The ROI of a Finovate Demo

The ROI of a Finovate Demo
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: Finovate Marketing

Deciding how to best use your marketing budget is a big decision driven by three small letters: ROI. And for fintech companies pushing the envelope, Finovate is the event where you get maximized return on your investment, or what we call Return on Demo Investment (RODI).

Most conferences stick you on a 4- or 5-person panel in a faraway breakout room later in the day. If you don’t tweet your own selfie, there’s not a record of you even being there.

At Finovate, product demos are THE focus. You are the star of the show. You take center stage to address the entire audience. You hold court in your own turnkey booth. And the audience — financial services execs, analysts, VCs and bloggers — all want to talk to you. That’s RODI.

But your RODI starts well before the event:

  • When the upcoming cohort of demoing companies is announced, fintech investors and buyers pay attention because they know you’ve been vetted through a competitive application process.
  • We showcase your company with emails to our 60,000-person database, blog posts to our 350,000 visitors, as well as tweets to 40,000 followers.
  • We work with you to refine your message through 1-on-1 coaching sessions and a full dress rehearsal.

And your RODI doesn’t stop when the event does. Your demo video is hosted indefinitely at finovate.com/videos while our analysts keep you in the spotlight with articles about future funding rounds, product launches, awards, acquisitions and other notable news.

But don’t believe us, see what our alums have to say about the RODI here.

The earlier you get on board the bigger the RODI. So apply to an upcoming event now:

 

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Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge

Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Munnypot

Robo advisory platform Munnypot began the month announcing a new relationship with business process management specialist Capita. Now the U.K.-based FinovateMiddleEast alum is ending the month with news of a major new investment from private equity firm, Livingbridge.

The amount of the investment was not disclosed. Livingbridge typically invests equity of as much as $6.6 million (£5 million). Munnypot said it will use the funds to further develop its robo advisory solution.

“We are delighted with Livingbridge’s investment which will enable us to scale up our business and further develop our offer for consumers,” Munnypot CEO Andrew Fay said.

Munnypot CEO demonstrating the company’s robo advisor platform at FinovateMiddleEast 2018.

Munnypot provides automated financial investment services for as little as £25 a month and/or a single £250 investment. The platform leverages chatbot technology to encourage investors to maximize annual ISA allowances, and monitors fund performance against goal-based objectives. If performance is out of line, Munnypot automatically suggests alternatives for the investor to consider.

“We are excited to be supporting Munnypot in the early stages of their development,” Livingbridge investment director Steve Cordiner said. “The robo advisor sector has grown quickly in recent years and Munnypot has a strong proposition; delivering low cost and affordable advice to consumers.”

Munnypot’s funding news comes just weeks after the company announced a strategic “scaling” partnership with Capita, which took a minority stake in the robo advisor. Via this partnership, Munnypot will help Capita develop solutions for wealth management companies. Earlier this year, Munnypot reported that it would power the robo advisor platform for Jyske Bank in Denmark. The deal represented the company’s first European white label partnership.

“We know, first hand, the time and resources required to build a robust online investment advice proposition,” Fay said in a statement accompanying the partnership announcement. “For most firms, partnering is the best and most efficient route to developing an innovative, client-engaging service.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Crawley, U.K., Munnypot demonstrated its goal-based, online investment advice solution at the inaugural FinovateMiddleEast conference earlier this year. Unlike many robo advisors that seek customers from among the mass affluent, Munnypot is designed for those who traditionally have not been able to access financial advice, as well as investors looking for a cost-competitive alternative to other advisory services.

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Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service

Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Five Degrees

Dutch digital banking technology provider Five Degrees has teamed up with BillPro, an international business payments solutions specialist. Together, the two companies will launch a new cross-border banking service in Europe with Five Degrees’ core banking solution Matrix at the center.

“We are very happy to unite forces with BillPro, a leading provider of payment solutions in Europe and beyond,” Five Degrees CEO Martijn Hohmann said. “As a result, we are able to expand our customer base and enhance our position in the European market for Digital Banking platforms. Through this partnership, we can shape our idea of marketplace banking even more.”

Five Degrees Director of Sales Santosh Radhakrishnan and Prospery Product Owner Andrew Trythall demonstrating the company’s wealth management solution at FinovateEurope 2018.

BillPro will use Matrix as its core digital banking platform, and will offer it to its partners as an additional service option. The partnership will enable Five Degrees to expand its presence in the European market and give BillPro the ability to launch new banking services for its international business clients and support fintechs as they develop their own innovative solutions.

Matrix is an intelligent digital banking platform that supports customer onboarding, transactions, documents, and all customer interactions. The platform can be connected to legacy core banking systems, helping banks offer a broader range of customer-centric services including SME and retail lending, robo advisory and wealth management, as well as mortgages, FX trading, and current, savings, and deposit accounts.

“This will add significant value to both current and future clients as well as partners,” BillPro CEO Daria Rippingale said. “Our partnership with Five Degrees will enable BillPro to issue IBANs and Bank Accounts to people around the world.”

A member of the FinTech 50 and winner of the Banking & IT category at the Dutch Fintech Awards, Five Degrees has partnered with a variety of banks and fintechs including top three Netherlands consumer lender Credit Agricole Consumer Finance; robo advisor and fellow Finovate alum Munnypot; and GarantiBank, a European bank with more than $91 billion in assets.

At FinovateEurope 2018, Five Degrees demonstrated how Matrix served as an “orchestrating hub” for ABN AMBRO’s wealth management offering Prospery. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Five Degrees has raised more than $11 million (€10 million) in funding from investors including Karmijn Kapitaal and Velocity Capital.

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Fiserv and InComm Partner for Cash Billpay

Fiserv and InComm Partner for Cash Billpay
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fiserv, InComm

Prepaid products company InComm, along with financial services company Fiserv, have joined forces to make it easier for customers to pay their bills using cash at stores where they traditionally shop.

Bill payment transactions are powered by InComm’s VanillaDirect Pay. When a bill is due, the consumer receives a barcode on their smartphone from the biller. At the point of sale at a brick-and-mortar merchant, the cashier scans the barcode as they would for any other purchase. This adds the customer’s billing balance to their total, which they can pay in cash. After payment, the consumer receives a receipt as proof of purchase. Thee press release states that the service is currently available at thousands of InComm retailers such as Dollar General and Family Dollar.

“CheckFreePay allows us to continue to transform the payment experience,” said Matt Lanford, senior vice president and general manager for financial services at InComm. “Our technology is serving consumers, enabling them to pay bills easily, while also driving more traffic into our retailers and increasing their revenue.”

Fiserv’s CheckFreePay offers billers a cash bill payment option, enabling them to support all channels, including web, mobile, financial institution websites, walk-in, print, and mail. John Stoner, President of Biller Solutions at Fiserv said, “Whether it is for the convenience of paying a bill while shopping or the ability to receive a receipt immediately upon payment, VanillaDirect Pay and CheckFreePay will enable more biller organizations to conveniently serve customers in-lane at thousands of retail locations without visiting a designated walk-up pay counter.”

This cash payment option competes with PayNearMe’s service. Founded in 2009, PayNearMe offers a QR code-based payment service that allows customers to pay at 27,000 retail locations, including CVS, 7-Eleven, Family Dollar, and Casey’s General Store. doxo also has its foot in the door with cash-based bill payments. The company partnered with Coinstar in April to allow users to pay billers using cash at Coinstar kiosk locations.

InComm offers more than 500,000 points of retail distribution with 1,000+ brand partners in more than 30 countries. The company debuted CorFire Mobile Commerce at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, InComm showed off the Cashtie API at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Earlier this month, InComm acquired Gift Card Impressions, making it the company’s seventh acquisition.

Fiserv recently appeared on the FinovateSpring stage alongside Samsung SDS, where the two showcased how Samsung SDS integrates its biometric authentication and collaboration solutions into Fiserv’s Commercial Center: Security (CC:S) to create a more secure and convenient digital banking experience. As another security play, Fiserv recently began offering Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence decision and fraud detection service.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, Fiserv, Five Degrees, InComm, Infosys, Luxoft, Munnypot, nCino, NCR Corporation, Passport, Ping Identity, Revolut, SpyCloud, Unison

On Finovate.com

  • Fiserv and InComm Partner for Cash Billpay.
  • Unison Raises $40 Million to Promote the American Dream.
  • Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge.
  • Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service.
  • The ROI of a Finovate Demo.

Around the web

  • Infosys Finacle partners with Santander UK to launch interbank cash management system.
  • Luxoft to use open source blockchain platform Corda from R3.
  • Texas Tech FCU to deploy hardware, software, and services from NCR as it overhauls its customer experience.
  • Fiserv makes its Prologue Credit Loss Manager and risk modeling tools available via the cloud.
  • PYMNTS.com features Best of Show-winning cybersecurity specialist, SpyCloud.
  • American Banker: U.K.’s Revolut teams with Russia’s Qiwi ahead of U.S. launch.
  • Bill.com surpasses $50 billion in business payments processed annually.
  • The Tech Tribune names nCino and Passport among the 10 best tech startups in North Carolina.

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.

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Gusto Launches Flexible Pay, Turning Payday into Any Day

Gusto Launches Flexible Pay, Turning Payday into Any Day
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Gusto

Payroll, benefits, and HR technology innovator Gusto has unveiled a new solution called Flexible Pay that will enable workers in the U.S. to get paid outside of their employer’s standard payroll schedule. “The two-week pay schedule should no longer exist in today’s world.” Gusto co-founder and CEO Joshua Reeves said. “It’s a relic of calculating payroll taxes manually and was instituted in the U.S. almost 90 years ago. With modern technology, employees shouldn’t have to wait weeks to get paid.”

Eligible employers partnered with Gusto can begin offering Flexible Pay through the Gusto platform. The platform calculates, makes payments, and files all relevant taxes automatically, enabling eligible employers to use the solution without having to change either their current payroll schedules or debit frequency. Gusto noted in their announcement that solutions like Flexible Pay can help workers manage unexpected expenses without resorting to debt or payday lenders. Workers can set up direct deposit of earned wages via their Gusto account, and select their payday preference – even if it’s the next day. Currently available in Texas, Flexible Pay is expected to be available in other states over the course of 2018.

“Flexible Pay lets employees decide when they want to get paid for the work they’ve already done without additional cost to employers,” Reeves explained. “It’s the way we believe everyone will get paid in the future.”

Demonstrating its platform as ZenPayroll at FinovateSpring 2014, the company rebranded as Gusto in the fall of 2015, and announced the integration of health benefit and workers’ compensation management into its payroll offering. This provided businesses with a single unified service for both workers and employers. Gusto reports that 70% of its customers run payroll in five minutes or less, with 93% of them favorably comparing Gusto to traditional payroll service providers. The technology integrates with popular accounting platforms like Quickbooks, Xero, and TSheets, and the service is tiered to enable businesses of varying sizes to select the most cost- and feature-appropriate offering. This includes a freemium offering, HR Basics, launched this spring which gives small businesses a set of human resource tools for free, enabling them to manage worker vacation time and onboard new employees quicker.

Just a few weeks ago, Gusto introduced its own “Yelp for Accountants” partner directory to help SMEs find and hire accounting talent that specializes in the needs of small businesses. Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 for a second time earlier this year, Gusto began 2018 announcing a new partnership with accounting platform, Aplos.

Founded in 2011, Gusto serves more than 60,000 businesses in the U.S. and more than one percent of all U.S. employers. The company has raised more than $176 million in funding and includes CapitalG; General Catalyst; Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Emergence Capital Partners; and GV among its investors.

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Stellar to Acquire Chain.com

Stellar to Acquire Chain.com
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Chain.com, Mergers & Acquisitions

Cryptographic ledger company Chain.com is in the process of being acquired by blockchain technology platform Stellar.

Stellar, which is also the creator of the cryptocurrency Lumens, plans to purchase Chain for $500 million paid in Lumens (XLM) according to Fortune. Created by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, Stellar Lumens is the seventh most valuable cryptocurrency.

Fortune broke the news last week, reporting that the move is an “acqui-hire”– in other words, Stellar is more interested in acquiring Chain’s team of talented developers rather than its technology. As Fortune explained, “it is likely in response to the heated battle for top developers between crypto companies.” There is no word on Stellar’s plans to maintain or incorporate Chain’s platform or the timeline of the acquisition.

Since it was founded in 2014, Chain has raised more than $43 million from notable investors including Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures, Nasdaq, Visa, Citi Ventures, and Thrive Capital. Chain’s flagship offering is Sequence, a ledger-as-a-service that allows organizations to track and transfer tokenized money. Use cases include storing and moving users’ balances in a mobile wallet; issuing, servicing, and selling loans on a lending platform; and managing end client and driver balances on a ridesharing app.

Chain CEO and Co-founder Adam Ludwin showcased at FinDEVr San Francisco 2015, where he gave a presentation titled, The Blockchain Is Eating Financial Services. Earlier this year, Forbes listed Chain on its Fintech 50 roster that highlights the top private fintechs that have operations, customers, or impact in the U.S.

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TransferWise Helps Monzo Clients Send Money Abroad

TransferWise Helps Monzo Clients Send Money Abroad
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: TransferWise

Foreign currency exchange platform TransferWise just landed a new partnership with challenger bank Monzo. This agreement marks the fintech’s first U.K. bank client to go live and comes just weeks after the company announced a similar partnership with France’s BPCE Group.

Through today’s agreement, TransferWise will power international money transfers for Monzo’s 750,000 users. Starting today, Monzo has integrated with TransferWise’s API to allow its users to send money from their Monzo checking account in 16 currencies. The bank is working to add more currencies in the near future.

Monzo opted to leverage TransferWise for international money transfers because of the positive user experience co-founder Tom Blomfield has had with TransferWise in the past. Blomfield told TechCrunch in an interview, “I’ve personally been a TransferWise customer for five or six years and the service is amazing. Compared to my old bank, it’s really, really transparent, the fees are really fair, and they’re continually working on bringing fees down and to make transfers more instantaneous. So I can’t think of a better partner to do foreign transfers with than TransferWise.”

Many Monzo clients already use TransferWise, but for those who do not, TransferWise will automatically set up an account for them when they initiate their first bank transfer. For all users, the international transfers will be syndicated across both their Monzo and TransferWise accounts.

With more than 3 million users, TransferWise facilitates the movement of more than $2.65 billion each month. Today’s partnership marks TransferWise’s first U.K. bank client to go live, adding to the fintech’s other bank partnerships, including N26 and LHV. TransferWise had– at one point– announced an integration with Starling Bank in the U.K., but the partnership was never finalized and fell through.

TransferWise does not charge users to sign up and there are no monthly fees. By leveraging the ability to transfer money within its network of banks, the company makes sending money abroad up to 7x cheaper than using a bank account. The company was founded in 2010 and showcased its P2P currency exchange services at FinovateEurope 2013. TransferWise recently launched in Argentina to allow Argentinians to move money to and from more than 60 countries.

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Hydrogen Takes Top Honors at Fintech Awards Luxembourg 2018

Hydrogen Takes Top Honors at Fintech Awards Luxembourg 2018
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Hydrogen

Financial development platform Hydrogen won the grand prize at the Luxembourg Fintech Awards last week. The awards, sponsored by KPMG Luxembourg and Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT), were contested by nearly 200 applicants from 46 countries. As the Grand Prize winner, Hydrogen picked up €50,000 in prize money and will receive four months of hosting at Luxembourg’s co-working space, Technoport; 10 free consulting hours from KPMG; and a free membership to LHoFT, including six months of hosting at the LHoFT fintech hub.

“We are building the global financial platform of the Web 3.0 and Luxembourg is a natural place for us to offer our platform given their leading financial standing in Europe and globally,” Michael Kane, Hydrogen co-founder and CEO explained in an e-mail. “We are very excited to be honored with this prestigious award; it shows how tremendous our team is and how big the problem is we are solving.”

Hydrogen offers a suite of APIs that enable developers at financial services companies to build and deploy their financial apps anywhere globally. The firm provides the core infrastructure and connectors that companies require when building and managing fintech apps, including robo advisory and wealth management, savings, insurance, and PFM-based solutions. Hydrogen’s platform also gives developers the ability to leverage blockchain technology to better secure client information and to apply automated machine learning to cloud-based datasets.

Applicants to the awards were evaluated based on the quality of the idea behind the innovation, the technology/solution involved, business model, market potential, team, and more. Looking at the 15 semi-finalists who competed for the Grand Prize, Luxembourg House of Financial Technology CEO Nasir Zubairi said, “the diversity of the activity sectors represented as well as the geographical diversity demonstrate the international dimension of the Fintech awards and the indisputable appeal of Luxembourg as a FinTech hub.”

This year’s awards featured a strong showing by regtech firms, added Head of Advisory at KPMG Pascal Denis, which he attributed to Luxembourg’s “unique landscape of cross-border expertise.” Denis pointed out that artificial intelligence and blockchain-based technologies also made a strong showing. “We are able to attract the next generation of disrupters,” he said.

Also making it to the finals was fellow Finovate alum ThetaRay, a cybersecurity firm based in Israel. Lingua Custodia, a French translation company that specializes in financial documents won first runner up, with Swiss regtech firm, Apiax, picking up the second runner-up prize. BitValley was granted the Financial Inclusion Award for its work in leveraging blockchain technology to provide micro-insurance for farmers.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York City, Hydrogen demonstrated how its technology can be leveraged to build sophisticated financial services platforms at FinovateEurope earlier this year. The company’s co-founders, Michael and Matthew Kane, showed how Hydrogen could build a savings platform, based in Europe, complete with UI/UX, onboarding simulations, back end connectivity, and business intelligence. The Kane brothers also demoed how the platform could be further enhanced by using blockchain technology for security and leveraging a proprietary AI to support an interactive digital assistant.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Cardlytics, Chain.com, Comarch, Finastra, Gusto, Hydrogen, Hyperwallet, Passport, PayPal, Quadient, TransferWise

On Finovate.com

  • TransferWise Helps Monzo Clients Send Money Abroad.
  • Hydrogen Takes Top Honors at Fintech Awards Luxembourg 2018.
  • Gusto Launches Flexible Pay, Turning Payday into Any Day.

Around the web

  • The Paypers interviews Comarch product development manager Bartłomiej Wójtowicz.
  • ACI Worldwide VP of Merchant Payments for Europe Andy McDonald discusses the future of real-time payments.
  • PYMNTS.com takes a look at PayPal’s acquisition of Hyperwallet.
  • Quadient announces availability of Quadient Inspire R12.
  • Passport powers mobile parking app for University of Illinois.
  • Finastra to sell its Collateral Management Corporation (CMS) business to Teranet.

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.

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Newchip Lands $2 Million in Seed Funding

Newchip Lands $2 Million in Seed Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Newchip

For its first round of funding, investment marketplace Newchip has closed on a $2 million Seed round this week. Participating in the round are JadeValue Fintech, Yeoman’s Capital, Spunik ATX, Youbi Capital, and Polymath.

“We’re very excited about the funding partnerships we’ve accomplished and the value those investors bring to the company. We started Newchip with a dream to open up access to investments for both entrepreneurs and investors and now, with the closing of our seed funding round, we can achieve what we set out to do,” said Ryan Rafols, founder and CEO of Newchip.

Founded in 2016, Newchip’s marketplace allows users to invest in opportunities they care about for as little as $100. The low minimum investment, combined with Newchip’s varying investment marketplace, allow investors to curate a diversified portfolio. Some of the investment types include small business, pre-IPO companies, high growth startups, blockchain, and real estate.

Since launch, the Austin-based company has built its user base to 50,000 individuals. This success is thanks in part to Newchip’s popularity in the Apple app store, where the app recently reached the top 100 list for finance. The app is currently ranked #1 for startup investing, and is in the top 10 for fundraising and stock market investing.

Newchip debuted its investment app at FinovateSpring 2017. In April, the company began offering security token-based offerings and blockchain powered companies in its marketplace.

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Veridium Earns $150,000 Grant

Veridium Earns $150,000 Grant
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Veridium

Biometric authentication software company Veridium (formerly Hoyos Labs) was recently awarded a $150,000 grant from Digital Financial Services Lab. The grant is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Veridium earned the funds by completing the first DFS Lab Biometrics Challenge, which required groups to develop software-based technologies that can capture and verify fingerprints using only an Android smartphone. The $150,000 winnings are to be used to create a mobile app that makes it easy to enroll and match users in developing countries against government databases in order to ensure they receive proper government aid and money.

Lori Cohen, CMO of Veridium, said, “Our goal is to help design a new banking model, using our biometric authentication technology to bring the unbanked into the financial services system. Additionally, over time, [we aim to] improve their circumstances, making it possible to open a bank account, apply for credit, and achieve a level of financial stability.”

This isn’t Veridium’s first grant. The company earned a grant in 2017 in which it piloted a new digital banking model using biometric authentication in a partnership with Wala. The pilot aimed to bring accessible, zero-fee banking to residents of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Winning the grant from DFS Lab has enabled us to be one step closer to our goal of disrupting the current banking model, which currently excludes billions of people around the world just because they lack identity documents,” added Cohen.

At FinovateEurope 2017, Veridium showcased 4 Fingers TouchlessID, multi-finger touchless biometric authentication that works on smartphones with a camera. This method of biometric authentication can be leveraged to onboard and authenticate consumers, since the quality of the fingerprint photos is equivalent to those captured on traditional flatbed scanners. Earlier this year, the company deployed its VeridiumID platform with Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region. Headquartered in London and Boston, Veridium was founded in 2015. James Stickland is CEO.

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