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20 Mobile Banking Landing Pages

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 3, 2014
Categories: Mobile Banking, UX, Website Usability & Design

Last week, I caught up with the USAA folk to share thoughts on the future of mobile banking. They explained how they are converting visitors on the mobile web to their native app with a popup (interstitial) prompt (see inset). It’s the first time I’ve seen a bank use that desktop technique on the mobile web.

It had been more than a year since I took a tour of major banks using my phone’s browser (Safari, iPhone 5, iOS7). The last time proved relatively uninspiring. Several banks showed a mobile-optimized view, but most defaulted to their desktop-PC view which is unusable without tedious “pinch and zooming.” And no one pushed users to the native app.

Today, that’s changed dramatically. Of the 20 major mobile banking websites I visited, only one (Citibank) delivered a desktop-PC view (and that varied depending on which URL was used to enter the Citibank site). And four of the 20 pushed their mobile app heavily (and three more showed a download link to the app store).

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Recommendations
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While there has been much talk about pushing customers to less-costly HTML5 and responsive-design mobile websites, it’s still an app world (1 million and counting on iOS alone). And that’s not changing if Apple has anything to say about it. If you have a native app, make sure your mobile customers know about it.
Every mobile web front landing page should include a prominent link (above the fold) to your native app(s). And it’s not enough to simply show the Apple and Android app store logos. That’s too subtle for many novice smartphone users.
The call-to-action should list at least one benefit to the native app. Facebook, for instance, simply says, “browser faster.”
Test an interstitial landing page such as the one currently used by USAA. Users can choose “remind me later” to defer their decision to download the app, or they can kill the interstitial permanently by choosing “no thanks.”

Table: Mobile web default view from 20 major mobile FIs
Key: Native promo = Promotes native app
Mobile web = Delivers mobile-optimized view
Pinch & Zoom = No mobile optimization on main landing page, requires pinching and zooming to navigate

	Mobile Optimized View?	Native App Call to Action?	App Store link?	Large Promo?
Native app promo
Bank of America	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barclays (UK)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Moven	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
USAA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mobile web
American Express	Yes	No	No	No
BB&T	Yes	No	No	No
BECU	Yes	Yes	No	No
BMO Harris	Yes	No	No	No
Capital One	Yes	No	No	Yes
Chase	Yes	No	Yes	No
Fifth Third	Yes	No	No	No
ING Direct (Turkey)	Yes	No	No	Yes
Regions	Yes*	No	No	No
Schwab	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Simple	Yes	No	No	Yes
SunTrust	Yes	No	No	No
US Bank	Yes	No	No	No
Wells Fargo	Yes	No	Yes	No
Pinch&Zoom
Citibank	Varies by URL	No	No	No
GoBank	No	No	No	No

*Regions uses popup to provide choice of mobile view or full website

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Alumni News– July 3, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 3, 2014
Categories: Braintree, CurrencyTransfer, eToro, MicroStrategy, Misys, TIBCO Software, Tradeshift, Wealthfront, WePay

Misys launches new, modular core banking solution, FusionBanking Essence.

MicroStrategy, TIBCO listed among 16 most significant business intelligence software vendors in new Forrester report.

The New York Times Business Day interviews Adam Nash, CEO of Weathfront.

Wired Money startup pitch competition features Finvoate alums CurrencyTransfer and eToro.

Facebook chooses Braintree as sole payments provider for its FbStart program.

Wepay launches new website.

Tradeshift makes CPO Rising’s 2014 Hot Tech Prospect list.

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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Emida Launches New Smartphone Android POS App

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 2, 2014
Categories: Emida

Just in time for the second half of 2014, Emida’s Android POS app is ready for launch.

Traci Jones, VP of Global Product Development said, “We know through our 20 years of experience that we excel in prepaid technology simply because we understand the needs of our partners, worldwide.”

The new Android app is optimized for both Android smartphones and tablets, and provides much of the same functionality as Emida’s POS terminals. The app is available to all of Emida’s U.S. partners.

Emida maintains an international network that allows carriers, service providers, merchants, retailers and others to offer prepaid products to their customers via standard POS terminals. These prepaid products and services range from wireless and long distance, to bill pay and lottery, to stored value card and international top-up.

Take a look at a handful of Emida metrics:

Headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California
Operates in 37 countries worldwide
Supports network with more than 54,000 retail points
Network annual dollar payment volume of more than $1.5 billion
Network processes more than 240 million annual payment transactions

David Kirtman is CEO.

Emida demoed its technology as part of the FinovateFall 2012 conference in New York. See the company in action here.

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Seeking to Raise $75 Million, Yodlee Files for its Initial Public Offering

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 2, 2014
Categories: Yodlee

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to announce the first company to go public as a Finovate alum, Q2.

This week we learn that another alum, Yodlee, is taking the IPO plunge, as well.

With a goal of raising $75 million, Yodlee has filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating its intention to become a public entity.

According to The Silicon Valley Business Journal, Yodlee plans to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol, YDLE.

Yodlee is one of the engines powering a variety of digital and mobile technologies in the fintech space, from digital wallets to PFM solutions. The company’s account aggregation abilities and vast collection of transactional data from consumers and businesses are widely sought after by startups and established companies alike.

A few metrics about Yodlee shared in the S-1:

More than 750 organizations in more than 10 countries use Yodlee’s platform
More than half of the 15 largest banks in the United States are Yodlee customers
More than 100 million end users reached by Yodlee technology via the company’s network of partners
More than 15 million paid users as of the March 31, 2014
Revenues in 2013 grew 21% to more than $70 million
Revenues during the first three months of 2014 grew 34% to more than $19 million
Net loss of $1.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2013
EBITDA of $4.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2013
EBITDA of $885,000 for the three months ending March 31, 2014

Yodlee is a three time Best of Show winner, having taken home trophies after demos at Finovate 2009, FinovateFall 2013, and FinovateAsia 2013. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Yodlee recently announced partnerships with Startupbootcamp, 25fifteen, and Entrepreneurial Spark. Anil Arora is Yodlee’s president and CEO.

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Alumni News– July 2, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 2, 2014
Categories: Emida, Market Prophit, Q2, SafetyPay, Yodlee

SafetyPay announces partnership with Alpha Payments Cloud.

Reuters Insider interviews Igor Gonta, CEO of Market Prophit.

Q2 partners with Easy Solutions to bring multi-factor authentication to FIs.

Emida launches smartphone POS app.

Yodlee files for initial public offering; seeks to raise $75 million.

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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Q2 Partners with Easy Solutions to Bring Total Fraud Protection Suite to FIs

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 1, 2014
Categories: Q2

Courtesy of a new partnership between Q2 and Easy Solutions, more than 340 financial institutions will now have access to a suite of omni-channel fraud prevention solutions.

Integrating Easy Solutions’ Total Fraud Protection Platform will give banks and credit unions are Q2’s virtual banking technology additional protection against attacks including phishing, farming, malware, Man-in-the-Middle and Main-in-the-Browser.

Jay McLaughlin, chief security officer and senior VP of Q2 said, “Security and fraud protection are crucial pieces of what customers depend on us to provide.” Added VP of Worldwide Sales at Easy Solutions, Alberto Arango, “Q2 is an innovator and has seen impressive growth in acceptance of its platforms, delivering virtual banking to more than 3.5 million retail an commercial users.”

Q2 is an innovator in the field of cloud-based virtual banking. The technology company specializes in providing solutions for community banks, regional banks, and credit unions. the company was most recently in the press announcing a handful of deployments at financial institutions like First Financial Bank and Urban Partnership Bank.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company launched an initial public offering in March, and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker, QTWO. Matthew Flake is CEO.

A few metrics on Q2:

Revenue growth of 51% in 2013
Market capitalization of more than $495 million
Trailing 12-month revenue (as of March 31, 2014) of more than $60 million

Q2 demoed its Risk & Fraud Analytics solution at FinovateSpring 2011 in San Francisco. See the company’s demo here.

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Moven Raises $8 Million to Help Launch Overseas Expansion

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 1, 2014
Categories: Moven

Growing the business and expanding offshore are now possible thanks to the $8 million (£4.7 million) in funding just raised by Moven.

Leading the series A round was SBT Venture Capital. Among those also participating were:

Anthemis Group
New York Angels
Route 66 Ventures
Standard Bank

Additional unnamed angel investors were also involved in the round. This latest investment takes Moven’s total capital to more than $12 million.

Moven founder and CEO Brett King broke the news at the Wired Money conference on Tuesday. And as reported in Wired UK, Moven will also be announcing two major partnerships, one in Canada and one in New Zealand, that Brett believes will help take the company closer to its 10 million app download goal.

Moven helps consumers better control their spending and manage their finances without traditional budgeting. What is compelling is the way Moven tracks not just whether spending is above or below trend, but also where the extra spending is coming from. This gives users a great deal of insight, as well as a lot of control over spending and saving. Moven’s technology includes a mobile app, a debit card, and a contactless sticker.

Moven emerged from beta this spring after receiving more than 100,000 invite requests from eager, would-be early adopters. Shortly afterward, the company announced that it had partnered with fellow Finovate alum, MoneyDesktop, to make it easier for Moven users to aggregate their outside accounts.

Moven was founded in March 2011, and is headquartered in New York City.

Winner of a Best of Show award for their demo at FinovateEurope 2013, Moven was last on the Finovate stage for FinovateSpring 2013 in San Francisco. See a demo of the company in action here.

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Alumni News– July 1, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on July 1, 2014
Categories: Doxo, Insuritas, Mambu

Puget Sound Business Journal profiles Doxo co-founder and CEO, Steve Shivers.

Techcrunch column on the “un-banking of America” highlights a dozen Finovate alums.

Mentors International deploying Mambu’s cloud banking platform.

Finovate alums raise more than $600 million for second quarter in a row.

People’s Trust Federal Credit Union teams up with Insuritas to provide insurance solutions for its 26,000 members.

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 Alums Raise More than $600 Million for Second Quarter in a Row

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 30, 2014
Categories: App Annie, Betterment, BodeTree, Dashlane, DemystData, Fastacash, FutureAdvisor, Gremln, Holvi, Kabbage, Kony Solutions, Kreditech, LearnVest, Lending Club, Motif Investing, Nutmeg, Ondot, RevolutionCredit, SeedInvest, ShopKeep POS, Signifyd, Swipely, The Currency Cloud, TransferWise, Tuition.io, Wealthfront

In the first quarter of 2014, 23 Finovate alums raised more than $592 million

And as the second quarter draws to a close, it’s clear that a comparable cohort of alums have kept the pace.

Over the course April, May, and June, 28 alums raised significant amounts of capital ranging from Gremln’s $100,000 to the $65 million raised by Lending Club. The quarterly total of $594 million is almost exactly the same as the previous quarter.

And given that some amounts are undisclosed (I’m talking about you, Holvi, RevolutionCredit, and Tuition.io), we’re confident that Finovate alums have notched their second $600 million fund-raising quarter in a row.

How does this compare with the less recent past? Very well, indeed.

In the second quarter of 2013, 15 alums raised more than $200 million. This was a major improvement on the second quarter from 2012, which featured 14 companies raising more than $120 million.

Total raised for Q2 2014 = $594 million

April — $217 million raised by 11 companies

Betterment – $32 million – blog post
The Currency Cloud – $10 million – blog post
LearnVest – $28 million – blog post
Lending Club – $65 million (equity portion of debt and equity deal) – blog post
Ondot Systems – $18 million – blog post
SeedInvest – $2 million – blog post
ShopKeep POS – $25 million – blog post
Signifyd – $2 million – blog post
Tuition.io – undisclosed – blog post
Wealthfront – $35 million – blog post

May — $226 million raised by 11 companies

App Annie – $17 million – blog post
BodeTree – $2 million – blog post
Dashlane – $22 million – blog post
DemystData – $5 million – blog post
FutureAdvisor – $15 million – blog post
Holvi – undisclosed – blog post
Kabbage – $40 million – blog post
Motif Investing – $35 million – blog post
RevolutionCredit – undisclosed – blog post
Swipely – $20 million – blog post

June — $151 million raised by six companies

fastacash – $4 million – blog post
Gremln – $100,000 – blog post
Kony – $50 million – blog post
Kreditech – $40 million – blog post
Nutmeg – $32 million – blog post
TransferWise – $25 million – blog post

Note: Funding prior to becoming a Finovate alum not included. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]

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Alumni News– June 30, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 30, 2014
Categories: BBVA, Betterment, Darwinex, Fiserv, FutureAdvisor, ID.me, Lending Club, Monitise, Nutmeg, Tradeslide

BBVA announces partnership with Visa to bring host card emulation (HCE) functionality for contactless payments for its Wallet app.

Teachers Federal Credit Union ($4.9 billion in assets) to deploy Fiserv DNA platform.

Monitise on the Move: Helping Banks Enable Commerce.

TradeSlide rebrands as Darwinex.

Lending Club moves closer toward an initial public offering.

ID.me’s partnership with Overstock.com to add first responders.

Millionaire Corner features Nutmeg and FutureAdvisor as examples of “productive and easy” online investing.

Free Enterprise interviews Betterment CEO Jon Stein.

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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Monitise on the Move: Helping Banks Enable Commerce

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 27, 2014
Categories: Monitise

How does a technology company like Monitise help banks and financial institutions provide more value for their customers?

I spoke with Marc Winitz, SVP for marketing at Monitise, during a break at the Digital Banking Summit in Los Angeles earlier this month. And the answers he provided told me a great deal about where banks – and banking technology – are likely headed in the years to come.

Much of the current focus, he said, is on payments. The problem is that the payments business is pretty well-established. What banks and FIs should consider instead is how to add value at the “discovery” part of the transaction rather than at the “settlement” part of the transaction. In other words, being a significant factor at the beginning of the process rather than at the end.

The Peri mobile shopping app that Monitise developed and is being piloted by U.S. Bancorp is an excellent example of bringing banking and e-commerce closer together. Peri works by accessing the digital signatures embedded inside a growing amount of media – from television advertisements to print copy. With the Peri app, consumers can essentially recreate the online shopping experience while watching a TV commercial or reading an ad in a magazine.

When the app reads the digital signature of the item of interest, the item appears in the app. The actual purchase is quick and efficient since the consumer’s purchasing information (name, address, credit card number, etc.) is already on file at the bank.

The technology is likely to be white-labeled and made available to companies and brands. Importantly, however, it is an example of the kind of technology that helps put banks at the forefront of an area – ecommerce – that has more or less left traditional banking behind.

What’s interesting about this approach is how it serves both the retailer’s interest in minimizing the “discovery” period (i.e., less “shopping” and more “buying”), as well as the bank or financial institution’s interest in being a bigger part of the e-commerce experience.

And as far as Marc is concerned, banking apps like these are an important way to go. “They feature a front-screen engagement opportunity,” he explained. “They yield personal insights (into consumer behavior), and have a funding source/transaction/wallet component.”

Monitse Metrics

Founded in 2003
Provides services to more than 350 financial institutions and brands worldwide
Has 28 million users and strategic partnerships
Processes 3.4 billion mobile transactions a year valued at $71 billion
Operates in the UK, the United States, India, Hong Kong, and Indonesia
Trades on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: MONI)
Led by co-CEOs Alastair Lukies (Monitise plc) and Elizabeth Buse (Monitise Group)

But there is a big question as to whether banks are situated in the right position to do what needs to be done to reinvigorate the industry. On the one hand, banks continue to earn a great deal of trust from their customers. This gives banks both the credibility and the “room to fail” that is critical when embarking upon new initiatives and ventures.

On the other hand, the challenge is that banks are no longer simply measured by their own performance vis-a-vis other banks. It’s not just the rise of non-bank actors, significant as that is. The move toward an omni-channel experience provides a whole new way for consumer experience to be judged (and for those judgements to be shared via social media). So now a consumer’s “banking experience” ends up being compared to a consumer’s “Amazon shopping experience” or a consumer’s “Apple Store shopping experience.” And if that doesn’t seem like a tall order for the average bank, then you are fortunate to be a customer of a far more, forward-looking bank than the rest of us.

According to Marc, banks need to first re-imagine how they do business, then see what technology is necessary in order to provide that business via a compelling user interface and experience. And the fact of the matter is that for many banks, choosing a technology partner is the most efficient way to make that happen.

Marc pointed out that mobile banking started with many banks, probably too many, thinking they could do it all by themselves. “Banks should do what they do best,” he said. “Don’t try and pick a gift card company. Let us do it.”

Monitise Milestones (2014)

Acquired Markco Media for up to £55 million ($93.5 million)
Launched mobile app design arm, Monitise Create, in North America
Added former Visa executive Elizabeth Buse as co-CEO
Announced mobile banking platform deployment by Desert Schools FCU
Offered mobile alerting software as standalone product
Acquired Pozitron in all-share deal worth $100 million

Who gets it? The largest banks, the top 20 Marc said, are making the right moves. “They’ve got all the money in the world to spend.” It’s the next tier of banks and FIs that have the greater challenge. This includes institutions like Desert Schools Federal Credit Union, the largest credit union in Arizona ($3 billion in assets; 320,000 members), that recently adopted Monitise’s Vantage 5.1 platform this spring.

The ability to conduct modular upgrades on the platform, Marc said, prevents a strain on budgets and IT resources. And this is a good thing not just for the bottom line of these mid-tier banks, but for the teamwork necessary to make mobile transitions work. “The whole team must be involved when it comes to something like mobile,” Marc said.

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Alumni News– June 27, 2014

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on June 27, 2014
Categories: Acculynk, Coinbase, Matchi, MiiCard, RevolutionCredit, SeedInvest, Trustly

Matchi announces signing sponsorship agreement with Standard Bank Group.

Intuit’s PayByCoin integrates Quickbooks Online with Coinbase to allow merchants to accept bitcoin.

RevolutionCredit is among six startups presenting at the 2014 FinTech Innovation Lab in New York.

Trustly partners with PayPal to facilitate direct payments for online bank customers in Sweden and Denmark.

Acculynk joins with Navicure to offer payment platform for healthcare providers.

500 Startups teams up with SeedInvest to raise money for $100 million Fund III.

A review of digital ID technology by the Economist includes a nod toward miiCard.

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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