AdviceGames Raises $570,000 from Ibuildings

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AdviceGames, the Netherlands-based company that gamifies personal financial management, announced last week it raised $570,000.

The investment comes from Ibuildings, a creator of software that facilitates online communication between businesses and customers. The funding will be used to increase the speed of its machine learning technology and build a solid foundation for international growth.

Since launching in 2013, AdviceGames has invested over $1.1 million to develop and build its machine learning platform.

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Tom Schenkenberg, founder of Ibuildings, will join AdviceGames as CTO.

AdviceGames will debut its newest technology this week at FinovateEurope 2015.

Alumni News– February 9, 2015

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgCredit Union Times reviews Malauzai Software’s report on the growing popularity of debit card on-off functionality.
  • Crain’s Chicago Business profiles Rippleshot.
  • Inside-it.ch: CREALOGIX leverages TouchID API to develop biometric fingerprint authentication app for mobile banking.
  • PYMNTS.com: MPD CEO Karen Webster interviews Bruce Lowthers, FIS EVP for North American Retail Payments.
  • CrowdFundBeat features Realty Mogul CEO Jilliene Helman.
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.

FinovateEurope Lands in London Tuesday

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We are excited to be in London again for the fifth annual FinovateEurope 2015. The event begins at 8:00 AM Tuesday, 11 February, at Old Billingsgate Market Hall and continues through 5:00 PM Wednesday, 12 February. If you still don’t have your ticket, pick one up today, because they’re almost gone.

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Here are a few last-minute reminders:

Presenters
We’ll showcase 70+ presenters over the course of the two-day show. Be sure to check them out beforehand to get a head start on networking opportunities.
Also, our Sneak Peek blog series provides more detail on select presenters.

When
On Tuesday, registration opens at 8:00 AM with continental breakfast served until opening remarks at 8:45 followed by the first demo at 9:00.
Here is the detailed agenda:
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Venue
We’re returning to the beautiful Old Billingsgate Market Hall, situated alongside the River Thames.
 
Mobile networking app

If you’re a registered attendee, download the mobile app to view the agenda, presenters, fellow attendees, and more:

Once you’ve downloaded it, search Finovate and select Join.

Have more questions? Check out our FAQ or email [email protected].

Fintech Fundings: $530 Million Raised First Week of February

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It was a big week for marketplace lenders with SoFi landing $200 million; CommonBond, $150 million (an undisclosed portion of that was commitment to purchase loans); Fundera, $12 million (debt). In addition, Chinese online lender U51 pulled in $50 million.
In total, 13 companies—including Finovate alum, SimplyTapp‘s $2.5 million—raised $533 million, which includes at least $12 million in debt.
Here are the deals from 31 January to 6 Feb 2015, in order of size:
Marketplace for student loan refinancing and other loans
Latest round: $200 million
Total raised: $766 million; $365 million equity, $401 million debt
Tags: lending, student loan, personal loan, underwriting, P2P, peer-to-peer, San Francisco, California
Source: Crunchbase
Student loan marketplace lender
Latest round: $150 million; an undisclosed portion of the round is a guarantee to fund loans originated on the platform
Total raised: $253.5 million
Tags: lending, education, student loan, refinance, investing, P2P, person-to-person, New York City
Source: Crunchbase
Indian mobile bill-pay and commerce platform 
Latest round: $80 million
Total raised: $116.5 million
Tags: mobile, bill payment, billing, rewards, offers, coupons, prepaid, wireless, topup, Mumbai, India
Source: FT Partners
Chinese alternative lender
Latest round: $50 million
Total raised: $50 million
Tags: lending, personal loans, underwriting, credit, China
Source: FT Partners
Mobile banking and payments platform for Latin America
Latest round: $19 million
Total raised: $39 million
Tags: mobile, online banking, payments, Miami, Florida
Source: Crunchbase
Archer (a.k.a. Market Street Advisors)
Investment management technology 
Latest round: $12.5 million
Total raised: $12.5 million
Tags: investing, enterprise, Edison, New Jersey
Source: FT Partners
Loan marketplace for small business loans
Latest round: $12 million (debt)
Total raised: $15.3 million; $3.3 million equity, $12 million debt
Tags: lending, small business, SMB, investing, debt crowdfunding, loans, New York City
Source: Crunchbase
Mobile receipt capture app
Latest round: $2.6 million
Total raised: $3.1 million
Tags: expense management, PFM, receipts, SMB, Barcelona, Spain
Source: Crunchbase
Cloud-based mobile payments
Latest round: $2.5 million
Total raised: $10.1 million
Tags: payments, mobile, SMB, POS, Austin, Texas, Finovate alum
Source: Finovate
Digital currency
Latest round: $2.3 million
Total raised: $2.3 million
Tags: cryptocurrency, payments, bitcoin, Paris, France
Source: FT Partners
Bitcoin security and authentication
Latest round: $850,000
Total raised: $950,000
Tags: security, bitcoin, authentication, cryptocurrency, Rochester, New York
Source: Crunchbase
ziftrCOIN digital currency
Latest round: $850,000
Total raised: $850,000
Tags: cyrptocurrency, digital currency, bitcoin, ecommerce, Milford, New Hampshire
Source: Crunchbase
Indian mobile wallet
Latest round: $240,000
Total raised: $240,000
Tags: mobile, payments, Bengaluru, India
Source: Crunchbase

Alumni News—February 6, 2015

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgCardFlight releases its mobile POS app, SwipeSimple 2.0.
  • Sky News reports Temasek is investigating a possible purchase of Misys.
  • The Observer features Ripple Labs in its look at the “race to replace bitcoin.”
  • Column on digital money accounting highlights, Mint, Venmo, and Coinbase.
  • Investopedia compares Motif Investing to investing with traditional exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
  • Forbes highlights Betterment, Wealthfront, FutureAdvisor, blooom, Motif Investing, and Personal Capital in a column on roboadvisors.
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.

Funding for E.U.-based Finovate Alums Totals $377 Million in 2014

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With FinovateEurope less than a week away, it’s a good time to review the results of 2014. In total, European-based alumni of Finovate raised $377 million. And 2015 is looking even better with two major fundings in January:

Here are the 2014 fundings by quarter:

Q1, 2014
Total: $180 Million
Q2, 2014
Total: $107 Million
Q3, 2014

Total: $21 Million

Q4, 2014
Total: $69 Million

Note: This total does not reflect funding raised by the 44 new-to-Finovate companies that will demo next week at FinovateEurope 2015.

** We used $1 million for Red Zebra’s “seven figure amount”

Payments Platform Mozido Adds $2.5 Million to SimplyTapp’s Series B Round

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Host Card Emulation company, SimplyTapp, announced a $2.5 million addition to this week’s most recent round, bringing its Series B total to $8.5 million and total cumulative funding to $10.1 million.

The Austin-based company announced the first round, which was furnished by Blue Sky Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, last November.

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The funding comes from mobile payments and rewards company, Mozido, which is also based in Texas.

SimplyTapp demonstrated at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014.

SixThirty Accelerator Deadline Extended to February 6

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SixThirty Accelerator is extending the deadline for its spring 2015 incubator class to Friday, February 6th.

SixThirty has played a role in the development of two Finovate alums: miiCard, which was a part of the Fall 2013 cohort, and Gremln, a participant of the Spring 2014 class.

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Co-founded by Jim McKelvey, SixThirty invests up to $100,000 per selected company, for a total of $800,000 a year in late seed-stage, financial startups. Through the four-month program, SixThirty provides companies with expert mentorships and the opportunity to network and connect with the region’s FI ecosystem, which includes MasterCard, Wells Fargo, and Scottrade.
The spring 2015 cohort will be announced at the end of February.

Alumni News—February 5, 2015

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgQuisk electronic payment system to launch in Jamaica. Come see Quisk at FinovateEurope next week.
  • AM560 interviews Lendio CEO Brock Blake on alternative lending.
  • On Finovate.com: “Funding for E.U.-based Finovate Alums Totals $377 Million in 2014″
  • European Commission’s Promoting Enterprise blog spotlights Nuno Da Cruz Sebastiao of Feedzai.
  • Argent Credit Union hires Insuritas to open and manage turnkey insurance agency.
  • Coinbase to support Google Now notifications.
  • CoinJar launches iOS bitcoin payments app, CoinJar Touch, ahead of its FinovateEurope 2015 debut next week.
  • SixThirty Accelerator deadline extended to February 6.
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.

FinovateEurope 2015: Come for the Demos, Stay for the Networking

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We got the word on Monday: FinovateEurope 2015 will be the largest Finovate conference in Europe to date.

This is a great way to start the year. And we’re hoping you’ll join us in London on February 10 and 11 to enjoy our first event of 2015. We’re headed toward a sold-out show, so get your tickets before they’re gone. 

Live demos are Finovate’s stock-in-trade. But the high-quality networking opportunities are not to be overlooked. And with 500 minutes of demos and an equal amount of time dedicated to high-quality networking, we think we’ve got the balance just right.
Here’s a look at the kind of folks you’ll be rubbing elbows with at FinovateEurope 2015 this year.
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FinovateEurope tends to have a particularly international flavor. And this year’s conference is no exception. Below is a map that shows where each of our 70 presenters is headquartered (click to enlarge). 
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Find out more about this year’s presenting companies here, or check out our Sneak Peek Preview series below.

FinovateEurope 2015 is sponsored by The Bancorp, iBe, Financial Technology Partners, KPMG LLP, Life.SREDA.

Alumni News– February 4, 2015

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgIntelligentHQ features TransferWise and CurrencyFair in its look at the “currency transfer revolution.”
  • ayondo hires Peg Reed as Senior Vice President of Business Development.
  • School of Bookkeeping reviews Kashoo Simple Cloud Accounting.
  • Fintech Monthly focuses on recent fintech fundraising including recent investment in TransferWise.
  • ProfitStars adds billpay, invoice management, and mobile banking functionality to its ICBA Preferred Service Provider program.
  • Temenos teams up with Polytech Ventures to launch the first Swiss fintech incubator.
  • Expensify adds 4,000 new customers in 2014, including  the BBB, ZenDesk, and Yahoo!  
  • Forbes features Currency Cloud’s cross border payment API.
  • Kony’s partners now offering apps on its business mobile app marketplace.
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.

FinovateEurope 2015 Sneak Peek: Part 7

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FinovateEurope is less than a week away, and we’ve already surpassed last year’s record-breaking attendance. Soon, we’ll be sitting inOld Billingsgate Market Hall in London, enjoying tea while enjoying the first day of live demos at FinovateEurope.

Want to be a part of the largest FinovateEurope crowd ever? Get your ticket soon before it’s sold out.

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In this final post of our Sneak Peek series, we’re featuring Aire, Akamai Technologies, LifePay, MoneyHub, mydesq, Onlinepay.comSedicii, and Taulia. You can see all the posts here:


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Aire is an alternate credit score for people. Our mission is to help thin-file customers who qualify for essential financial products via this new score.

Features

    • Rescore credit rejections to lend to 15%+ more customers
    • Improve overall cost of acquisition
    • Minimal change to existing risk profile

Why it’s great
Aire can help turn a No to a Yes.

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Presenters

Aneesh Varma, Co-founder
Varma is a serial entrepreneur with a prior startup in enterprise retail tech, he started off in consumer finance at JPMorgan. He’s an engineer with a background in predictive algorithms quantitative finance.
LinkedIn

 

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Jon Bundy, Co-founder
With 14 years across financial technology, Bundy has been building risk and data products with an additional expertise in fraud detection and AML as well. He was previously at RBS, Searchspace and Symbian.
LinkedIn

 


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Akamai Technologies is a leading provider of cloud security services, helping banks provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere.

Features

    • Focus on the source of the request
    • Determine the extent to which that source has sent malicious requests in the past
    • Make predictions regarding how much that source can be trusted in the future

Why it’s great
The Akamai Client Reputation service provides financial institutions the ability to forecast intent and protect applications against web attacks.

Presenters

Ory Segal, Director of Threat Research
LinkedIn

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Nick Coleman (pictured), Web Security Specialist

 

 


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LifePay is an mPOS EMV chip-and-pin solution, allowing SMEs to accept payments by plastic cards via smartphones, and get LifePay Stand and overall sales analytics.

Features

    • LifePay-mPOS chip & pin is a start-point of LifePay ecosystem
    • LifePay offers the LifePay Stand solution with a portable printer and cashbox as a next-gen cash register.
    • Merchant’s portal

Why it’s great
LifePay – inspiring Asia


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MoneyHub puts the user at the center of their financial universe and helps them visualize their future. MoneyHub’s Ecosystem will empower people to connect, share data and collaborate with their financial advisers and institutions like never before.

Why it’s great
Your customers are already using MoneyHub, why not see how you can use it with them?

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Presenters

Toby Hughes, CEO MoneyHub
Hughes, Founder and CEO of MoneyHub, is an entrepreneur with more than 10 years of digital marketing and technological innovation experience in financial services.
LinkedIn

 

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Dave Tonge, CTO
Tonge, CTO at MoneyHub, has a strong technical skill-set and entrepreneurial instincts. Dave specializes in innovative business strategy and agile software architecture.
LinkedIn

 


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mydesq is an iPad-based workbench which combines products, clients, accounts and analytics providing wealth managers the information advantage to work smarter.

Features

    • Work from anywhere, anytime
    • Simplify work
    • Increase Sales & Service

Why it’s great
It revolutionizes and simplifies the way wealth managers work.

Presenter

Milan Vora, CEO & Founder
LinkedIn


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onlinepay.com is a mobile wallet for students. Share, buy and top up!

Features

    • Share your money with your friends
    • Make purchases directly from your mobile phone
    • Top up your gaming accounts  

Why it’s great
onlinepay.com is a mobile wallet, designed for fun and sharing money, convenient mobile shopping and top up of gaming and trading accounts.

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Presenters

Vladimir Kovalevskiy, Director
Kovalevskiy has in-depth experience in the payment and e-commerce fields in Russia and abroad, including projects related to mobile payments.
LinkedIn

 

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Anfisa Chernaya, Marketing Manager
Chernaya is working in marketing field for last 5 years.
LinkedIn

 


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Sedicii eliminates the exposure (storage and transmission) of private data required to authenticate.

Features

    • Sedicii Payments Card Authentication
    • Sedicii Mobile Authentication
    • Sedicii Contact Centre Authentication

Why it’s great
It is innovative technology for more secure authentication and identity verification.

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Presenters

Rob Leslie, CEO
Leslie’s track record includes part of the original management team to establish/grow Dell Japan to $300M TO in 4 years. Leslie also co-founded PTS Japan, sold in 2000, having achieved $33M valuation in 5 years.
LinkedIn

 

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Richard Coady, Commercial Director
Coady has held senior positions with BT, WBT Systems, Prometric. He will work towards the implementation of the International Sales strategy for the Sedicii portfolio of authentication applications.
LinkedIn

 


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Taulia transforms supply chains, enabling organizations to create a healthy relationship between suppliers and buyers.

Features

    • Sets up a SaaS network between a buyer and all its suppliers with eInvoicing
    • Uses network to offer all suppliers an opportunity to get paid early using third-party finance
    • Preserves buyer capital

Why it’s great
Taulia solves the buyer/supplier payment dilemma.

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Presenters

Matthew Stammers, European Marketing Director
Member of the European management team with responsibility for launching Taulia in Europe. Previously worked for Bottomline Technologies and Capita and holds a Henley MBA.
LinkedIn

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Christophe Juvanon, European Solutions Consulting Director
Key member of Taulia’s European team responsible for understanding customer’s requirements and solution fit. Previously employed by OpenText and DHL. Holds a post-grad degree from Napier University.
LinkedIn


 

That concludes our Sneak Peek series. You can catch all 70+ companies as they demo live at FinovateEurope on February 10 and 11. Pick up your ticket here.

Questions? Check out our FAQ.