Finovate Alumni News– March 27, 2014

  • Finovate-F-Logo.jpgTSYS partners with Virgin Money to provide consumer credit processing services for UK customers.
  • Cachet Financial Solutions appoints Darin McAreavey as EVP and CFO.
  • Prosper to cross the $1 billion mark in personal loans originated through its platform next week, hosts giveaway.
  • Tech Zulu interviews Trustev after the company’s win at SXSW Accelerator.
  • Jumio to help form Identity Security Network with eight leading Bitcoin exchanges.
  • InComm’s corporate B2B store enables retailers to streamline management of corporate gift card sales.
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.

Last Chance for FinovateSpring 2014 Early-Bird Tickets! Register Now to Save!

FinovateSpring 2014 is only five weeks away and the event is on pace to be the largest Finovate event to date. After our sold-out London event in February, we are projecting over 1,400 innovators will descend on Silicon Valley on April 29th and 30th to watch the future of financial and banking technology debut live!

If you would like to join that audience and discover the latest fintech innovations before your competition does, please register before this Friday March 28th in order to lock in your seat AND the early-bird discount.

If it makes it any easier to commit, here is a small sample of the amazing organizations that will be in attendance:

  • Altimeter Group
  • American Savings Bank
  • ATB Financial
  • Bank of the West
  • Bankers Trust
  • BBVA Ventures
  • Bessemer Venture Partners
  • BlackRock
  • C1 Bank
  • Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
  • Capital One
  • Celent
  • Celtic Bank
  • Charles Schwab
  • Chase Paymentech
  • CIBC
  • Citi Ventures
  • City National Bank
  • Commerce Bank
  • Commonwealth Bank
  • Consulate General of Canada
  • CFPB
  • Credit Suisse
  • Credit Union Times
  • Digital Insight
  • Discover
  • E*TRADE
  • EverBank
  • Experian
  • Federal Reserve System
  • Fidelity
  • Filene
  • First Data
  • First Republic Bank
  • FirstBank
  • FIS
  • Fiserv
  • Foundation Capital
  • FTV Capital
  • Fujitsu Research
  • General Atlantic
  • H&R Block
  • Hyundai Capital
  • IBM
  • Intel Capital
  • Intuit
  • Jack Henry
  • Jyske Bank
  • Lazard
  • Lexis Nexis
  • Lightspeed Venture Partners
  • MassMutual
  • Mastercard
  • Maybank
  • McKinsey & Co
  • Mergermarket
  • Mohr Davidow
  • Moody’s Analytics
  • Morningstar
  • Mountain America CU
  • NCR
  • NEA
  • New York Life
  • North Hill Ventures
  • U.S. Dept. of Treasury
  • Oracle
  • PNC Bank
  • Principal Financial
  • Sberbank Venture Capital
  • Scotiabank
  • Silicon Valley Bank
  • Stanford University
  • Swedbank
  • TD Ameritrade
  • The Vanguard Group
  • TowerGroup
  • Transamerica
  • TransUnion
  • U.S. Bank
  • USAA
  • VentureBeat
  • Visa
  • Wells Fargo
  • West Point Bank
  • Western Union

Please don’t delay! Tickets are selling fast so please be sure to register now to make sure you get a seat!

FinovateSpring 2014 is sponsored by: The Bancorp, Capital Source, Financial Technology Partners, Hudson Cook, Life.SREDA and Xignite.

FinovateSpring 2014 is partners with: Aite Group, Bank Innovators CouncilBankersHub, Bay Area Fintech Startups, BayPay Forum, California Bankers Association, Government of Canada, Celent, Filene, Hotwire PR, Javelin Strategy, The Paypers, SME Finance ForumVisible Banking, & Western Independent Bankers.

Last Chance for FinovateSpring 2014 Early-Bird Tickets! Register Now to Save!

FinovateSpring 2014 is only five weeks away and the event is on pace to be the largest Finovate event to date. After our sold-out London event in February, we are projecting over 1,400 innovators will descend on Silicon Valley on April 29th and 30th to watch the future of financial and banking technology debut live!

If you would like to join that audience and discover the latest fintech innovations before your competition does, please register before this Friday March 28th in order to lock in your seat AND the early-bird discount.

If it makes it any easier to commit, here is a small sample of the amazing organizations that will be in attendance:

  • Altimeter Group
  • American Savings Bank
  • ATB Financial
  • Bank of the West
  • Bankers Trust
  • BBVA Ventures
  • Bessemer Venture Partners
  • BlackRock
  • C1 Bank
  • Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
  • Capital One
  • Celent
  • Celtic Bank
  • Charles Schwab
  • Chase Paymentech
  • CIBC
  • Citi Ventures
  • City National Bank
  • Commerce Bank
  • Commonwealth Bank
  • Consulate General of Canada
  • CFPB
  • Credit Suisse
  • Credit Union Times
  • Digital Insight
  • Discover
  • E*TRADE
  • EverBank
  • Experian
  • Federal Reserve System
  • Fidelity
  • Filene
  • First Data
  • First Republic Bank
  • FirstBank
  • FIS
  • Fiserv
  • Foundation Capital
  • FTV Capital
  • Fujitsu Research
  • General Atlantic
  • H&R Block
  • Hyundai Capital
  • IBM
  • Intel Capital
  • Intuit
  • Jack Henry
  • Jyske Bank
  • Lazard
  • Lexis Nexis
  • Lightspeed Venture Partners
  • MassMutual
  • Mastercard
  • Maybank
  • McKinsey & Co
  • Mergermarket
  • Mohr Davidow
  • Moody’s Analytics
  • Morningstar
  • Mountain America CU
  • NCR
  • NEA
  • New York Life
  • North Hill Ventures
  • U.S. Dept. of Treasury
  • Oracle
  • PNC Bank
  • Principal Financial
  • Sberbank Venture Capital
  • Scotiabank
  • Silicon Valley Bank
  • Stanford University
  • Swedbank
  • TD Ameritrade
  • The Vanguard Group
  • TowerGroup
  • Transamerica
  • TransUnion
  • U.S. Bank
  • USAA
  • VentureBeat
  • Visa
  • Wells Fargo
  • West Point Bank
  • Western Union

Please don’t delay! Tickets are selling fast so please be sure to register now to make sure you get a seat!

FinovateSpring 2014 is sponsored by: The Bancorp, Capital Source, Financial Technology Partners, Hudson Cook, Life.SREDA and Xignite.

FinovateSpring 2014 is partners with: Aite Group, Bank Innovators CouncilBankersHub, Bay Area Fintech Startups, BayPay Forum, California Bankers Association, Government of Canada, Celent, Filene, Hotwire PR, Javelin Strategy, The Paypers, SME Finance ForumVisible Banking, & Western Independent Bankers.

Fintech Funding Bubble?

When we first started Finovate in 2007/2008, during the depths of the financial-services sector collapse, there were maybe a half-dozen major venture fintech fundings per quarter. In comparison, yesterday (25 March 2014), in a single day, 10 fintech fundings were announced totaling nearly $60 million (according to Crunchbase).

Yes, you read it right. TEN in 24 HOURS! And that doesn’t even include ThreatMetrix, whose latest $20 mil round didn’t make it into the database by today’s noon (Eastern Time) cutoff. 

What are the drivers? As you can see from the list below, the digital currency craze attracted nearly half the amount, with $23.5 million sent to three companies. Crowdfunding and other alt-lending has been absorbing large amounts of capital of late, and yesterday pulled in another $20 million in three fundings. The other four ran the gamut from $12 mil into a prepaid card company and $1+ million each in insurance, healthcare payments and stock analysis.

Is it 1999 again? That’s not for me to say. I hope not (obviously). But it’s hard to believe that there is enough revenue to sustain even a small portion of these startups. Clearly investors believe there are major disruptions ahead in all things financial. 

——————————–

Table: Fintech Fundings Announced March 25, 2014

Amount Company Market Segment
$17 mil Circle Internet Financial Digital currency/bitcoin
$14 mil CircleUp Equity-based crowdfunding
$12.2 mil SpendSmart Payments Co Prepaid cards for youth
$5 mil Payward (Kraken) Bitcoin
$4 mil BlueVine Small biz alt-lending
$1.6 mil RealCrowd Crowdfunding real estate
$1.5 mil GoCoin Bitcoin
$1.4 mil SeniorQuote Insurance Insurance lead gen
$1.2 mil FlexMinder Healthcare payments
$1.2 mil Estimize Earnings estimates for stocks
$59 mil TOTAL

Source: Crunchbase, 26 March 2014

Finovate Alumni News — March 26, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgProfitStars’ Gladiator ranks #36 in MSPmentor’s top 501 managed service providers.
  • Kofax Mobile Capture platform wins “Elegant Implementation” category of Housing-Wire magazine’s HW TECH 100.
  • Online TV host Doug Sleeter interviews Xero CEO, Rod Drury.
  • Jumio wins 2014 METAward in “established” category.
  • miiCard bringing its ID verification technology to eMerchantPay.
  • WTOP News asks: is the credit card with keypad from Dynamics is the “card of the future”?
  • MasterCard selects Anna Yip as head of Hong Kong and Macau.
  • Digital Insight to expand online banking portfolio to include shared access and small business payments. Come see Digital Insight demo at FinovateSpring next month.
  • Kraken, the digital currency exchange platform used by Fidor Bank, raises $5 million.
  • ZipZap pauses UK cash-to-bitcoin transfers through its platform.
  • Boku partners with sunhill technologies to enable direct global carrier billing for sunhill’s services.
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.

FinovateSpring 2014 Sneak Peek: Part 1

FinovateSpring2014ButtonLogo.jpg

The northern hemisphere’s first day of spring last week can mean only one thing: FinovateSpring 2014 is just around the corner. To help you prepare for the upcoming onslaught of innovation, we’ll be dishing up bite-sized pieces of some of the companies you’ll see in San Jose on April 29 and 30.

In this first installment, we showcase ChiaraMail, Dealstruck, Digital Insight, ID.me, LendingRobot, and Verde International:


ChiaraMailLogo

ChiaraMail offers the first technology to protect your customers from becoming victims of e-mail address spoofing, while providing them unprecedented e-mail privacy without the use of encryption.

Features:
    • Eliminates spoofing and the resulting identity theft.
    • Ensures in-transit privacy.
    • Adds critical functionality such as changing e-mails after sending, and improved mail network efficiency.
Why it’s great:
ChiaraMail technology assures your customers that a message that claims to be from you is actually from you.  
ChiaraMailRobert.jpg

Robert Uomini, CEO/President
Uomini is founder of ChiaraMail and inventor/developer of the patented technology behind ChiaraMail. He has been developing disruptive technologies for many years.
ChiaraMailDavid.jpg

David Head, Chief Marketing Officer
Head is a senior marketing and sales executive with more than 20 years of experience in enterprise and start-up companies bringing game-changing technologies to market.


DealstruckLogo

Dealstruck is a web-based peer-to-peer lending company that offers a suite of financing products to small business borrowers designed to progressively graduate them toward conventional financing.

Features:

    • Real-time access to borrowers and deals
    • Ability to manipulate data from Dealstruck loan packaging to augment underwriting/yield
    • Opportunity to participate alongside others or take down full loans
Why its great:
Dealstruck provides the most complete suite of financing options for business borrowers and investment opportunities for lenders.  

DealstruckSenturia.jpg

Ethan Senturia, co-founder and CEO
Senturia is Wharton Business School graduate who previously ran Internet marketing for a lead generation startup, Ampush Media, and in distressed credit at Lehman Brothers.

DealStruckRussel.jpg


Russell McLoughlin
McLoughlin, co-founder and CTO, is a B.S./M.S. who has worked at the Biodefense Knowledge Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and at Google Machine Translation and Apple.

DigitalInsightLogo

Digital Insight’s Promotion Suite for mobile reaches the right customers on their mobile device with the right offers at the moment of truth.

Features:

    • Brings personalized, relevant cross-sell offers from financial institutions to their customers.
    • Engages consumers in their moment of need anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Why it’s great:
Provides personalized engagements and enhanced communications to connect financial institutions with their customers like never before. 

DigInsightKarish.jpg

Karishma Anand
Anand is the director of product management for Digital Insight. She is responsible for driving product strategy, execution for digital banking and payments solutions.
LinkedIn

DigInsightMarshall.jpg

Marshall Yuan 
Yuan is a senior product manager at Digital Insight. In this role, he oversees the strategy and go-to-market plan for Android banking applications.
LinkedIn


IDmeLogo

ID.me verifies attributes of a consumer’s identity and ties them to a payment medium

Features:

    • CRM, Offers, Loyalty and Authentication via a payment medium
    • Elimination of physical credentials needed at checkout
    • Fraud prevention for high-value transactions via authentication
Why it’s great:
User-centric digital identity, attribute verification and a mobile device enables the holy grail of marketing: personalization  

IDMeBlake.jpg

Blake Hall 
Hall is a former Army Ranger and Harvard Business School graduate. Thanks to The Economist, he is the first Google result for “muscly entrepreneur.”

IDMematt.jpg

Matthew Thompson
Thompson is a former Army Ranger and a decorated combat veteran. He co-founded ID.me while attending Harvard Business School.
LinkedIn


LendingRobotLogo

LendingRobot automates loan selection and investment in Peer Lending.

Features:
    • Fully automates investment in LendingClub and Prosper
    • Submits orders within one second after new loans appear
    • Automated definition of investment strategies
Why it’s great:
LendingRobot makes investing in Peer Lending simple and efficient, and allows individuals to compete with institutional investors.  

LendingRobotGilad.jpg

Gilad Golan, CEO 
Golan shipped almost every product he ever built (and he built a lot of them).
LinkedIn

LendingRobotEmmanuel.jpg

Emmanuel Marot, President
Marot uniquely mixes backgrounds in both user experience design and quantitative finance.


VerdeInternationalLogo

Verde International’s Verde Aurora is a next-gen automated loan-underwriting optimization engine satisfying customers, shareholders, regulators, dealers, and other stakeholders, instantly.

Features:
    • The best possible decisions and counteroffers, delivered in seconds
    • Loss models that outperform industry leading models by fourfold
    • Scalable deployment that any financial institution can afford
Why it’s great:
Verde Aurora obsoletes today’s decision systems by integrating behavioral models, DCF analysis and MPP-driven optimization for perfect instant offers, pleasing customers and shareholders alike. 
VerdePatrick.jpg

Patrick Reily, CEO and Co-Founder Verde International
Reily’s multidisciplinary approach to strategic planning and business development is the result of 25 years of experience in banking and financial services. 
VerdeBob.jpg

Robert Hughes, CEO of Finance and Thrift Co.
Bob has over 30 years of experience as the President/CEO of federally insured financial institutions.

Stay tuned for a sneak peek of another six companies later this week.

SmartAsset Brings in $5.2 Million in Series A Financing Round

SmartAssetLoResLogo.jpg

The team at SmartAsset, a company that aims to answer consumers’ complex financial questions, has been busy lately. Not only are they preparing their 7-minute demo for FinovateSpring next month, they also recently launched a retirement planning tool, and this week announced they just closed on $5.2 million.

The Series A financing round was led by Javelin Venture Partners. Denis Grosz, SV Angel and Brendan Wallace, founder of Identified, also contributed.

SmartAsset plans to use the round to grow its New York-based team by around a dozen new employees and expand its platform’s capability to give users more control of their financial future.

To see SmartAsset’s newest tech and meet the innovators behind the platform, don’t miss its live demo at FinovateSpring.

Finovate Alumni News — March 25, 2014

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgEleven Finovate alums win awards at PYMNTS Innovation Project 2014.
  • Bazaarvoice announces partnership with Spredfast.
  • TechCrunch: Wealthfront, OnDeck, Lending Club, Credit Karma, Betterment, and Kapitall “come of age.”
  • CMS Wire reviews Backbase’s customer experience platform.
  • Top Image Systems’ eFLOW to process the digital census of a country in EMEA in a deal worth more than $1 million.
  • Place2Give releases GIVE-API to provide access to its database of charities as well as its payment processing tech.
  • SmartAsset raises $5.2 million in series A funding. Come see their live demo at FinovateSpring next month in San Jose.
  • Netherlands Queen Maxima visits Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) to see its psychometric credit scoring methodology in action.
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.

FinanceIt’s New Printed Materials Service Keeps Shoppers Informed of Financing Options at the Point of Sale

FinanceItLogo2014.jpg

In an era when the Internet of Things is becoming wildly popular, POS financing provider Financeit has opened up a communications channel in the analog world of print.

The Canadian-based company announced today that its users now have the option to order printed materials, such as:

    • Brochures detailing Financeit and its benefit to customers
    • Price tags that help highlight monthly prices
    • Posters and window displays
    • Stickers for front window and cash register 

FinanceItSings.jpg

These printed materials not only let shoppers know that instant financing is available in the store, but also help to educate them about the merchant’s payment plan options through Financeit.

Users can order these items in the Library section of their account.

Financeit has raised a total of $21 million and demoed at FinovateFall 2013 and FinovateFall 2012.

Eleven Finovate Alums Win Awards at PYMNTS Innovation Project 2014

Innovation_Project_2014_pymnts_logo.jpg

The votes are in. The judges have decided. And 11 Finovate alums have earned awards at the 2014 PYMNTS.com Innovation Project, including three gold medals.

Finovate alums won awards in a diverse range of categories, from “B2B Innovation” to “Best Comeback Story.” Areas where alums dominated included “Best Credit Innovation,” where Credit Karma, Lending Club, and Klarna swept the field, as well as “Best Innovation via ACH” and “Best Check Innovation.”

Thumbnail image for Innovator_awards_pymnts_2014.jpg

The Innovation Project is “powered by PYMNTS.com,” a joint venture between BusinessWire and Market Platform Dynamics. The event is in its second year, and was again held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A total of 49 awards were presented. Gold, silver, and bronze in fifteen categories, plus singular Catalyst, Women Driving Innovation in Payments, Lifetime Achievement, and Best in Show awards. 

Also announced were three inductees to the Payments Hall of Fame.
See how the rest of the Finovate family fared below.




Catalyst Award 
  • International e-commerce payments and money transfers
  • Finovate demo video: Europe 2012
Gold
  • Best B2B Innovation
  • Cash flow management solution for business integrating electronic payments, accounting, digital documents, and more
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Aggregates consumer financial data from bank accounts and credit scores to mortgage loans in one location
  • Finovate demo video: Startup 2009
  • Best Check Innovation
  • Enables check payments without having to write paper checks
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
Silver
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Online, peer-to-peer lender
  • Finovate demo video: Startup 2009
  • Best Cash Innovation
  • Cash transaction network 
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2013
  • Best New Technology
  • Open-source, distributed payment protocol
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2013
  • Best Innovation via ACH
  • Best Check Innovation
  • Send money to a Venmo account, bank account or supported debit card for free
  • Finovate demo video (with Braintree): Spring 2013
Bronze
  • Most Innovative Company
  • E-commerce solution mitigates credit and fraud risk for online merchants 
  • Finovate demo video: Spring 2012
  • Most Disruptive Innovation
  • Best Comeback Story
  • Peer-to-peer lending
  • Finovate demo video: Finovate 2007
  • Best Credit Innovation
  • Best Innovation via ACH
  • Solution leverages mobile device camera to enable check deposit, account opening, and bill pay.
  • Finovate demo video: Fall 2013

Finovate Alumni News– March 24, 2014

  • TransferWise recognized as “boldest small company” in winning FT’s Boldest in Business award for 2014.
  • BBVA follows Simple acquisition with launch of new digital banking unit.
  • Currency Transfer featured in Wired UK as Startup of the Week.
  • BillGuard invites beta testers to try its new Android app.
  • Mail Tribune highlights the importance of Credit Karma and Credit Sesame.
  • Ping Identity purchases Accells Technologies to make mobile devices into a tool for logging you in to all of your cloud-based services in one shot.
  • BellaDati launches the next level of visual data discovery with new release.
  • Matt Turck examines opportunities for Kensho and Quantopian in a Bloomberg-dominated world.
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.

BancBox’s New API Ensures Accreditation of Investors So Crowdfunding Platforms Don’t Have To

BancBoxLogo.jpg

Players in the crowdfunding space have a lot of headaches in order to maintain compliance, especially since the SEC requires that parties who invest in offerings on crowdfunding platforms must be fully accredited. That is, they must meet one of the following two requirements:

1) Have earned $200,000/ year in both of the past two years (or $300,000 with spouse) and expect to earn the same next year

2) Have a net worth of $1 million (excluding primary residence)

BancBox, a company known for its money-moving APIs, is seeking to remove this barrier for players in the crowdfunding industry with its new API that will verify the accreditation of investors.

BancBoxInvestHomepage.jpgThe API is a part of the BancBox Invest service. It will enable crowdfunding platforms to determine if their investors are accredited and legally allowed to invest in the platform. In order to comply with the SEC’s 506(c) standard, the new API will:

1) Verify income. This includes a review of the investor’s IRS documents (W-2s, 1099s, K-1s, 1040s) for the past two years and an additional confirmation that they expect to qualify in the current year.

2) Have a third party verify income (releasing in April): Third party verification must be received from a CPA, attorney, broker dealer, SEC-registered investment advisor or an equivalent entity.

3) Verify assets (releasing in May): An investor must have a net worth of at least one million dollars, excluding the value of their primary residence.

Combined with other features that the Invest service offers, the API will give private placement and equity/debt-based crowdfunding platform owners a full suite of solutions.
seedinvestlogoblack.jpg

SeedInvest, which demoed at FinovateSpring 2013, is among the companies using BancBox’s new API.

Check out BancBox’s demo from FinovateSpring 2012 where it debuted its payments platform.