Who’s Up for Analyst All Stars?

Who’s Up for Analyst All Stars?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2018

Finovate was built on the foundation of live fintech demos. And there’s plenty to love about the live demo-only, fintech-speed-dating model, but I’ve become increasingly fond of Finovate’s incorporation of the analyst speed-dating session that takes place in the days following the demos.

Demo companies and the analysts both face a 7-minute time limit, but there are two major differences between the two sessions. First, while the companies demo specific fintech innovations, the analysts present on fintech themes and opportunities for the future. Second, the companies face a demo-only, no slides rule, but the analysts are allowed to use as many slides as they’d like in their 7-minute time slot.

Here’s a look at who will be facing the heat of the spotlight during our Analyst All Star session at FinovateEurope next month.

Ron van Wezel

Van Wezel is a senior analyst for Aite Group’s Retail Banking and Payments practice. His research covers market and regulatory trends in the payments space, with a focus on Europe. Aite Group is an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology, and regulatory issues and their impact on the financial services industry. Headquartered in Boston, Aite Group works with its clients as a partner, advisor, and catalyst, challenging their basic assumptions and ensuring they remain at the forefront of industry trends.

Kieran Hines

Hines is Head of Industries at Ovum, and leads a team of analysts that support clients across a range of verticals including financial services, retail, government, education, healthcare, and utilities. Hines’ personal research focus is payments, and he regularly produces research and advises customers on issues such as real-time payments, open banking, fraud/security, and vendor selection.

Michelle Evans

Evans is the Head of Digital Consumer Research at Euromonitor International. In her role, she oversees the firm’s research on the digital consumer, providing actionable insights and in-depth analyses into how technological advances are reshaping the way consumers browse and buy goods and services globally.  Recognized as a thought leader in digital commerce, she was named a Power Woman in Fintech by Innotribe in 2015, a Woman on Top in Tech by Asian Entrepreneur in 2016, and a Woman to Watch by Remodista in 2018. Leveraging her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, she has a reoccurring column in Forbes and is regularly quoted in publications globally.

Oliwia Berdak

Berdak joined Forrester Research in 2013 and leads Forrester’s coverage of digital disruption and digital innovation in financial services. She advises executive teams on their digital strategies and the impact of emerging technologies on their business. Prior to joining Forrester, Dr. Berdak held a number of research positions in business and academia, working with a variety of methodologies to deliver insight.

Zilvinas Bareisis

Bareisis researches and advises clients on consumer payments. He has a keen interest in payments innovation, and how the “perfect storm” of competitive, regulatory, and technology developments shapes consumer payments today and tomorrow. Bareisis has over 20 years of experience advising senior executives at the leading financial institutions and their technology and service providers. He joined Celent in April 2010 from Oliver Wyman.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Doxo, Insuritas, Interactions, NCR Corporation, Revolut, SmartX, TSYS

On Finovate.com

  • TSYS Tech Backs J.P. Morgan’s Commercial Virtual Card Issuance.
  • Finovate Alums Larsen, Garlinghouse, Armstrong Among Crypto’s Richest.
  • NCR Overhauls Self Service Network for Oman’s Bank Dhofar; Expands ATM Access in India.

Around the web

  • Revolut partners with Visa to issue prepaid cards to new customers.
  • Call Centre Helper interviews Mike Iacobucci, Interactions CEO.
  • SMArtX (formerly HedgeCoVest) expands Direct Indexing Platform.
  • doxo surpasses 3 million users and 45,000 payable billers.
  • Army Aviation Center FCU ($1.2 billion in assets) launches member owned full service insurance agency courtesy of Insuritas.

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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Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto

Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard

Identity authentication and secure card issuance company Entrust Datacard has formed a major partnership this week. The Minnesota-based company teamed with payment card supplier Gemalto to offer a SaaS-based instant issuance solution for U.S. banks.

The new offering pairs Entrust Datacard’s instant issuance technology with Gemalto’s SaaS platform, lowering the barrier to entry to create an easy-to-deploy instant issuance solution for any size financial institution. The technology gives banks complete control over the card issuance delivery process and, when they issue cards in the branch, they benefit from cost reductions not only in the form of savings on postage, but also from lowered overhead.

Here’s how it works: once a bank branch installs Entrust Datacard’s instant issuance printers they can personalize and print EMV cards on-demand. The issuance software is hosted and managed by Gemalto’s secure, cloud-based SaaS infrastructure.

In the press release, Karen Kaukol, Vice President of Instant Issuance at Entrust Datacard said, “With a SaaS-based instant issuance solution, we are able to not only provide financial institutions with the ability to instantly meet their customer’s needs, but do it in a manner that drives retention, and increases activation and usage rates, all while reducing the overhead expenses to the bank.”

Entrust Datacard was founded in 1969 and presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. Jason Soroko, Security Technologies Manager, and Matt Rose, Technical Sales Consultant, spoke to the audience of developers on Safeguarding Your Banking Applications. With more than $600 million in annual revenue, Entrust Datacard has 2,000 colleagues working around the globe to serve customers in 150 countries. Last month, the company partnered with the government of Ghana to help it issue national identity cards to its citizens in real time.

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IdentityMind Global Introduces Anti-Fraud Solution for ICOs

IdentityMind Global Introduces Anti-Fraud Solution for ICOs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: IdentityMind Global

Trusted digital identities specialist IdentityMind Global is doing its part to make the world better and safer for cryptocurrency and ICO market participants. The company unveiled its KYC Plug-in for ICOs today, a turnkey SaaS product that enables firms to conduct KYC and AML checks on those seeking to invest in ICOs.

“As ICOs become more prevalent, and as money continues to flow into ICOs, regulators globally are starting to take notice,” IdentityMind Global CMO Jose Caldera said. “The regulatory risk, in conjunction with the risk of enabling fraudsters, financing of terrorism, and money launderers should motivate organizations performing ICOs to properly identity the participants in the ICO process. IdentityMind is at the forefront of delivering an easy compliance solution to companies conducting an ICO.”

Left to right: CTO Kieran Sherlock and CMO Jose Caldera during their presentation “Entity Link API” during FinDEVr London 2017.

The plug-in includes a variety of features to ensure companies are able to perform KYC and AML checks. These consist of a web-ready software client to guide the ICO participant through the KYC process, a pre-configured risk-based KYC ruleset based on local regulations, reports for examiners and auditors, a due diligence platform, and the ability to validate the risk of bitcoins used to participate in the ICO.

“By working with IdentityMind, we are assuring that all participants go through KYC and AML processes before partaking in our $500 million Dragon ICO,” founder and CEO of Dragon Corporation, Chris Ahmad said. “This is perhaps the largest ICO to date and by working with IdentityMind we’re able to verify participants on a global basis in a quick and efficient manner.”

IdentityMind Global presented its Entity Link API at FinDEVr London 2017. A component of the company’s RegTech API, Entity Link API provides the analysis and machine intelligence that determines whether the person on the other end of the transaction is a real entity, is authorized to use the data it is presenting, or posses a risk to the corporate brand in some way.

Named to the Global RegTech 100 last fall, IdentityMind Global announced an expansion of its partnership with fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alum Mitek in late January, adding biometric facial comparison technology to its compliance and fraud prevention platform. The company began the year winning a new patent for technology that improves screening for sanctioned individuals making cryptocurrency transactions.

IdentityMind Global has raised more than $10 million in funding, and includes Lakewood & Company, MoneyTime Ventures, and Overstock.com among its investors. Founded in 2013 by Garrett Gafke (President, CEO), IdentityMind Global is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

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Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money

Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Onfido

Identity verification company Onfido announced today it will power real time identity verification and KYC checks for Arro Money, a financial services company that provides personal and business accounts.

Leveraging Onfido’s technology, Arro Money will provide financial services access to underbanked businesses. Onfido’s eKYC data and real-time verification for passports, ID cards, and drivers licenses from 160 countries offers fast due diligence checks that will offer Arro Money’s new clients access to its services in three minutes.

Director at Arro Money, Muhammad Asim said that through its partnership with Onfido the company can improve its customer service and eliminate excessive credit checks. “Ultimately,” Asim continued, “we are helping to improve accessibility and financial inclusion… by having this strong alliance with Onfido, our customers’ identification is verified securely, simply and, above all, quickly.” Arro Money has already onboarded 10,000 customers with advanced KYC checks and aims to acquire 50,000 more business accounts over the next 12 months.

Founded in 2012, Onfido leverages machine learning technology to validate a user’s identity document and compare it with their facial biometrics. To insure the validity of the documents, the company cross-references identities from 192 countries against international credit and watchlist databases.

Onfido has raised more than $60 million in funding from investors including Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Crunchfund. The company’s clients include ZipCar, Couchsurfing, Revolut, and Square. Onfido will demo its newest tech on stage, alongside dozens of other companies, at FinovateEurope next month. Register today to be a part of the audience.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard, Expensify, FinanceIt, Fiserv, IdentityMind Global, Jumio, Lendio, LendStreet, Marqeta, NICE Systems, Onfido, Quid, Ripple, Soundpays, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money.
  • IdentityMind Global Introduces Anti-Fraud Solution for ICOs.
  • Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto.

Around the web

  • Fiserv sells 55% of Lending Solutions business to Warburg Pincus.
  • Lendio announces new Lendio franchise in New Hampshire’s Seacoast Region.
  • Financeit appoints Dante Tamburro as general counsel and Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Ripple to power instant payments to China courtesy of new partnership with LianLian International.
  • The Future Laboratory leverages technology from Quid to build its Trends of the Trends 2018 report.
  • Mint2Save reviews universal mobile wallet app, Soundpays.
  • Gartner recognizes NICE as a leader in Workforce Engagement Management for a second year in a row.
  • PYMNTS interviews Jumio Director of Product Management, Reinhard Hochrieser on the challenges of abandonment in online banking.
  • Expensify unveils website enhancements to improve credit card import, simplify billing currency section.
  • Lend Street Financial and Marqeta earn spots in The Tech Tribune’s list of the 10 Best Tech Startups in Oakland.
  • National Australia Bank (NAB) to allow business customers to make payments directly via Xero’s accounting platform rather than its own online banking site.

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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Coupa Software Teams Up with Tuition.io

Coupa Software Teams Up with Tuition.io
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Tuition.io

Tuition.io is on a roll. Less than a week after the company announced a partnership with Estee Lauder to help its employees better manage student loan debt, the Los Angeles, California-based fintech has teamed up with business spend management platform Coupa Software to do the same for its workers.

“Coupa has a long history of championing a people-centered corporate culture, and this is another way to continue their mission of offering best-in-class employee benefits,” Tuition.io CEO Scott Thompson said. “With the student debt crisis continuing to escalate, it is not a matter of if, but when companies will do their share to find solutions. We are excited to work with Coupa as they lead the way.”

The partnership will enable Coupa cmployees who enroll in the program get monthly disbursements to help them pay down the principal in their outstanding student loans. Parents who take out Parent PLUS loans to help fund their children’s higher education can also take advantage of the benefit. All full-time Coupa workers in the U.S. are eligible to participate in the new program.

Pointing to the high number of Americans with student loan debt – estimated at more than 44 million Americans, Coupa VP of People Ray Martinelli praised Tuition.io’s ability to provide “a benefit that helps our employees overcome this burden and start building toward their future sooner rather than later.” Martinelli added that the partnership means that not just employees will get help managing their debt, but also their extended families. “It reinforces our commitment to our employees’ success,” he said.

Trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker “COUP”, Coupa Software’s cloud-based business spend management platform links hundreds of organizations and institutions with millions of suppliers around the world. The company has a market capitalization of $2 billion, and more than 450 customers in more than 40 countries.

Tuition.io demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2012. In December, the company announced that it would power a student loan debt reduction benefit for MidWestOne Financial Group’s Educational Assistance Program. Earlier in 2017, the City of Memphis announced that it would use Tuition.io to support student loan debt reduction program for its workers.

In terms of funding, Tuition.io most recently announced a $7 million investment last September led by Wildcat Venture Partners and featuring participation from current investors Mohr Davidow Ventures and MassMutual Ventures. The funding took the company’s total capital to more than $115 million.

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Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing

Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Personal Capital

Wealth tech company Personal Capital is making it easier for investors to put their money in causes that are important to them with the launch of its Socially Responsible Personal Strategy today.

The New York-based company is offering clients the ability to select a personalized socially responsible investment strategy with the same pricing structure as the rest of its offerings– a single, flat fee. “There has been a surge of investor interest in aligning their money with their values,” said Craig Birk, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Management at Personal Capital.

Personal Capital has teamed with Sustainalytics to screen equity holdings in the U.S. for three factors– environmental, social, and governance (ESG)– to find the best companies in each group. Just like Personal Capital’s core portfolio offerings, the new Socially Responsible Personal Strategy offers exposure to all six major liquid asset classes and individual stocks and uses Personal Capital’s Smart Weighting methodology to balance exposure to size, style, and sectors within the U.S. equity asset class.

In addition to the ESG factors, clients can use advanced customizations to exclude any stock or sector that they do not want to hold. In fact, 30% of Personal Capital portfolios do so. In total, the company manages more than $6.5 billion in assets and tracks over $500 billion for 1.6 million registered users. In the past 12 months, Personal Capital has nearly doubled its assets under management. At the end of last month, the company surpassed $6.5 billion in assets under management with an average client balance of more than $430,000.

Founded in 2009, Personal Capital debuted its One-Click Investment Proposals at FinovateSpring 2014. At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, the company’s Ehsan Lavassani, Founding Engineer and Chief Engineering Officer, and Ravi Gundlapalli, Director of Frontend Engineering, gave a presentation titled, Data-Driven Account Opening. Last October, Personal Capital launched an education planning tool to help investors set aside money for the cost of college. Later that month, the company was named a Top 100 digital tech company in Colorado.

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Startup Challenger Banks with Small Business Focus

Startup Challenger Banks with Small Business Focus
By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Bento for Business, Holvi, Small Business
UK challenger, OakNorth become a financial services “unicorn” in its Nov. 2017 funding round

In the digital age, few startup banks have gained meaningful market share in what matters, revenue and profits. In the United States, only two large bank-like companies (see note 1) have emerged from 20 years of digital disruption: PayPal and Square.  There are also a handful of new online lenders that have amassed significant scale (SoFi, Lending Club, Prosper, Kabbage, Avant, On Deck).

There are still zero consumer banks started in the past 20 years that have broken the top-100 list. The possible exception was ING Direct. But as part of a large bank, it’s a stretch to call it a startup (see note 2). BofI Holdings, the public company that owns Bank of Internet, is the largest pure digital bank with $8B in assets and ranking 151 in this list posted by MX.

Why so few successes? It’s difficult for a startup bank to gain scale. First, the market is absolutely saturated. Every bankable consumer in the USA can choose from: (1) big trusted brands with a large branch networks and sophisticated digital services; (2) small community banks with deep ties to their communities (and serviceable digital banking); (3) or equally small non-profit credit unions providing bargain priced loans and deposits (and often with above average digital banking).

Second, to be successful, startups must solve a problem much better than the incumbents. For most consumers banking digitally simply is not a problem. The exceptions were in remote payments, which PayPal solved, and micro-businesses merchant accounts, which Square solved. That’s why it will likely continue to be tough for new deposit-focused banks to become big players, at least in the United States.

But there are many niches for banking startups to mine and one of the most promising is small business banking. A startup bank that solves bookkeeping and financial management problems for small businesses can be the next Square.

Here are some of the bigger efforts around the world (note 3):

UK

USA

Germany

Rest of world

  • Holvi – Finland, acquired by BBVA March 2016, Finovate alum
  • Tochka – Russia

Author: Jim Bruene (@netbanker) is Founder & Advisor at Finovate as well as Principal of BUX Certified, a financial services user-experience accreditation program. 

Notes:

  1. You can argue they are not banks, but they provide key consumer banking services, payments and credit, so I’m going to call them banks for the purposes of this post. I’m also excluding the crypto market, since it’s too soon to call the major players “bank like” though I think they are well on that path.
  2. I would probably add ING Direct to this list. Although they were technically not a startup, they built a significant deposit business from scratch, eventually selling for $9B to Capital One during the Great Recession.
  3. To make this list, the startup bank must be solely focused on small businesses and must offer, or plan to offer, a debit card to access funds held on deposit at the startup.

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Veridium to Power Biometrics for Nordea

Veridium to Power Biometrics for Nordea
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Veridium

Biometric authentication software company Veridium (formerly Hoyos Labs) has partnered with Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region, which will deploy the VeridiumID platform.

With around 11 million customers, 31,500 employees and 600 branch office locations, Nordea will use VeridiumID to replace tokens with biometric authentication for access to confidential and secure data. VeridiumID leverages biometric authentication that works in conjunction with a front-end mobile SDK that allows companies to embed biometrics into their mobile app. The bank considers this a critical first step in embracing multi-factor biometric authentication. VeridiumID’s software-only approach gives Nordea increased customization and scalability and offers increased security and ease-of-use at a lower cost.

And with the upcoming GDPR deadline, this comes at a good time for Nordea. The implementation of VeridiumID is part of Nordea’s strategy to improve how employees access data and accounts while meeting the new GDPR compliance demands. James Stickland, CEO of Veridium said, “With Veridium, Nordea will be able to take its first steps in advancing security for high privilege access and GDPR compliance.”

In addition to VeridiumID, Veridium offers VeridiumAD, which adds biometric authentication to Microsoft Active Directory environments, and 4 Fingers TouchlessID, which authenticates the user by capturing all four fingerprints at once using a rear-facing camera and LED flash.

Stickland most recently demoed VeridiumID with 4 Fingers TouchlessID at FinovateEurope 2017. The company first presented as Hoyos at FinovateSpring 2011, where it showcased its EyeLock solution. Last month, Veridium partnered with Walla to bring biometric authentication to sub-saharan Africa. Founded in 2015, the company has offices in the U.S., U.K., and Romania.

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Banco Santander to Leverage Ripple Tech to Offer Same Day Mobile International Payments

Banco Santander to Leverage Ripple Tech to Offer Same Day Mobile International Payments
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ripple

Banco Santander announced that the mobile app it plans to launch in the first quarter of this year will feature instant payments powered by technology from Ripple. The new service will enable customers to make same-day, cross-border payments.  P2P payments, a digital wallet, and PFM functionality will also be part of the app

Using its own internal staff, the Spanish bank has piloted the technology for the past 18 months. The testing involved Apple Pay transactions between £10 and £10,000 and relied on Touch ID to ensure secure logins. Santander said it believes it will be “one of the first global banks to roll out distributed ledger technology based payments for individuals” and expects to initially launch the app in four countries simultaneously (believed to be Spain, Brazil, the U.K., and Poland, see below).

News of the new solution was sleuthed in part by analysts participating in Banco Santander’s 2017 earnings presentation which featured the below slide previewing the firm’s plans for same day mobile international payments in “3 clicks & 40 seconds.”

“The need for finance has evolved from providing a Pound in your pocket or card in your purse, where you pay at a till, to being seamlessly integrated into a new, always on, connected lifestyle,” said a representative of Banco Santander in Coinspeaker last week. “At Santander we work hard to ensure our banking is simple, personal and fair and believe new Blockchain technology will play a transformational role in the way we achieve our goals and better serve our customers, adding value by creating more choice and convenience.”

This news comes just a few months after Santander U.K. announced that it will partner with American Express to use Ripple’s technology for cross-border, B2B payments. Interviewed earlier this year, Head of Technology Innovation at Santander UK, Ed Metzger, praised Ripple’s advantages over SWIFT. “We chose Ripple because of its speed, transparency, and certainty … these three characteristics provide relief to the pain points of international payments.”

Making its Finovate debut as OpenCoin at FinovateSpring 2013, Ripple is based in San Francisco, California and was founded in 2012 by Chris Larsen. Last month, the company launched a trial with MoneyGram that will include leveraging XRP for remittances and the potential integration of Ripple’s xVia, an API that facilitates sending payments across multiple networks using a standard interface.

Ripple introduced its Infrastructure Innovation Initiative in December, an effort to help central banks, regulators, and market infrastructures test and pilot blockchain-based solutions. In October, the company launched a new accelerator program and incentives to encourage banks to become more involved in blockchain technology.

With more than $93 million in funding, Ripple includes Santander Innoventures, SBI Investment, Core Innovation Capital, and IDG Capital Partners among its investors. Brad Garlinghouse was appointed CEO of the company in the fall of 2016.

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FinovateEurope Sneak Peek: Electronic IDentification

FinovateEurope Sneak Peek: Electronic IDentification
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Electronic IDentification, FinovateEurope 2018, FinovateEurope 2018 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateEurope on the 6 through 9 of March 2018 in London. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

Electronic IDentification’s VideoID is the first and only technology that combines video streaming with the most advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithm to identify people in just seconds from any device. The results are amazing: time-to-market goes from three weeks to only three minutes, customer conversion rate increases 60% and businesses have no more territory barriers to perform businesses.

Why it’s great
Its solution is fully compliant with most stringent regulations, such as European AML or eIDAS.

Presenter

Iván Nabalón, CEO
Nabalón is founder and CEO of eID, the company with the greatest growth in Europe in the identification industry. It has created a new category of identification services that combines video and AI.
LinkedIn

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