I spent the majority of last week at Money20/20 catching up with Finovate and FinDEVr alums.
With 5 tracks of panel discussions and product announcements, plus an exhibit hall floor, it was impossible to parcel out all of the themes buzzing around. However, from the slice of the mega-conference that I attended, the overarching theme was payments, specifically, removing friction from the payments experience. This became evident in the product announcements and discussions throughout the keynote sessions from Stripe, Poynt, Chase, Verifone, Google’s AndroidPay, Samsung Pay, PayPal, MCX, and First Data.
In addition to these larger players, there were many smaller companies in attendance. I sat down with five Finovate and FinDEVr alums to find out what’s new.
Arxan
Arxan, which protects applications, has experienced 50% year-over-year growth for the past 5 years.
Last week the company announced the extension of its application protection to the Apple TV. Arxan safeguards the TV operating system and already protects multiple pre-installed applications on the Apple TV. The apps are shielded using multi-layered guards to fortify the application from being reverse-engineered and compromised and are inserted within the binary code of the applications.
See Arxan’s FinDEVr 2015 presentation.
Endeavour
This was the first time I’ve chatted with Endeavour since they debuted their mobile account opening solution at FinovateSpring 2014. The Austin-based company revealed some crucial news— it was acquired by Genpact, an operational efficiency specialist for enterprise organizations.
The structure of Endeavour’s organization will remain more or less unaffected by the acquisition which Genpact hopes will bolster its Lean Digital offering by adding Endeavour’s mobile expertise.
Kabbage
Kabbage recently partnered with ING, Santander, and Kikka Capital, and the company is growing fast. These partnerships will help the Atlanta-based company expand operations outside of the U.S. Kabbage is especially targeting the growing ecommerce market in India through its Bangalore office.
Kabbage anticipates originating $1 billion in small business loans in 2015, and is planning a major push into consumer loans next year.
Watch Kabbage’s presentation from FinDEVr 2015 and its demo from FinovateSpring 2015.
Socure
Socure uses a person’s existing online “fingerprint” (Facebook photos, email address, and phone number) to validate their identity. Because Socure sources the data from pre-existing information users to simply take a selfie to validate who they are.
In my discussion with Socure the company disclosed plans to extend its services to verify information for small and medium-sized businesses. Today, this process consists of manually scouring websites for data. Socure’s technology could speed up and streamline that process.
Check out Socure’s demo video from FinovateFall 2015
SplitIt (formerly PayItSimple)
SplitIt offers point of sale financing with no interest by placing a hold on the customer’s existing line of credit. The solution launched at FinovateFall 2014 under the name PayItSimple. Alon Feit, the company’s CEO, states that the new name is a better reflection of what the company does.
Since launching last year SplitIt has signed 100 merchant partners and is in negotiations for $14 million in funding. After the round closes the company plans to use the funding to further grow its merchant base, as well as its 15-person team.
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