Finovate Blog

Editor’s note: This was supposed to be the Friday Fintech Four, which is much better alliteration. But alas, it didn’t get published, so here’s the belated Monday version.

<drum roll> Here are the four most surprising fintech developments of the past week (in no particular order):

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One: Stealthy mobile payment startup Clinkle hires long-time CFO of Netflix, Barry McCarthy, as its COO
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McCarthy was CFO from 1999 to 2010, taking Netflix public in 2003, then overseeing its finances as a public company for seven years. It’s pretty unusual for a big-name public company exec to take on an exec role at a startup, especially one in mobile payments. And one that hasn’t even officially launched yet to boot. McCarthy is on the board of three startups: Chegg, Eventbrite and Wealthfront, a startup in the investment space.
    >> LinkedIn profile of McCarthy
    >> A nice overview of the news at TechCrunch 
    >> An interview with McCarthy at AllThings D

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Two: New mobile PFM, Level Money, beats Square Cash to #1 in iOS app store (finance)
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As soon as Square launched its P2P payments app, Square Cash, it quickly rocketed to number two in the Finance section of the iPhone app store (see Chart 1 below) and number 55 across all free apps in all categories. But it never got higher, and a week later it’s hanging in at number 11.

The reason it missed the top slot? Another newcomer, Level Money, a great-looking new PFM, was being featured by Apple in the App Store and maintained the top ranking during that period (see Chart 2). During its time as a promoted app, Level Money maintained a top-20 ranking among all 500,000+ free apps (see Chart 3).

    >> Netbanker post on Square Cash
    >> Distimo app rankings for Square Cash (see following chart)

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Chart 1: Square Cash app ranking in Free Finance in Apple App Store

Chart 2: Level Money app ranking in Free Finance in Apple App Store

Chart 3: Level Money ranking among all free apps in the Apple App Store

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Three: Amex customers have put $1 billion into its Bluebird prepaid card
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At this year’s SourceMedia Payments Forum, American Express revealed key metrics about its highly touted Bluebird prepaid program sold in Walmart stores:

• 1 million new accounts
• $1 billion in total loads
• Average load of $1,000 per account
• 87% of accounts new to Amex
• 53% over age 35

Thanks to the attendees who tweeted the metrics @leimer (Bradly Leimer) and @JimMarous among others.

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Four: Four fintech startups snapped up last week
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Compared to other tech sectors, fintech has experienced less M&A activity in the past few years. Everything moves a little slower in a highly regulated, fraud-magnet segment. Buying fintech is not like bolting on a photosharing app. That said, it was a busy past 10 days on the M&A front:

• Betterment buys ImpulseSave to boost its auto-savings features (Finovate post)
• UK’s FundingCircle buys Endurance Lending to enter U.S. market (Techcrunch)
• Blackhawk acquires Intelispend (Digital Transactions)
• Wonga buys Germany’s BillPay to expand outside United Kingdom (Techcrunch)

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Photo credit: Fab Festival