderBanked

Around the web

  • UK payments startup SumUp launches a 3G-powered credit card reader.
  • Worldpay extends real-time payouts to 50+ countries.
  • TD Bank Group and Flybits expand Canadian banking technology relationship to provide TD customers enhanced, personalized mobile experiences.
  • BlueRush lands co-selling agreement with Valeyo’s network of more than 95 Canadian financial institutions.
  • Tradeshift teams with credit insurer Coface to ensure greater financial transparency between buyers and suppliers.

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.