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Fintech Fundings: 17 Companies Raise $100 Million Week Ending Oct 17

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 17, 2014
Categories: Funding

You can tell the market is frenzied when fintech companies raise only $101 million this week. That still works out to a $5+ billion annual run rate, which isn’t too shabby. Much of the money went into a Series-D to India’s Financial Software Systems, a 23-year old fintech veteran.

In terms of startups, the big winner this week was Finovate alum, Quantopian, a high-tech investing play that debuted at FinovateSpring 2013 (see post for more info). But Technisys ($13 million) and Germany’s Orderbird ($10 million) were not far behind.

In addition, fintech accelerator SixThirty announced its latest investments: $100,000 each to Davo Technologies, MyMoneyButler, PFTIR and New Constructs (see below for details).

Here are the 17 deals in order of magnitude (10 Oct through 17 Oct):

Financial Software Systems (FSS)

Payments technology

Latest round: $57 million

Total raised: Unknown (though the latest round is referred to as “Series D”)

Tags: Chennai, India

Source: Crunchbase

Quantopian

Algorithmic trading platform

Latest round: $15 million

Total raised: $23.8 million

Tags: Investing, analytics, hedge fund, trading, Boston, Massachusetts, Finovate alum

Source: Finovate

Technisys

Latin American digital banking technology

Latest round: $13 million

Total raised: $14 million

Tags: Mobile, Miami, Florida

Source: Wall Street Journal

Orderbird

Mobile POS

Latest round: $10 million

Total raised: $14 million

Tags: Mobile, point of sale, iPad, Berlin, Germany

Source: Crunchbase

Kubo Financiero

Mexican P2P microfinance

Latest round: $1.7 million

Total raised: $1.8 million

Tags: Credit, lending, microfinance, P2P, Mexico

Source: Crunchbase

AlphaPoint

Digital currency exchange

Latest round: $1.4 million

Total raised: $1.4 million

Tags: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NYC, New York

Source: Crunchbase

Sign2Pay

Mobile payments

Latest round: $760,000

Total raised: $760,000

Tags: Payments, Netherlands

Source: Crunchbase

Dr Wealth

Asian financial planning and advice

Latest round: $640,000

Total raised: $640,000

Tags: Wealth management, PFM, personal finance, investment management, Singapore

Source: Crunchbase

Growish

Italian collaborative payments company

Latest round: $500,000

Total raised: $500,000

Tags: Payments, mobile, P2P, group payments, Milan, Italy

Source: FT Partners

TrueAccord

Automated debt recovery technology

Latest round: $250,000

Totals raised: $5.3 million

Tags: Credit, collections, debt, lending, San Francisco

Source: Crunchbase

bitFlyer

Japanese bitcoin exchange
Latest round: $236,000

Total raised: $236,000

Tags: Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, Japan

Source: Crunchbase

Davo Technologies

Sales tax remittances and other business payments

Latest round: $100,000

Total raised: $100,000

Tags: SMB, accounts payable, payments, SixThirty, Montclair, New Jersey

Source: Crunchbase

MyMoneyButler

Reduce investment management fees

Latest round: $100,000

Total raised: $100,000

Tags: Investing, fees, SixThirty, Palo Alto, California

Source: Crunchbase

PFTIR (Public Funds Investment Tracking and Reporting)

Investment reporting technology

Latest round: $100,000
Total raised: $100,000

Tags: Analytics, investing, enterprise, SIxThirty, Chesterfield, Missouri

Source: FT Partners

New Constructs
Investment research

Latest round: $100,000
Total raised: $100,000

Tags: Investing, research, equities, SIxThirty, Brentwood, Tennessee

Source: FT Partners

H3 Financial Services

Lending and membership technology

Latest round: Undisclosed

Total raised: Unknown

Tags: Aliso Viejo, California

Source: Crunchbase

i-Invested
Crowdfunding platform

Latest round: Undisclosed

Total raised: Unknown

Tags: P2P, lending, credit, investing, UK

Source: Crunchbase

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Finovate Debuts: NopSec

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 17, 2014
Categories: FinovateFall 2014, Nopsec

Finovate Debuts is a blog series to introduce companies who demonstrated for the first time on the Finovate stage. Today’s feature is NopSec, which demonstrated its Unified VRM system at FinovateFall 2014.

NopSec

NopSec is focused on making the digital world a safer place. For banks, this means getting a handle on cyber security. If you’re a bank with 60,000 hosts under management, with thousands of security vulnerabilities, you have two major issues. First, you need to identify the vulnerabilities, and second, you need to know how to fix them.

With so much much information to sort through to determine and prioritize what needs to be fixed, this can be time consuming. This is where NopSec comes in. Its SaaS-based Unified VRM provides a solution for IT professionals to manage security threats. Using Big Data, it generates a prioritized list of what security issues need to be addressed, and how to address them.

The stats

Founded in 2009
Headquartered in New York
Works with infrastructure both on premises and in the cloud

The experience

The NopSec Unified VRM system helps bank security experts sort through the massive amount of data about security threats, and suggests actions to protect against the threats. Its holistic approach on security can be broken down into four steps:

Identify threats
Explore details
Discover solutions
Create reports

Step 1: Identify threats

The first step is to identify specific vulnerabilities. The dashboard below provides an overall picture of security risk and vulnerability that is easily digestible for everyone from the technical security professional to the CIO. It is divided into modules that correspond to different threats– external and internal.

Step 2: Explore details

Security analysts can drill down further into vulnerabilities by searching and filtering. The case below shows results filtered by “Top Exploited.” Other filters, listed on the left-hand side in the graphic below, include criteria for geographic location, available patches, top trends, etc.

Once experts find the individual threats that interest them, they can view a summary description of each case. The graphs along the top provide an overall view of the risk factor, operating system, and location of each threat that matches the search criteria.

Step 3: Discover solutions

Identifying and understanding the security threats is only part of the equation. The crucial piece is solving the vulnerabilities. To do this, Unified VRM prioritizes the most dangerous and relevant threats by ranking them by importance.

Remediation recommendations are listed next to each vulnerability, along with the number of assets it affects. In the example below, the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities affect 134 assets, so it is ranked as the number one issue to fix. Dividing the bank’s security into manageable pieces helps security professionals know what to focus on.

In addition to simply advising remediation, the platform has a social aspect that allows for team collaboration. Users just select others they would like to involve in the conversation, and everyone has the ability to comment on the solution.

Step 4: Communicate via reports

To communicate issues and progress with everyone from executives to other technical experts, NopSec provides a reporting tool. It offers four options that tailor the information in the report to the appropriate level for different intended audiences:

Executive, for a high level status view
Technical, for a more detailed view with technical specifications
Full, for a complete view
Customized, for an overview mixed with details

Benefit to banks

The largest benefit NopSec brings to banks is the ability to proactively secure their systems. By identifying and prioritizing major security threats that affect hundreds of assets, banks’ technical teams can spend more time solving those issues, and less time searching for the issues.

Additionally, the Unified VRM system takes the institution’s security a step above what government regulations require, since they are often times too generic and not applicable to every environment.

Check out NopSec’s live demo of Unified VRM at FinovateFall 2014.

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Quantopian Raises $15 Million, Launches Crowdsourced Hedge Fund

By David Penn Posted on October 17, 2014
Categories: Quantopian

Two big announcements from algorithmic trading and investing platform Quantopian are reminding us that there is more than one way to “robo-invest.”

First up is the $15 million the company raised in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors Khosla Ventures, Spark Capital, and Wicklow Capital also participated. CEO and Founder John Fawcett said that the capital will support further product development and potential expansion.

The investment takes Quantopian’s total capital to $23.8 million.

It’s hard to upstage a $15 million investment. But Quantopian’s second announcement of the week – its decision to launch a hedge fund driven by the investing algorithms of the platform’s best and brightest – may prove to be a more important development for the longer-term future of the company.

The Quantopian Managers Program will provide top-performing quant investors with trading capital. Users of the platform have been able to live trade their algorithms since the beginning of the year, and this latest initiative will give Quantopian’s most talented developer-investors the opportunity to benefit even further from their work.

Those applying for the program will need a six-month minimum track record on the platform. Quantopian hopes to invest up to $1 million in each of the selected algorithms, with the developers earning a share of the investment returns.

Quantopian was named one of America’s Most Promising Companies for 2014 by Forbes, one of five Finovate alums to make this year’s list. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Quantopian demonstrated its Live Trading platform at FinovateSpring 2013 in San Francisco.

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Alumni News– October 17, 2014

By David Penn Posted on October 17, 2014
Categories: Emida, Google Cloud Platform, MasterCard, Nymi, Patch of Land, Quantopian, SeedInvest

Patch of Land turns to SeedInvest in public fundraising effort for its seed round.

Quantopian raises $15 million in Series B round; launches crowdsourced hedge fund.

MasterCard teams up with Zwipe to launch credit card with fingerprint-based authentication.

Arroweye Solutions increases payment card security against hacking threats.

Emida partners with Defense Mobile to distribute its mobile solutions through Emida’s network of distributors.

BlogTO looks inside the offices of Nymi during an open house.

Google Cloud Platform launches simpler billing.

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: eSignLive by Silanis

By David Penn Posted on October 16, 2014
Categories: Silanis Technology

Finovate Debuts is a blog series to introduce new Finovate alums. Today’s feature is Silanis, which demoed eSignLive Use Your Own Device at FinovateFall 2014.

eSignLive Use Your Own Device by Silanis

Silanis is one of the biggest service providers in the banking and lending e-signature market. Banks, credit providers, insurers, and government agencies use the company’s electronic signature platform to the tune of more than 600 million documents processed annually.

The latest innovation from Silanis, eSignLive Use Your Own Device, turns smartphones into signature capture devices without requiring an app download or expensive in-branch hardware. The technology “solves the final barrier” of transactions that demand a full, handwritten signature, according to Silanis, and enables financial institutions to deliver the same kind of customer experience that retailers offer.

The Stats

Founded in March 1992

Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Tommy Petrogiannis is CEO and Co-Founder

100 employees

Processes more than 600 million documents a year

Customers include four of the top 10 banks in North America, eight of the top 15 insurers, and the U.S. Army

Named Leader in Customer Satisfaction by enterprise review site, G2 Crowd in 2013 and 2014

Won IBM Beacon Award for Best Industry Solution for Banking in 2013

Launched eSignLive Use Your Own Device in September 2014

The Story

Silanis specializes in providing electronic signature services – and their client list is impressive. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been using the platform since 1997. GMAC went paperless with its global operations in 2001 courtesy of the e-signature platform from Silanis. And just one of the company’s clients, a “top 5 US bank” with more than $300 billion in assets reports processing more than 35,000 e-sign transactions every day since deploying the technology at all 3,000 retail branches in 2011.

This has meant:

An 80% reduction in document handling costs (savings in the millions of dollars)

A 90% reduction in loan exceptions

More than 90,000 hours of bankers’ time reallocated toward increasing loan sales

The bank also reported that the Enterprise edition of eSignLive helped them exceed compliance regulations, make back office operations manuals obsolete, and improve the overall banking experience for their customers.

Still, there has been a region of the e-signature world that has eluded Silanis up until recently. For those transactions that require a full, handwritten signature, the options for many institutions have been bleak. Typically, there is little alternative other than to require customers to go to a brick and mortar location, even though the application started online. Proprietary e-signature hardware is expensive, often prohibitively so for smaller community FIs.

The Innovation

Silanis solves both the multi-channel and cost issues by turning the customer’s own smartphone into a signature-capture solution. The e-signatures created by this “operating system agnostic” Use Your Own Device approach are legally-enforceable transactions with an audit trail and “signing ceremony” captured, as well. Authentication and delivery to the back end for processing are fully integrated. There is no need to buy expensive e-signature hardware and no apps for consumers to download.

With eSignLive, the Holy Grail of 100% remote account opening is now possible, according to Silanis. It is ironic that the most fundamental of banking services – customer onboarding – has been the most resistant to technology innovation. By focusing on the issue of the handwritten signature requirement, Silanis directly targets one of the main reasons for this particular pain point.

From the user’s perspective, opening an account with the technology is straightforward. Signees access the platform from a browser, rather than downloading an app. After completing an electronic disclosures and signatures consent document, the customer fills out the form as she would ordinarily.

The technology recognizes if the applicant is using a touchscreen device. If not, when it’s time to sign, a gold “Sign with your mobile phone” button appears below the signature capture field. Click here and an email or SMS message is sent to the applicant with instructions on how to complete the transaction. The applicant opens the email or SMS on the touchscreen device, clicks on the link provided, and then traces her signature with a finger or stylus in the signature field. Click “Continue” and the applicant’s hand-drawn signature is added virtually to the document.

Once the user confirms that everything is accurate, the document is sent to the FI’s processing. Applicants can download and print the document for their own records.

For the FI, eSignLive provides cost-savings from fewer errors and reduced document handling, costs of scanning, faxing, couriers, and postage.

Additionally, the technology also gives FIs a number of valuable customer insights, ranging from where customers complete transactions,
where they are dropping out, and how to selectively market different programs to their customer base.

eSignLive’s Use Your Own Device is available on the Integrated and Enterprise editions. Both are on-premises deployments rather than solely SaaS, and include additional features such as advanced forms, reports, and dashboards; branding customization; and, in the case of Enterprise, a completely customizable GUI, workflow and advanced authentication.

The Future

What should we look forward to when it comes to Silanis? With the launch of eSignLive in September, new deployments are at the top of the list. And 2014 already has been a good year in this regard: the company launched a new partnership with AgencyPort Software in October, teamed up with loan management software specialist Calyx Software in August, and has been providing e-Signature services for Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) since the beginning of the year.

Even more worth watching may be the company’s theory that technologies like this will enable FIs to become truly “virtual banks”, 100% divorced from the brick-and-mortar branch. But to the extent that eSignLive Use Your Own Device, makes on boarding new customers an easy and seamless process, the technology may be just as liberating for “non-virtual” FIs as it promises to be for those banks trying to go branchless.

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Alumni News– October 16, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 16, 2014
Categories: Behalf, Betterment, Jumio, Lending Club, Motif Investing, PhotoPay, Quantopian, ReadyForZero

Fidelity to offer Betterment to 3,000 financial advisers who use its institutional wealth services division.

Lending Club named winner of The Economist’s annual Innovation Awards in the consumer products category.

TechCrunch reports: Sequoia-Backed Behalf Buys Stuff For Small Businesses Looking To Grow.

ReadyForZero PLUS Credit now shows credit scoring factors.

FT column on technology and banking features PhotoPay.

Pando Daily takes a look at Quantopian’s plan to launch a hedge fund.

Jumio teams up with Ribbit.me to build ID verification process for RibbitRewards marketplace.

Motif Investing iOS app adds account access with Apple TouchID.

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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Alumni News– October 15, 2014

By David Penn Posted on October 15, 2014
Categories: Betterment, Handpoint, Interactions, Kony Solutions, Silanis Technology, Spreedly

PYMNTS: Karen Webster interviews Spreedly CEO Justin Benson.

Finovate alums dominate alternative lending section of Bplans’ “35 Great Ways to Fund a Small Business.”

Check out our latest CEO Interview: Mike Iacobucci of Interactions.

Betterment launches Betterment Institutional to bring its technology to registered investment advisors.

G2 Crowd Gridscape at Dreamforce ’14 shows eSignLive by Silanis earning highest customer satisfaction rating.

Kony receives Global Information Security Certifications for Enterprise Mobility Solutions.

Iceland’s Snorrason acquires Handpoint merchant portfolio.

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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Banks Gear Up (or not) for Upcoming Apple Pay Release

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: Apple, Mobile Payments

If all goes well, some time within the next week Apple Pay will be up and running. Short-term it won’t cause a ripple in market share or consumer behavior (see previous post), but long-term it is likely to be seen as an important mobile-payments milestone.

Regardless, I look forward to using it. But with only a couple contactless terminals in my usual Seattle haunts, I guess I’ll be buying lots of coffee at Peet’s and Tully’s while I test it.

But I digress.

The subject for today is what banks are and aren’t doing to ride on Apple’s mobile coattails. There has been little FI marketing so far, other than PayPal’s NY Times full-pager poking fun at it (15 Sep 2014, see inset). And some media buys from Visa and MasterCard.

Eleven financial institutions were named on 9 Sep 2014 at the official launch of Apple Pay: Six major launch partners listed below and five “coming soon” issuers (see note 1).

The big six have been almost silent since the first week when four of the six issued press releases, emailed customers (note 2) and/or posted promos on their websites.

Issuers may now be gearing up their marketing machines, which were caught relatively unaware last month, due to Apple-prescribed secrecy, for a pre-holiday Apple Pay push. However, I would not be surprised if major issuers, who’ve already seen contactless card-usage fizzle, take a wait-and-see approach for the remainder of 2014.

In any event, it will be interesting to watch.

_________________________________

Apple Pay FI launch partner marketing to date
_________________________________

American Express
   Press release: No
   Email: None reported
   Website promotion: None reported
   Website site search: Nothing listed

Bank of America
   Press release: No
   Email: One reported by The Financial Brand (link) though I did not receive it
   Website promotion: Nothing now, but promo reported at launch by Jim Marous in The Financial Brand
   Website site search: Links to landing page (link)

Capital One
   Press release: link
   Email: One sent to my consumer account (12 Sep 2014)
   Website promotion: None reported
   Website site search: Nothing

Chase
   Press release: Quoted in Apple’s official release (link)
   Email: One reported by MediaLogic (link) though I did not receive it
   Website promotion: Nothing now, but promo reported at launch by The Financial Brand
   Website site search: Nothing

Citibank
   Press release: link
   Email: None reported
   Website promotion: Nothing now, but promo reported at launch by The Financial Brand
   Website site search: Nothing

Wells Fargo
   Press release: link
   Email: Two sent to my consumer account (11 Sep and 19 Sep 2014)
   Website promotion: Nothing now, but promo reported at launch by The Financial Brand

Website site search: Nothing

______________________________

Second wave issuers
______________________________

Perhaps because they are smaller and must try harder, three of the six next-wave Apple Pay issuers (note 1) have promos running on their websites today:

Barclaycard homepage (one of three promos in rotation)

PNC Bank homepage (in lower left corner)

US Bank homepage (one of three promos in rotation)

———————

Notes:
1. The five other issuers mentioned at the Apple launch were: Barclays, Navy Federal Credit Union, PNC, US Bank, USAA. Yesterday, Arvest Bank announced it was supporting the system as well.
2. Despite having 10 card accounts (four business and six personal) across the six launch partners, I have received emails only from two (Wells Fargo on 11 & 19 Sep 2014 and Capital One on 12 Sep 2014).

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CEO Interview: Mike Iacobucci of Interactions

By David Penn Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: CEO Interview, Interactions

For many in attendance at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose watching the Interactions demo, the “Aha!” moment came when the virtual agent began speaking flawless Spanish.

The demo was already impressive, with murmurs of appreciation from the audience as the seamless call and response back and forth between the presenter and the Interactions virtual agent made believers of everyone in the room.

But the Spanish might have been the breaking point, that moment when technology seemed to do that thing that the great Arthur Clarke insisted it could always do: become indistinguishable from magic.

Magical as the technology may seem, Interactions‘ virtual agent technology is far from magic. Rather, it is the result of a patent-pending technology that succeeds where other virtual technologies, including Apple’s Siri, have struggled.

Interactions technology has been deployed in industries ranging from retail to hospitality to healthcare, and include Fortune 500 financial services corporations. The company, founded ten years ago, is headquartered in Franklin, Massachusetts, and includes Softbank Capital, North Hill Ventures, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Sigma Partners, Prime Ventures, and Updata Partners among its investors.

We talked with Interactions President and CEO Mike Iacobucci about his company’s technology, how it came to be, and the ways it can be put to use to save money, improve efficiencies, and help improve the customer/client experience.

Finovate: Interactions is a two-time Best of Show award winner. What is it about Interactions that draws such a positive response?

Mike Iacobucci: There are two reasons our demo was impactful: first, because it was a live demo and second, because our technology works flawlessly.

We’ve all used an automated system in the past, be it an IVR when calling for customer care or Siri on an iPhone. And we know from these experiences that they’re far from perfect technologies. Many of us have seen the replays of Microsoft’s live speech-recognition failures during keynotes in 2006 and 2012.

The other reason is because our technology appeals so much to the audience as consumers. Not only do we have a cool technology. It also addresses a serious problem that people know all too well – that a five-minute customer-service call can raise our blood pressure more than our teenage children.

Our technology makes contacting customer service a value-added experience, and that innovation makes our presentation even more exciting.

Finovate: What has Interactions been working on since FinovateSpring in April?

Iacobucci: Interactions is working to expand our product portfolio by bringing enhanced human-like text and speech-based conversations to every channel and device. Our services are rooted in customer care, but we’re moving into more revenue-generating areas like marketing and sales.

We’re rapidly expanding into Asia and delivering customer implementations in newer channels like mobile chat and proactive messaging.

Finovate: What makes Interactions’ “Adaptive-Understanding (TM) technology” different from other voice-automation technologies?

Iacobucci: Speech recognition averages 75% accuracy with simple, open-ended prompts in the best conditions, which means that it’s going to fail for consumers in at least one out of every four attempts. Comparatively, our patented Adaptve-Understanding technology performs with 95+% accuracy on simple to complex open-ended prompts, which really changes the game.

Our technology focuses on how computer and human intelligence can work together to achieve a desired outcome. We always use automated speech recognition to apply business rules. When needed in small doses, we supplement with our Human Assisted Understanding capability to leverage a trained analyst’s natural proficiency at noise discrimination and interpretation.

In short, it’s automation with a human touch. And we’ve accomplished this and made it scale for very large multinational enterprises.

Finovate: Are there things that a virtual assistant does better than a live human customer service representative? Do you see this changing as VA technology becomes more sophisticated?

Iacobucci: Absolutely. Customer service representatives are great at handling unique situations, troubleshooting complex issues, sales inquiries, and retention calls. However, there’s nothing value-added by having customer service representatives handle data-collection processes. For example, we can fully automate a loan application. It’s a lengthy process, but for us, it’s just capturing a few dozen fields of data. Nothing we can’t handle. And by automating these transactions, the savings are incredible.

When your virtual assistant is handling all of these data-collection transactions successfully, your agents can then spend more time with the call-types best handled by people. And that improves agents’ job satisfaction and retention rates. And, it keeps them more engaged.

Additionally, a virtual assistant is much more secure than a live agent, and collecting private information is an area where we excel. Moreover, we’re consistent, and this is extremely relevant to the financial services sector. The virtual assistant engages in a consistent manner from conversation to conversation, and if anything needs to be read back word for word, our solutions are a much safer bet than a live agent.

Finovate: Two years ago in an interview with the Boston Business Journal, you hinted at an initial public offering. Is that still under consideration?

Iacobucci: We have no specific plans for a public offering. The company has the characteristics of a company that can be an innovative institution to a large market.

Finovate: What is the clim
ate like in Boston for fintech innovation? How does it compare to that of Silicon Valley?

Iacobucci: In many ways, Boston and Silicon Valley are extremely similar. With an incredible amount of talent pouring in from the top institutions in the country and an entrepreneurial spirit rivaled by few other cities, Boston is an extremely inviting climate for fintech innovation.

This is only magnified by a strong presence in venture capital as well as progressive banking and financial institutions like Fidelity, State Street, and Putnam Investments. Additionally, there is a highly concentrated and rapidly growing focus on speech recognition, as seen by recent investments in Boston from Amazon. Google, Nuance, and Interactions.

Finovate: What can we expect from Interactions in the coming months?

Iacobucci: We’re looking to be a broad provider of services to the market beyond the customer care market. We want to leverage our platform to reach other market segments and other regions in the world where speech technology is otherwise inefficient or incapable.

We’ve created interactive systems in both speech and text that can foster the types of conversations that were never thought possible with automation, and with our technology, our potential applications are limitless.

Learn more about Interactions. Watch their Best of Show winning live demo from FinovateSpring 2014 here.

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CEO Interview: Mike Iacobucci of Interactions

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: CEO Interview, Interactions

For many in attendance at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose watching the Interactions demo, the “Aha!” moment came when the virtual agent began speaking flawless Spanish.

But the Spanish might have been the breaking point, that moment when technology seemed to do that thing that the great Arthur Clarke insisted it could always do: become indistinguishable from magic.

Finovate: Interactions is a two-time Best of Show award winner. What is it about Interactions that draws such a positive response?

Mike Iacobucci: There are two reasons our demo was impactful: first, because it was a live demo and second, because our technology works flawlessly.

Our technology makes contacting customer service a value-added experience, and that innovation makes our presentation even more exciting.

Finovate: What has Interactions been working on since FinovateSpring in April?

We’re rapidly expanding into Asia and delivering customer implementations in newer channels like mobile chat and proactive messaging.

Finovate: What makes Interactions’ “Adaptive-Understanding (TM) technology” different from other voice-automation technologies?

In short, it’s automation with a human touch. And we’ve accomplished this and made it scale for very large multinational enterprises.

Finovate: Are there things that a virtual assistant does better than a live human customer service representative? Do you see this changing as VA technology becomes more sophisticated?

Finovate: Two years ago in an interview with the Boston Business Journal, you hinted at an initial public offering. Is that still under consideration?

Iacobucci: We have no specific plans for a public offering. The company has the characteristics of a company that can be an innovative institution to a large market.

Finovate: What is the clim
ate like in Boston for fintech innovation? How does it compare to that of Silicon Valley?

Finovate: What can we expect from Interactions in the coming months?

Learn more about Interactions. Watch their Best of Show winning live demo from FinovateSpring 2014 here.

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Alumni News– October 14, 2014

By David Penn Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: Arxan Technologies, Backbase, Coinbase, Deluxe, edo Interactive, Fiserv, Forte Payment Systems, Holvi, Malauzai Software, MasterCard, Prosper, Taulia, Xignite

Finovate Debuts: Malauzai Software.

Cross County Savings Bank to deploy DNA account processing platform from Fiserv.

Apps from MasterCard and Deluxe earn spots in PaymentsSource’s “8 Wallet Apps That Go Beyond Payments.”

Arxan and Xamarin extend Mobile Application Protection to developers.

Coinbase hires former Sr. adviser to Homeland Security & Gov’tl Affairs Committee, John Collins, to head gov’t affairs.

Equities.com interviews Prosper.com’s Ron Suber regarding CFGE, Peer-to-Peer Lending and Working with Big Banks.

RBS partners with Taulia to offer dynamic discounting with e-Invoicing to corporate customers.

Backbase named a visionary in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals 2014.

Holvi accounts now use International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs).

Forte Payment Systems announces new partnership with The Master’s Touch, LLC to power eNoticesOnline bill presentment service.

Visa Europe partners with edo to make its performance marketing platform available to 500 million European bankcards.

Xignite teams up with FactSet to provide fundamental market data from the cloud.

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: Malauzai Software

By David Penn Posted on October 13, 2014
Categories: Finovate Debuts, Malauzai Software

Finovate Debuts is a blog series to introduce new Finovate alums.

Malauzai Software

Develops easy to manage and measure mobile banking SmartApps for community financial institutions. SmartApps are full-service, native mobile banking apps designed for iOS, Android, and the browser. Features include debit card management, billpay (including picturepay options), and P2P payments.

The Stats

Founded in January 2009
Headquartered in Austin, Texas
Tom Shen is Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board
More than 60 employees
More than 305 bank and credit unions clients with more than 260,000 end users
More than 500,000 downloads
Launched SmartwebApps in September 2014

The Story

There is a sense of “You do what?!” that comes from learning about what Malauzai Software has been building and deploying at community banks and credit unions across the country. Pick a mobile banking innovation, any innovation: Want to take a picture of your bill and pay with your smartphone? Want to turn your debit card off or on from time to time?

What’s impressive about Malauzai Software isn’t just that their apps do these things. It’s that their apps have been doing these things and more for community bank customers in places like the Air Academy Federal Credit Union in Colorado Springs and the First Financial Bank in Abilene, Texas for longer than you might think.

Malauzai Software is helps smaller financial institutions innovate faster than the big banks. Many things are helping this happen: from more nimble decision-making to the rise of mobile, which Malauzai calls an “equalizer” in the competition over bank customers. And here, Malauzai is simply looking to play its role, or as they put it “we’re on that wave” helping community FIs embrace truly omni-channel banking.

The Solutions: Meet MOX

The company has developed solutions that help not just consumers, but also business and enterprise-level use cases, as well. Malauzai offers Business Mobile solutions that target high value customers and support business customers requirements with multiple business entities. Their Enterprise solution gives professionals working in FIs tablet-optimized front and back office apps that boost customer on boarding, mobile teller capability, and other options to enhance the in-branch experience.

There are three concepts that underpin Malauzai’s approach to development. The primary one is MOX which stands for “Mobile Only Experience.” This combines a recognition that mobile is increasingly the channel of preference and simply porting a mobile experience to the desktop (or even to the tablet) is often a poor option.

The second concept is “convergence,” a banking customer accessing a SmartApp by smartphone will expect and should receive the same functionality when she switches to her desktop or tablet.

And the third concept is “superior economics.” On the platform management side, Malauzai believes it is important that banks and financial institutions be able to manage all their different SmartApps using a single application management system. Malauzai’s omnichannel approach via SmartApps liberates community banks from having to manage separate “Internet” or “online” banking services and mobile banking. The result is cost savings for banks and their customers.

“Internet banking is marginalizing,” said Malauzai Chief Product Officer, Robb Gaynor. “So why pay for it? With SmartwebApps, banks and credit unions are paying one low price per user for mobile and online banking. It’s like getting online banking for free.”

Among the features available on Malauzai Software’s SmartApps are:

Debit card management
Billpay including the Picture Pay option
Person-to-person (P2P) payments
Remote Deposit Capture deposits
Branch/ATM finder
Account balances

The apps can be personalized and feature a time-saving SmarTex login that gives customer quick access to basic information like account balances and transaction histories without requiring full login. And speaking of security, SmartwebApps give users the option to add a PIN for additional safeguarding of accounts, as well as customizable mobile banking security alerts. The apps are currently available in English, Spanish and Korean languages.

The Analytics

What’s in it for banks, other than providing all these great services for their customers? We’ve touched on the “easy to manage” aspect of the technology. Now let’s take a look at the “easy to measure” part.

“Easy to measure” refers specifically to the way that FIs can glean valuable information on user preferences. These preferences can range from which features are most popular on a given SmartwebApp to the kind of user metrics that can power intelligent and relevant In-SmartApp marketing and messaging.

Malauzai Software relies on a pair of tools to help pull this off. Its Real-Time Metrics and Reporting functionality (REBA) ensures that the bank or credit union maintains “constant, real-time contact” with their mobile channel. Administrators can access this data either by way of an online-based portal or with an iPad SmartApp.

The other resource is Malauzai’s Application Management System (AMS). Centrally managed by way of an administration portal (SAMI), the system enables central management of the SmartApps, and includes the ability to make changes to the SmartApp in real-time and across platforms, without having to update the App in app stores.

The Future

Malauzai has made headlines several times this year. The company announced a partnership with Finovate alum and IBM acquisition, Trusteer, this summer that will bring even greater security to consumers using SmartwebApps at Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. And in May, Malauzai reported a successful $6.5 million Series C funding round led by Wellington Management Company, LLP.

2014 has also seen deployments of SmartApps at Vons Credit Union in El Monte, California; Poca Valley Bank in Charleston, West Virginia; and Atlantic Capital Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, among others.

What can we expect to see from Malauzai in the months to come? The fact that the company is innovating against the grain with its current emphasis on bringing a mobile-quality experience to the desktop is worth watching. And for more on the debate, check out Malauzai’s Chief Technology Officer, Danny Piangerelli, post-FinovateFall blog post at Malauzai’s Monkey Chatter blog.

Malauzai also expects to take advantage of innovation in other areas, such as the new iOS8 operating system, with biometric authentication via TouchID, and the birth of ApplePay.

At the same time, focusing on how the web and mobile products work together, ensuring the sort of omni-channel experience their community bank and credit union clients want to deliver, remains key. And the best part, according to Malauzai, is that innovation at this end of the market is not zero sum. “We allow community banks and credit unions to out-innovate money center banks,” Gaynor said. “But anything we can do to enable the success of a CU is a positive for the whole industry.”

Check out a video of Malauzai Software’s live demo here.

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