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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on August 28, 2015
Categories: Azimo, Coinbase, Flint Mobile, Interxion, MicroStrategy, Prairie Cloudware, RedCloud, SizeUp, Xero

Around the web

Whiznews in Southeastern Ohio looks at a local deployment of SizeUp with the Zanesville-Muskingum Chamber of Commerce.

RedCloud names Katia Hilal as vice president of product. See RedCloud at FinovateFall 2015 in New York.

Omaha.com talks with Doug Parr, chief revenue officer for Prairie Cloudware, about the EMV transition this fall.

Azimo brings its money-transfer services to Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Coinbase enables U.K. and Spanish customers to buy bitcoin using 3D Secure credit and debit cards.

Interxion announces availability of Azure ExpressRoute in Amsterdam. Check out Interxion at FinDEVr 2015 in San Francisco.

Apple identifies Flint, MicroStrategy, and Xero as partners for the iPad-for-business effort.

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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SumUp Raises €10 Million in Round Led by BBVA Ventures, Groupon, American Express

By David Penn Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: Funding, SumUp

Investments totaling €10 million from BBVA Ventures, Groupon, American Express and others have boosted mPOS specialist SumUp’s total capital to more than €50 million.

The infusion comes on the heels of a June investment from Venture Incubator AG, a Swiss venture-capital firm. The combined investments, SumUp CEO Daniel Klein said, makes SumUp “better equipped than ever to execute our vision of empowering small businesses all over the world by radically simplifying payments.”

Specifically, SumUp plans to put the capital to use by:

Expanding into two more countries in 2015, growing the company’s footprint to 15 countries on three continents.
Introducing a new contactless version of its end-to-end payment platform as well as “supporting the development of new services.”

From left: Stefan Jeschonnek, CMO and co-founder; Florian Richter, U.K. country manager, demonstrated SumUp at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

Both development and new services have been on the agenda for SumUp in recent months. In May, SumUp released its Terminal Payment SDKs for iOS and Android and a suite of APIs that enabled third parties to connect to SumUp’s platform and terminals. According to the company, this made SumUp the “first truly open mPOS platform.” Also in May, SumUp expanded payment options for Swiss merchants by including payments from American Express.

SumUp’s technology enables merchants to accept credit and debit card payment via both smartphone and tablet. The solution relies on proprietary, end-to-end, EMV payment technology, a portable card reader, and an app available on both iOS and Android to enable small businesses to accept payments on-the-go. SumUp charges a flat 1.95% for both credit and debit transactions, and has no monthly fee.

SumUp demoed its cashless point-of-sale solution at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. The company was founded in August 2011 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Flybits

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek, Flybits

The Sneak Peek series looks at the innovators demoing live on stage at FinovateFall 2015. Be sure to pick up your tickets to our annual autumn conference, and we’ll see you in New York!

Flybits is the first context-as-a-service software platform. Develop better mobile apps, sooner, and for less. Get agile as you tailor your customer engagement strategy.

Features:

Flybits-enabled existing apps in 15 minutes
Location support is hardware agnostic
Non-developers can easily change app content and behavior

Why it’s great
The Flybits context-as-a-service platform has all the infrastructure needed to make your apps context-aware, so you can deliver fresh and personalized mobile experiences.

Presenters: Hossein Rahnama, Chief Product Officer, Founder; Jerry Rudisin, CEO

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: CellTrust

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: CellTrust, FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek

The Sneak Peek series looks at the innovators demoing live on stage at FinovateFall 2015. Be sure to pick up your tickets to our annual autumn conference, and we’ll see you in New York!

CellTrust SecureLine delivers a complete bring your own device (BYOD) solution with secure SMS and voice to empower the mobile workforce with communications that can be secured, traced and archived.

Features of SecureLine:

Keep personal and business communications separate with dual persona technology
Boost collaboration, increase response times and productivity
Archive mobile communications in support of compliance

Why it’s great
Don’t wait for your next security breach or compliance fine. Protect and transform your enterprise through secure and archived mobile communications with CellTrust SecureLine.

Presenters

Brian Panicko, SVP, Global Sales Strategy Panicko is responsible for leading CellTrust’s sales and business acquisition. Under Brian’s leadership since 2007, CellTrust’s customer base has exceeded 1,000 global organizations.
LinkedIn

Dragan Marceta, Director, Sales Engineering Marceta leads CellTrust’s technical support and sales engineering teams focusing on security and mobile device communication compliance.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Xignite

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek, Xignite

The Sneak Peek series looks at the innovators demoing live on stage at FinovateFall 2015. Be sure to pick up your tickets to our annual autumn conference, and we’ll see you in New York!

Named one of the ten coolest brands in banking, Xignite provides cloud-based financial data APIs to help fintech innovators deliver real-time and reference market data to their digital assets.

What it is

Xignite CloudStreaming is a zero-footprint streaming solution that enables implementation of the next generation of innovative financial applications.

Why it’s great
Xignite CloudStreaming lets you stream financial data to any device through a simple HTTP GET call.

Presenters

Stephane Dubois, CEO, Founder
Recently named to Institutional Investor’s Tech-50 list of financial visionaries and innovators, Stephane Dubois is a well-known thought leader and has been called “the godfather of fintech.”
LinkedIn

Anand Viswanathan, Developer
Anand spearheads developer efforts at Xignite and is the creator of Xignite Labs. Prior to Xignite, he held positions at Viagogo, Media Interface and Network Design Lab. He speaks Hindi and Tamil.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Adobe

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: Adobe, FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek

The Sneak Peek series looks at the innovators demoing live on stage at FinovateFall 2015. Be sure to pick up your tickets to our annual autumn conference, and we’ll see you in New York!

Adobe helps the financial services industry transform paper forms, documents, and their associated manual processes into consistent, compliant, connected customer experiences across multiple channels.

Features:

Extends form and document reach to smartphones
Integrates with Adobe Marketing Cloud analytics, targeting and email
Includes digital workflow and mobile worker app

Why it’s great
With Adobe Experience Manager Forms and the Adobe Marketing Cloud, financial institutions can easily make, manage, measure, and continually optimize their forms and documents.

Presenters

Christopher Young, Director, Financial Services Strategy
As director of industry strategy, Christopher Young leads a team that helps financial services clients develop best-in-class digital marketing strategies using Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions.
LinkedIn

Neal Wadhwani, Principal Solutions Consultant, Financial Services and Insurance
Neal is responsible for designing solutions and globally managing technical relationships with financial services and insurance clients to maximize digital experiences on mobile and desktop.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Socure

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek, Socure

The Sneak Peek series looks at the innovators demoing live on stage at FinovateFall 2015. Be sure to pick up your tickets to our annual autumn conference, and we’ll see you in New York!

Socure takes an innovative approach to identity verification by using online and social media data to enable financial institutions to confirm consumers’ identity.

Features of Socure:

Innovative Social Biometrics Platform(TM)
Blends facial recognition with social media and online data
Patented technology to fight fraud, reinforce KYC/CIP

Why it’s great
Socure is the only platform that blends facial recognition with social media and online data, using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to validate an identity in real time.

Presenters

Sunil Madhu, CEO, Co-founder
Madhu is a serial entrepreneur, with several successful transitions through IPO and acquisition. A security architect by profession, he has spent 20+ years innovating and implementing ideas for identity safeguards and access management.
LinkedIn

Johnny Ayers, SVP, Business Development; Co-founder
Ayers has worked at Socure since September of 2012.
LinkedIn

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 27, 2015
Categories: Adobe, Avoka, Betterment, CellTrust, DoubleNet Pay, Emailage, Flybits, FutureAdvisor, Markit, MaxMyInterest, Mint, Moven, PocketSmith, Socure, SumUp, Venmo, Wealthfront, Xignite, Yodlee

On Finovate.com

Check out the third installment of our FinovateFall 2015 Sneak Peek series:
- Flybits
- CellTrust
- Xignite
- Adobe
- Socure

“SumUp Raises €10 Million in Round Led by BBVA Ventures, Groupon, American Express”

Around the web

PocketSmith re-launches with new layout and design.

In its fiscal year 2015, Avoka signs record number of clients and experiences 70% year-on-year bookings growth.

Yodlee is accepting applicants for its upcoming Ynext Incubator class.

Markit acquires FX trade-processing specialist DealHug. See Markit at FinDEVr 2015 in San Francisco in October.

Emailage opens European data center.

After BlackRock’s acquisition of FutureAdvisor, ThinkAdvisor considers the fate of Wealthfront and Betterment.

Forbes looks at Mint, MaxMyInterest, Moven, and Venom in a discussion on the connection between mobile, messaging, and financial services.

Mainstream features a quote from founder of DoubleNet Pay, CEO Brian Cosgray, on the impact of debt on new retirees.

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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Finovate Debuts: WealthForge is a Private Placement Compliance Engine Wrapped in Technology

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 26, 2015
Categories: Finovate Debuts, WealthForge

WealthForge’s online platform provides an efficient way for companies to raise private capital. It seeks to make the process faster, cheaper, and more compliant.

At FinovateSpring 2015, WealthForge launched its Invest Button, technology that compliantly processes private placements, which companies can then incorporate into their website.

WealthForge vitals:

Founded 2011
Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia
Infographic below shows stats from the WealthForge platform:

Investor experience

After clicking the Invest Button, investors are routed to a white-labeled page hosted on WealthForge’s servers, which are fully encrypted and secure.

The investor, whether individual or institutional, fills in their desired investment amount, along with other information such as employment, accreditation, and suitability. To remain compliant, WealthForge stores investor information for up to seven years.

For every piece of investor information entered, WealthForge conducts third-party due diligence and bad-actor checks. Since WealthForge tracks investor keystrokes throughout the process, they ensure all necessary steps are taken and have visibility to any fields the investor may have failed to fill out or review.

For fund transfers, WealthForge supports:

ACH
Wire transfer
Check
Self-directed IRA transfer

Once financing is confirmed, the investor e-signs the multiple federal and state-required documents, which are customized for each deal. After all documents are signed, WealthForge’s team of experts begin compliance verification of each offering and issuer.

Compliance

FINRA and SEC regulations are a large part of WealthForge’s platform.

Instead of using technology to circumvent regulation, WealthForge embraces it by increasing engagement with regulators and compliance measures. The company has scaled its technology to deal with increased regulation, and undergoes audits twice a year, exceeding regulators’ guidelines.

WealthForge keeps all the compliance, tracking, legality, and regulation verification in the background. WealthForge co-founder Mat Dellorso says its technology acts as a buffer that saves the client and their investor from having to “see how the sausage is made.”

Check out WealthForge’s live demo from FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose.

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FinDEVr APIntelligence

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 26, 2015
Categories: Avoka, Credit Karma, FinDEVr APIntelligence, Intuit, Nymi, PayPal, Personal Capital, ReadyForZero, Venmo, Xero, Yodlee

Are you building new financial technology? Be sure to register soon for the only event exclusive for fintech developers, FinDEVr 2015, Oct 6-7 (fewer than 6 weeks away!) in San Francisco.

Developer news

Royal Bank of Scotland to host hackathon in partnership with Open Bank Project.

The latest from upcoming FinDEVr 2015 presenters

PayPal’s One Touch Instant Checkout platform is now available in 13 new markets.

Let’s Talk Payments looks at Venmo and its new group-payments feature.

Intuit to sell off Quicken with no plans to divest Mint or Mint Bills.

Yodlee cites innovations from PayPal, Credit Karma, Personal Capital, and ReadyForZero in its 7 Habits of Highly Successful Fintech Startups.

Alumni updates

Global News interviews Karl Martin, Nymi CEO and founder.

The Denver Post profiles Broomfield-based Avoka Technologies. See Avoka at FinovateFall 2015 in New York City in September.

The Unicorn Farm interviews Xero CEO Rod Drury.

CIO cites Avoka’s win of most innovative customer solution in Citi’s demo day in London.

Stay up to date on daily developments by following FinDEVr on Twitter.

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BlackRock Acquires Online Investment Adviser, FutureAdvisor

By David Penn Posted on August 26, 2015
Categories: FutureAdvisor

When the going gets tough in today’s wealth-management business, the tough acquire robo-advisers.

International risk- and investment-management titan BlackRock has agreed to acquire FutureAdvisor, the San Francisco-based online investment adviser founded in May 2010, for an undisclosed sum.

In an email to clients and customers Wednesday morning, FutureAdvisor co-founder and CEO Bo Lu singled out BlackRock’s retirement-planning tools, specifically BlackRock’s CoRI retirement indexes. Lu added that the merger will allow the company to “build out new features at an even faster clip,” and assured clients there would be no change in the relationship between clients and FutureAdvisor.

“Our brand, our culture, and our people will work to serve you and improve your digital experience every day, just as we did before the acquisition,” Lu said.

From left: CEO Bo Lu, founder, and Joe Cianciolo, VP of business development, demonstrated FutureAdvisor’s technology at FinovateFall 2013 in New York.

FutureAdvisor provides a few services, such as a basic portfolio review, for free. For investors who want the full suite of services, FutureAdvisor Premium charges a flat 0.5% of funds managed to handle everything from fund selection, based on criteria and goals set by the investor, to periodic portfolio rebalancing. And rather than being a solely automated solution, FutureAdvisor also provides licensed advisers to answer questions and explain concepts, as well as service personnel to help investors navigate the platform.

The merger comes as robo-advisers in general, and FutureAdvisor in specific, have been making headlines. FutureAdvisor reached the $600 million-under-management milestone in June, and took its total capital to more than $20 million in May, courtesy of a $15 million investment led by Canvas Venture Fund’s Rebecca Lynn. Earlier this summer, FutureAdvisor launched its online investment library, and was named a 2015 Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum.

Interestingly, FutureAdvisor came under takeover speculation in July, when an analyst at Seeking Alpha suggested that a merger between FutureAdvisor and market-data aggregator Yodlee (a fellow Finovate alum) was a good idea. Citing the company’s strategy of combining robo-advisory with human specialists, FutureAdvisor’s rapid growth, and the size of the average FutureAdvisor account of more than $150,000: “Can you say farm system?” the analyst wrote, “Are you seeing the fit potential?”

Headquartered in San Francisco, FutureAdvisor last appeared on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2013 in New York.

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What Do We Call PFM as it Becomes Part of Digital Banking?

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 26, 2015
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Personal Financial Management

The term PFM has gotten a bad rap. Clearly, Personal Financial Management is not a consumer-friendly term. You can’t use an acronym unless it’s ingrained in society (IRS, FBI, etc.). And stringing together three 3-syllable words to spell it out is too cumbersome (and doesn’t fit on a smartphone menu anyway).

So what do we call this thing formerly known as PFM? Today, I saw “money manager” used at America First Credit Union (an MX client). That’s a 56% reduction in syllables, but I fear it, and its longer sibling, digital money management, are still too generic to be meaningful for consumers. When you think about it, every single time you log in to your bank you are doing some type of “money management,” so that term doesn’t really call to mind the advanced feature set we in the industry have called PFM.

The best approach may be to simply not give it a name. PFM is really just additional features integrated into online or mobile banking. As those features become fully integrated, and relatively common, they become harder to single out with a unique term.

So here’s where I net out. Just between you and me, let’s keep calling it PFM within the industry (on our blog alone we’ve mentioned it in almost 500 posts). But when talking to consumers, let’s not create another confusing term. Especially since personal financial or money management is already an assumed benefit of digital banking.

Then, when looking to create more interest, use the classic marketing terms attached to “online” or “mobile” banking, for example:

Advanced online banking
Enhanced mobile banking
Do more with online banking
New-and-improved mobile banking
Features added to online banking
v2.0 mobile banking
Manage your money better with mobile banking

That still leaves the problem of what to call it on a menu, or in a tab, if you offer a stand-alone service. Outside of banking, I think the most common term today is Advanced as in Google’s Advanced Search. Or, if you are potentially going to charge a fee, Pro is commonly used. If that seems too specific, it could be Premium or Select. Even the old credit card standbys, Gold, Platinum or Black, could be used.

Bottom line: FIs should use descriptions that fit with their other branding. Here, we are going to stick with PFM, with the understanding that the term should not be used on your website.

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Opening graphic is from MX on the cover of its white paper on Digital Money Management.

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