PayPal Acquires TIO Networks in $230 Million Deal

PayPal Acquires TIO Networks in $230 Million Deal

TioNetworks_homepage_February2017

In a cash deal valued at $233 million ($304 million CAD), PayPal Holdings has agreed to acquire Canada’s TIO Networks. PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman praised the way the company’s combination of digital platform and physical, in person locations made billpay “simpler, faster, and more affordable” – particularly for the underbanked. TIONetworks_HamedShahbaziChairman and CEO of TIO Networks, Hamed Shahbazi (pictured), emphasized this point as well. “We founded TIO to make speed and access part of the bill payment experience for the underserved, and we believe that we have created affordable products to serve the needs of all customers,” Shahbazi said.

TIO Networks will continue to operate as a service within PayPal after the acquisition, which is still pending shareholder approval. The purchase price of the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company, which made its Finovate debut in 2012, represented a premium of more than 25% of its recent share price. PayPal anticipates completing the acquisition in the second half of 2017.

Among the strategic benefits of the acquisition, according to PayPal, is the addition of 14 million consumer bill pay accounts with an estimated 60 million transactions processed as of TIO’s fiscal 2016. In addition, TIO Networks:

  • Processes more than $9 billion in bill payments a year
  • Accepts payments at more than 70,000 locations nationally
  • Provides access to more than 10,000 billers in network
  • Serves a wide variety of verticals including:
    • financial services companies
    • wireless carriers
    • insurance companies
    • app developers
    • national and local retail chains
    • general loan providers

TIO Networks was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The company demonstrated TIO MobilePay at FinovateSpring 2012. Five-year revenue growth of 125% helped TIO Networks make Canada’s 2016 PROFIT 500 list last fall, and in May, the company rebranded its consumer-facing acquisition, Chargestmart from 2014, as TIO.com. One of the top two tech companies in the 2016 TSX Venture 50, TIO was named by the Canadian Innovation Exchange as one of Canada’s 20 “hottest most innovative” public tech companies.

FinDEVr Feature — Modelshop

See Modelshop and the rest of the FinDEVr New York speaker lineup on March 21 & 22. Register and save 10% with the promo code FinDEVrBlog.

Interview with Tom Tobin, Modelshop‘s Founder:

Where did you start your career and how did you gain the experience needed to run the tech side of your company?
Modelshop 2I started as a rocket scientist. No, literally. I worked for General Dynamics in the late ’80s and wrote flight control software for the Atlas II satellite launch platform. The launches were exciting, but the coding really wasn’t. It took weeks to write 100 lines of code, with hundreds of people double checking your work.

I got out of avionics code and took a role building golf ball flight trackers using machine vision for Callaway golf. Definitely more exciting, but I really wanted to be part of a software company that was solving big problems.

I joined a small company in San Diego called HNC Software (now FICO). They were solving the credit card fraud problem using Neural Networks. Fast forward 25 years and I’m still creating solutions in financial services using data and analytics to solve tough problems such as credit pricing decisions, fraud detection and portfolio optimization. Modelshop is the culmination of what I’ve learned delivering these solutions to some of the largest (and smallest) financial institutions out there, and it has the potential to change how decisions are made in our industry.

From a technologist’s perspective, what’s unique and game-changing about your technology?

Modelshop 1At its core, Modelshop is an incredibly flexible ontology engine. It can morph the way organizations leverage information to transparently move between data, logic, policy, analytics and back to data. What’s interesting is that spreadsheets also do a pretty good job of this and can be powerful in the hands of capable business analysts. Our goal with Modelshop was not only to replicate that ease of working with information to produce immediate answers for businesses, but also to deliver that on a more scalable, shareable, real-time and analytically robust platform. Technology aside, our vision is to enable businesses to deliver unique analytic applications and services on a larger scale than with traditional coding. We believe we have successfully delivered a platform that accomplishes that vision.

Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution/technology.

Blinker.com is an early stage company based in Denver that connects private party auto buyers and sellers and facilitates the purchase transaction, including financing. They have created an incredible user experience and all of the analytic decisioning behind the scenes is powered by Modelshop. I love the product they have built, and I’m proud of the role we’ve played in delivering their solution in an incredibly short time frame.


FinDEVr New York 2017 is partnered with American Banker, BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, Celent, CIOReview, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Distributed, Economic Journal, Empire Startups, Femtech Leaders, Finmaps, Fintech Finance, Harrington Starr, Level39, Mercator Advisory Group, The Paypers, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Spiff Partners with Nordea Liv to Launch Mobile Savings App.
  • PayPal Acquires TIO Networks in $230 Million Deal.
  • Qumram’s Regtech Offering Lands $1.49 Million

On FinDEVr.com

Around the web

  • TransferWise announces integration with Facebook Messenger.
  • Valiant Bank to deploy new customer engagement platform from Backbase.
  • Thomson Reuters Labs’ latest data science lab opens in Singapore.
  • Malauzai reports record growth for 2016.
  • Santander’s VC arm invests undisclosed amount in Personetics.
  • Standard Chartered leveraging WeChat’s online payment gateway to launch e-commerce solution for corporates.

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.

Banking Opportunity: Synced Joint Accounts

Banking Opportunity: Synced Joint Accounts

simple shared account

One thing we are looking forward to this year is the launch of Simple’s (part of BBVA) Simple Shared checking account. When the beta was announced last September (2016) and the company said it would be launching “some time in 2017.” See screenshots above.

The account promises to help users track their individual purchases, while also maintaining a shared transaction area and goal(s) that includes an Our Safe-to-Spend number across both users. Users would be able to simply transfer money to each other as well. And interestingly, it appears that any two people (and maybe more?) will be able to sync their Simple accounts together, it won’t have to be an actual legal joint account. That’s exactly how it should be.

Innovating in the Deposit Business
The deposit business is relatively straightforward. There are checking accounts, debit cards, and savings accounts (most paying a negligible amount of interest). So how does a bank differentiate itself in this absurdly low interest-rate environment? Branding, trust and location have been the traditional drivers and are still vital. And every decade or so a new technology comes along and there is some jostling along the way until everyone offers it (ATMs, VRUs, debit cards, online banking, mobile banking, etc.).

But even in a world where every FI offers the same basic product lineup, there are still ways to add value and increase market share and/or margins. Synced joint accounts, like Simple’s Shared Account. Married couples are the biggest opportunity, but there are other segments as well: Parents that need to sync with their kids. adults that need to sync with their aging parents, employers with employees, advisors with their clients, and so on.

There has been progress on this front. Many (most?) business accounts offer ways to enable third-party accountant/advisor access. Person-to-person transfers make it easy to send money to kids at college. And PFM solutions such as Mint, allow money-tracker couples to keep an eye on their spending across multiple accounts.

Bottom line: Existing solutions are often difficult to use, missing key features, and not fully integrated within big-name financial brands. Simple, which already offers a state-of-the-art checking account with Safe to Spend balance forecasting, natural-language search, and overall great UI, is expected to raise the bar considerably when Shared Accounts launches. I look forward to using it.


Author: Jim Bruene is Founder & Senior Advisor to Finovate as well as
Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services UX consultancy. 

Three Credit Unions Sign Up for Bankjoy’s Mobile Banking Technology

Three Credit Unions Sign Up for Bankjoy’s Mobile Banking Technology

Bankjoy_homepage_February2017

So, how many credit union deals did you land this week?

Finovate newcomer Bankjoy announced this week that three credit unions had agreed to deploy its mobile banking technology. The three FIs are CommunityWide FCU ($395 million) of South Bend, Indiana; Advantage Plus FCU ($125 million) of Pocatello, Idaho, and One Detroit CU ($35 million) of Detroit, Michigan. Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan pledged that the company’s technology would “help them improve their member experience, increase efficiencies, and develop a foundation to more easily integrate future technologies.”

Bankjoy_stage_FF2016

CEO Mike Duncan (pictured left) demonstrating the Bankjoy API at FinovateFall 2016.

Each of the credit unions is seeking something a little different from Bankjoy. CommunityWide, for example, will be using the fintech company’s data marketing technology in addition to its mobile banking, billpay, and other solutions. Advantage Plus is reportedly considering deployment of Alexa-based, Bankjoy Voice, alongside its new home banking and mobile apps. One Detroit CIO John DiGaetano emphasized the ability of Bankjoy’s technology to support further platform enhancements. “It will also help us leverage technology to become a member service leader by providing the same suite of services provided at competing institutions,” DiGaetano said.

Specializing in bringing mobile banking functionality to credit unions, Bankjoy enables credit unions to offer their members a variety of mobile banking services ranging from billpay and check deposit to P2P money transfers. Bankjoy’s technology includes built-in financial goal management tools to help members save and budget better. The white-label solution also gives credit unions the ability to offer targeted loan products and incentives.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Troy, Michigan, Bankjoy demonstrated its API at FinovateFall 2016 last September. The company has raised $120,000 in seed funding and is a graduate of the Y Combinator program.

FinovateEurope 2017 in the Press

FinovateEurope 2017 in the Press

IMG_9966

Last week was quite a rush– seeing all of the new fintech ideas on stage at FinovateEurope and meeting the teams behind the innovations really has us excited about the future of fintech. The 71 companies from across the globe that took the stage to demo their newest technology gave the press, media, and analysts plenty to talk about (and the audience a lot to tweet about).

Hotwire_FelicityHudsonFelicity Hudson (pictured), Head of Hotwire PR’s FinTech practice contributed a piece about FinovateEurope this year:

“Great, Exciting, Fab, Impressive, Cool, Smart, Fab, Delight, Proud – are just some of the most popular words to appear in the 4,620 tweets around this year’s event in London. After ‘great’ and ‘#fintech’, the next most talked topic was PSD2, reflecting the amount of debate this upcoming regulation is stirring up. The general consensus from this audience is that this major legislative shift represents an opportunity, rather than a threat for banks.”

Hudson continued with an analysis of the event based on Twitter:

“Digging deeper into hashtag usage, and we see blockchain, IoT, biometrics, and regtech all appear in the top 10 most common topics. These have been talking points within the industry for a little while, though applications are now beginning to move out of the ‘lab’ and into the real-world – a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. While the regulatory environment for financial services is often viewed as a barrier to creativity, agility and innovation, you only have to look at PSD2 to see an example of legislation as a powerful enabler.

The blushing emoji smiley face seemed to capture the emotion for most – with 80 posts featuring this little grin. Oh, and then the piggy bank and snout (30 each) – with lots of love for @WorldlineGlobal and the talking piggybank, particularly from the Meniga team.”

In addition to Hudson’s contribution, here’s a list of press coverage that has rolled in so far. We’ll be updating this post in the coming weeks as additional pieces are published.

American Banker
Moven expands into Europe with U.K. launch
by Bryan Yurcan

Assurance & Banque 2.0
En 2017, ne dites plus “entrée en relation”, mais “onboarding”
by Adrien Pigeot

Bankaciyim.net
Bankacılıkta Yüzyılın Güvenlik Uygulaması “Gözünüzü Açın”

Bankier.pl
9 lutego 2017 r. – to powinieneś wiedzieć dziś rano

Banking Hub
FINOVATE EUROPE 2017 – LONDON
by Dr. Sarah Brockhoff

Banking Technology

Bank Innovation
7 Startups From Finovate Europe That Got Our Attention
by Diana Asatryan

BankNXT
Fintech innovation with a posh accent – interviews from Finovate Europe
by John Best

BiometricUpdate.com
VASCO demonstrates selfie-based authentication solution at FinovateEurope
by Stephen Mayhew

bobsguide

City A.M.
When fintechs and banks go speed dating
by Lynsey Barber

ComputerWorld
ITSector demonstra app na Finovate London

Daily Sabah Tech
Turkish banks take off with fintech ventures
by Timur Sirt

efinancialcareers.com
Five crazy start-up ideas in FinTech now
by Paul Clarke

eSignLive blog
Using Mobile as an Upselling Channel in Financial Services
by Rahim Kaba

Financial IT

Financial Post
As one of few senior women in technology, Janice Diner pays it forward
by Suzanne Wintrob

Finans.Haberler.com
Yapı Kredi, Göz Id Uygulamasını Finovate Europe’da Anlattı

Find Biometrics
Worldcore Adds BioID Facial Recognition to Platform

Fintech Finance

The Fintech Times
The FINOVATE Europe showcased the best financial innovations
by Kate Shcheglova

FintechIstanbul.org

Forbes

FS Tech
FinovateEurope 2017 – winners announced
by Chris Lemmon

GlobalData.com

Hürriyet
Önce CEO’yu gözünden tanıdı

IBSintelligence

Ihned.cz
Fintech – hrozba, nebo příležitost pro banky?
by Marek Miler and Adéla Skoupá

IT Reseller
Crealogix gewinnt Award mit VR-Banking-Anwendung

Leveris blog
FinovateTV-2017

LinkedIn Pulse
Fintechs are coming of age – my review of Finovate London 2017
by Michael Hilbert

Mapa Finance

Memento blog
Memento – Best of Show at Finovate

modeFinance blog
modeFinance on stage at the Finovate European conference

Money.pl
Polska firma pojechała do Londynu podbić serca światowych finansów. To już kolejny raz. Teraz bank ma być jak Facebook
by Agata Kołodziej

El Mundo
Tras Siri y Alexa, tu nuevo ‘chatbot’ será financiero
by Nerea Castro

Netzwoche.ch
Das sind die Gewinner der Finovate-Europe-Awards
by David Kiler

Nostrum Group blog
Finovate Europe 2017

OCTO blog
Finovate Europe 2017 : our first impressions
by Adrien Pigeot, Svetlana Baranov, Samuel Brunard

Paybefore
Moven Unveils ‘Easy’ Financial App at FinovateEurope

Private Banker
Collaboration Over Disruption the Key Theme for WealthTech at FinovateEurope 2017 (subscription content)
by John Schaffer

Puls Biznesu
Comarch wprowadził Myrę na salony
by Mariusz Gawrychowski

Retail Banker
FinovateEurope 2017: Three Ways Fintech Could Replace You
by Patrick Brusnahan

RFi Group
The latest and greatest at Finovate Europe

Rzeczpospolita
Fintechy na fali cyfrowej transformacji banków
by Robert Stanikowski and Łukasz Rey

Social Geek
STARTUPS La app para el control financiero ‘Moven’ acaba de realizar su lanzamiento en Reino Unido
by Stiven Cartagena

Trustly blog
Finovate 2017: Trustly demos its newest payment innovation

TVN24
Zainwestujesz nawet za kierownicą. Nowa polska aplikacja

Verdict
FinovateEurope 2017: have fintech startups matured?
by Billy Bambrough

Yahoo Finance
Worldcore Payment Institution Teams Up With BioID and Presents Face Recognition Authentication at FinovateEurope 2017


Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and braved the Finovate stage. Have a press piece from FinovateEurope you’d like us to add to this piece? Please email the link to [email protected] and we’ll include it.

We’ll see you at next year’s event!

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Three Credit Unions Sign Up for Bankjoy’s Mobile Banking Technology.

Around the web

  • Bluefin Payment Systems powers payment processing solution for ticketing and ecommerce platform, AudienceView.
  • Almaviva develops new Consent and Data Rights Management solution courtesy of partnership with Trunomi.
  • Mitek to provide AML and KYC compliance technology for European blockchain firm, Nocks.
  • InComm Canada was named the North West Company’s General Merchandise Vendor of the Year for 2016.
  • Jemstep Partners with SSG to offer Advisor Pro Platform to over 1,500 RIA Client Firms.

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.

Configo Unveils Live App Editor

Configo Unveils Live App Editor

Configo_homepage_February2017

Just weeks after its debut at FinovateEurope, customer personalization specialist Configo has announced a new addition to its Live Mobile Experience platform. The new feature, Live App Editor, makes it easier for designers to change and modify the platform’s interface in as few as 17 seconds.

“Configo takes personalization very personal when it comes to mobile experiences,” company co-founder and CEO Yosi Dahan wrote this morning in a statement. “As the world continuously shifts to mobile, real time targeting and personalization will determine success. We enable enterprises to create a customer-centric, live mobile experience that drives sales and engagement.”

Configo_stage_FEU17

Pictured (let to right): Configo co-founders Natan Abramov (CTO) and Yosi Dahan (CEO) demonstrating Configo Live Mobile Experience at FinovateEurope 2017.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and founded in 2015, Configo demonstrated its Live Mobile Experience at FinovateEurope 2017 earlier this month. Configo’s technology helps marketing and product development teams in financial services improve and optimize their mobile apps in real-time while avoiding a lengthy R&D process. Configo’s platform enables in-app personalized campaigns, A/B app testing, and deep segmentation that allows more accurate targeting of app users by location, usage patterns, and other data. The privately-held company has more than ten pilot projects with the largest banks and credit card companies in Europe.

Configo’s live demo from FinovateEurope will be available in our video archives in a couple of weeks.

Roostify to Power Self-Serve Mortgage Platform for Chase Bank

Roostify to Power Self-Serve Mortgage Platform for Chase Bank

Screen Shot 2017-02-16 at 2.10.08 PM

As a borrower who is in the middle of a 3-month process of closing on a house, the phrase faster closings speaks to me. JP Morgan Chase must have had a similar realization when it inked a deal with Roostify today.

San Francisco-based Roostify is a SaaS-based, self-service mortgage application platform that places borrowers in control of their loan process, enabling them to track their application all the way through until close. Mike Weinbach, CEO of Chase Mortgage said that leveraging Roostify will allow the bank “to be where more of our customers are, which is online and on their phones, while still offering the option to work with us in person if they prefer.”

Aside from mobile and web accessibility, the Roostify integration connects borrowers, loan officers, and real estate agents. Combining this line of direct communication with eSign capabilities speeds up the documentation and paperwork process. This sounds like a dream compared to the process I’ve been through so far– I’ve hauled a 1980’s-era file full of documents to the bank branch three times during my mortgage application process.

Roostify presented at FinovateSpring 2016 where the company’s Nathaniel Sokoll-Ward, Head of Product, and Jonathan Kirst, CTO, showed off integrations with TurboTax, Equifax, as well as account aggregation capabilities for asset verification. Founded in 2012, the company debuted a number of new integrations last year, including one with Optimal Blue for mortgage pricing, PCLender for loan origination, and DocMagic for automated mortgage documentation.

AutoGravity Earns Multi-Million Euro Investment from Daimler

AutoGravity Earns Multi-Million Euro Investment from Daimler

Autogravity_homepage_February2017

AutoGravity, one of FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners, picked up a major, “double-digit million euro investment” from Daimler Financial Services. The funding adds to the $50 million AutoGravity has raised since its founding in the fall of 2015, and comes as the company’s nationwide rollout reaches 46 states in the U.S.

Bodo Uebber, member of Daimler AG’s board of management, said the investment in AutoGravity was a “strategic step” in opening digital sales channels in leasing and financing. “We believe AutoGravity and its technology have the potential to revolutionize the sector for online financing while, at the same time, offering a digital platform for other financial services providers and automotive manufacturers,” Uebber said. Daimler Financial Services board chairman Klaus Entenmann called AutoGravity “a new star rising in the digital world.”

AutoGravity_stage_FF2016b

Pictured: AutoGravity CMO Serge Vartanov demonstrating the company’s auto financing solution at FinovateFall 2016.

Quoted in AutoFinanceNews, AutoGravity Chief Marketing Officer Serge Vartanov added that the investment from Daimler was a major show of confidence in the company’s platform and potential for growth. “That Daimler has recognized the technology and sees the potential in transforming that shopping and financing experience for the consumer,” Vartanov said, “I think is a really good validation of what we’ve been building.” He added that because AutoGravity is lender-agnostic, Daimler’s investment in the technology will benefit not just its loan originations at its own Mercedez-Benz Financial Services, but will help auto lending more broadly, as well.

AutoGravity’s mobile app gives prospective new and used car buyers and leasers the ability to search for vehicles, complete credit applications, and get up to four personalized financing offers. With more than 150,000 downloads, the free app is available in iOS and Android. Read more about AutoGravity in our profile from earlier this year.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Irvine, California, AutoGravity won Best of Show at its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall 2016. In November, the company announced that its technology would power the digital auto sales and finance app from Fletcher Jones Motorcars. AutoGravity’s app was listed by Forbes in September as one of the “best new personal finance apps and sites.” Andy Hinrichs is CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • AutoGravity Earns Multi-Million Euro Investment from Daimler.
  • Roostify to Power Self-Serve Mortgage Platform for Chase Bank.

On FinDEVr.com

  • Payoneer Launches Cross-Border, Mass Payment APIs

Around the web

  • Northern California’s Kaiperm Diablo FCU to deploy core banking technology from NYMBUS.
  • Shopkeep integrates its POS technology with First Data’s Clover platform in extension of current partnership.
  • Arxan launches Arxan Application Protection for JavaScript to protect JavaScript-based applications.
  • CuBroadcast interviews CUneXus CEO Dave Buerger.

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.

Best of Show Winner Swych Unveils P2P Gifting Bot

Best of Show Winner Swych Unveils P2P Gifting Bot

Swych_homepage_February2017

Fresh off its Best of Show winning performance at its debut at FinovateFall last September, mobile gift card innovator, Swych, has announced the beta release of its P2P gifting bot. The technology enables the user to generate and send e-gifts to any desktop, smartphone or tablet from within a chat, messaging, or virtual assistant app. Swych’s GiftBot preserves the same functionality as the mobile app, including the ability to “swych” the gift for another item from more than one hundred of Swych’s retail partners. GiftBot identifies recipients by first name, makes gift recommendations, and lets the sender add a personalized message.

“Most mobile usage studies show that consumers prefer to interact with friends, family, and colleagues predominately in social media apps such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, Instagram, Slack, or WhatsApp,” Swych Chief Revenue Officer Robert Sabella explained. “The use of virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home is also growing at a very fast clip. Swych’s GiftBot platform opens the door for our gifting brand partners to take advantage of this trend and connect to their consumers in an entirely new way,” he said.

Swych_stage_FF2016

Pictured (left to right): Swych co-founders Deepak Jain (CEO) and Robert Sabella (CRO) demonstrating the Swych Mobile Gifting Platform at FinovateFall 2016.

Swych CEO and co-founder Deepak Jain sees his company’s GiftBot technology as part of a wave of technologies – including artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality – that are “gearing up to overtake traditional web- and app-based commerce.” He added, “We are proud to be the first mobile gifting service to bring machine learning, AI, and advanced data analytics into the fast growing digital gifting space.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Plano, Texas, Swych took home Best of Show honors during its Finovate debut last fall for its mobile gifting platform. Swych is a private-held company funded by veteran angel investors from the banking, financial services, and enterprise computing industries.