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Tradeshift Inks Deal & Investment from Intuit

By David Penn Posted on January 25, 2013
Categories: Tradeshift

What’s better than a deal that turns your current customer base of 150,000 small and medium-sized businesses into a potential field of five million?

The same deal, with an undisclosed but “multi-million” dollar investment thrown in for good measure.

That’s how the year is beginning for Tradeshift. The company announced that it has formed a partnership with Intuit, integrating its e-invoicing and business transactions platform with QuickBooks. The new free app, which connects to customer’s Tradeshift or Quickbooks accounts, will be available first to QuickBooks users in the United Kingdom.

The company also announced a significant investment from Intuit, which will join Tradeshift’s board of directors. Although the amount was undisclosed, it has been characterized as “multi-million”.

Newly available to QuickBooks users, the app will also be an opportunity to further test Tradeshift’s social networking approach to business. CEO and founder Christian Lang has said that “invoicing is one of the few business processes that’s really viral.” Thanks to Intuit, he’ll now have five million opportunities (and undisclosed millions in new capital) to help prove his point.

See Tradeshift in action in this video from their demo at FinovateEurope 2012.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 25, 2013

By David Penn Posted on January 25, 2013
Categories: BillFloat, Cachet Financial Solutions, Concur, Geezeo, Lending Club, Simple, Tradeshift, TransferWise, TSYS, ValidSoft

Silicon Valley Business Journal interviews BillFloat CEO and co-founder Ryan Gilbert.

Commercial Bank of Qatar to deploy latest version of TSYS card and merchant management platform.

TransferWise wins “Best Middleweight Startup” at The Europas. See them demo at FinovateEurope in February!

Concur rolls out new datacenters in France and the Netherlands.

Santander receives 2012 Banking Technology Award for Best Security Initiative for its SIM swapping solution, developed with ValidSoft.

Portland’s KATU.com features Simple.

UK’s KashFlow integrates with Tradeshift to enable SMBs who use its cloud-based accounting software.

The Paypers reports: Geezeo enters 2 new partnerships.

VatorNews considers what’s next for Lending Club.

Cachet Financial Solutions partners with Volunteer Corporate to provide mobile RDC to their 325 member CUs.

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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PFMs Are Top Browser “Money” Plugins for Google Chrome

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 24, 2013
Categories: Desktop Presence, Google, Personal Financial Management

While they are overshadowed by the hundreds of thousands of mobile apps, there is a growing eco-system of plugins and apps for use with desktop browsers. I recently poked around in the Money section of Google’s Chrome Web Store.

Not surprisingly, Google Finance was the most popular with almost 300,000 users. Mint was second at about half that (160,000 users). No one else was close (see table below).

Of the top 11 money plugins, six were PFMs: Mint, Finance 41, CashBase, PocketSmith, Easy Envelope Budget, and Toshl. Four were investing related, and Zillow tracks residential real estate (note 1).

One surprise: There was just one U.S. financial in the store. BofA? Fidelity? PayPal? No, it was Mountain America Credit Union (screenshot below). There were several international financial institutions in the store as well (Maybank, BBVA, Bradesco).

Bottom line: With 700,000 total users across the top-11 apps, this is a niche market so far, and could remain that way. But interestingly, it’s another place where Mint dominates.

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Table: 11 Most Popular Chrome Extension
in the “Money” Category

Name	Users	Type
1. Google Finance	283,000	Investing
2. Mint	161,000	PFM
3. Zillow	49,000	Real estate
4. Finance 41	41,000	PFM
5. Cash Base	35,000	PFM
6t. Pocketsmith	34,000	PFM
6t. Wikinvest	34,000	Investing
8. WealthLift	28,000	Investing
9. Free Stock Charts	20,000	Investing
10. Easy Envelope Budget	18,000	PFM
11. Toshl	15,000	PFM
TOTAL	710,000	—

Source: Google, 18 Jan 2013

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Mountain American Credit Union extension for Google Chrome browser (link)
Note: The app currently has 127 users

PFM Toshl featured in the Google Chrome Web Store (link, 18 Jan 2013)
Third-party PFM Toshl was one of the featured apps in the broader Lifestyle Category. They have about 15,000 users, making it the 10th most popular app in the Money category.

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Notes:
1. And Finovate alums are well represented. In addition to Mint, Pocketsmith and Wikinvest, BillGuard, FutureAdvisor, Xero, ImpulseSave and SmartyPig (previous post) have plugins.
2. For our take on PFMs, see our May 2010 Online Banking Report (subscription).

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New TradeKing Finds Focus in Customer-First Mindset

By David Penn Posted on January 24, 2013
Categories: TradeKing

When TradeKing met Zecco, and the two online brokerages merged last year, the big question was whether or not the whole would be more than merely the sum of its parts.

Based on a review of where the “new” TradeKing stands at the beginning of 2013, the answer seems to be an ever-less-qualified “yes.”

The combined entity now boasts more than 500,000 total accounts, making TradeKing the sixth largest online brokerage. And once known primarily for its “disruptive” approach to the industry due to its low and transparent pricing strategy, TradeKing now has the opportunity to impress a whole new cohort of traders and investors with its customer service and investor education resources, as well.

Here’s a look at what TradeKing has accomplished as of the end of 2012:

Earned a four-star ranking for six years in a row in Barron’s Online Broker Survey
Voted #1 for customer service for the fourth time in the SmartMoney annual broker survey
The number of daily users of TradeKing LIVE has doubled since the Zecco acquisition
More than 49% of TradeKing’s registered representatives have FINRA Series 4 licenses
More than 50% of TradeKing’s registered reps have Series 24 licenses
TradeKing has hosted more than 60 live educational events for accountholders, with more than 8,000 total attendees

To that last point, TradeKing clients have watched more than 280 of the brokerage’s educational videos for more than 15,000 hours of watching and more than 57,000 total views.

TradeKing also announced that its trading platform now includes streaming charts, enhanced options functionality (including strategy recognition) and real-time, intraday updates. The company has also unveiled TradeKing Forex, which allows clients to trade more than 50 currency pairs, plus gold and silver, as well as provides access to charting tools, trader education, and actionable research.

Both TradeKing and Zecco made their Finvoate debuts back in 2008 at FinovateSpring.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 24, 2013

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 24, 2013
Categories: Access Development, Bazaarvoice, BBVA, Boku, Credit Agricole, Credit.com, Keynote DeviceAnywhere, peerTransfer, SecondMarket, TASCET, True Office, TSYS

The WSJ looks at angel investing via SecondMarket.

BOKU announces mobile payments partnership with U.S. Cellular.

In 4Q 2012, peerTransfer partnered with 51 schools. Over 25% of international students in the U.S. can pay their education expenses using peerTransfer.

TSYS announces partnership with Priority Payment Systems.

Jim Offerdahl appointed as new Bazaarvoice CFO.

Credit Agricole is the first bank in Portugal to provide contactless cards. See their demo at FinovateEurope in February!

Keynote offers free mobile testing via DeviceAnywhere.

American Banker reports: Iowa Bank Creates Digital Identities from Fingerprints & Photos using TASCET’s Financial ICONN software.

VentureBeat reports BBVA pools $100 million fund to invest in fintech startups. Come see BBVA’s live demo at FinovateEurope.

Credit.com announces “best balance transfer card” as part of Best Credit Cards in America series.

TrueOffice announces $3 million raised in Series A financing. Catch their demo at FinovateEurope in February.

Access Development launches “Savings Across America” customer incentive product.

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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Pageonce Handling $1 Million per Day in Mobile Bill Payments

By David Penn Posted on January 23, 2013
Categories: Pageonce

You may or may not want to send money to friends and family. But sooner or later, we’ve all got bills to pay.

And betting on the latter is paying off for mobile payment company, Pageonce.

Here are the key items from the company’s recent announcement as reported in TechCrunch:

Processing $1 million in mobile bill payments every day
Expecting an annual payment volume run-rate of $1 billion by the middle of 2013
Reached a 30% month-over-month growth in payment volume

Source: TechCrunch

Pageonce has more than 7.5 million users and 6,000 billers. The company’s mobile bill payment operation began a year ago. An upgrade last November added new features such as File Cabinet and Scheduled Payments.

With more than 50 employees, Pageonce has raised more than $20 million in venture funding capital. They demoed at FinovateSpring 2010.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 23, 2013

By David Penn Posted on January 23, 2013
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Bazaarvoice, Bill.com, DemystData, Dwolla, Expensify, EZBOB, Fiserv, Holvi, Intuit, LearnVest, Monitise, Pageonce, SimpleTuition, Temenos, TradeKing, Tradeshift

Temenos wins praise as “top advisor solution” from Aite Group. Come see their demo at FinovateEurope in February!

Spredfast announces Bazaarvoice integration.

Pageonce reaches $1 million mark in daily mobile bill payments processed.

A look at TradeKing after the merger.

ACI Worldwide‘s Money Transfer System helps FIs with Dodd-Frank compliance.

EZBOB forms partnership with ChannelGrabber. Watch EZBOB in action at FinovateEurope!

Monitise and CGI Logica form mobile FS alliance to target European retail banks.

Tradeshift partners with Intuit to bring its social invoicing platform to more than 5m QuickBooks users.

American Banker reports: Fiserv extends relationship with BofA. Come to FinovateEurope in London to see its live demo.

CNBC talks with Alexa Von Tobel, LearnVest CEO.

Bill.com and Expensify announce product integration.

GrowthBusiness profiles Holvi. Comes see Holvi’s new tech at FinovateEurope next month.

Fast Company reports you can now pay taxes in Iowa using Dwolla.

SimpleTuition reports 2012 success metrics for SmarterBucks program.

DemystData a finalist in AWS Global Startup Challenge.

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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FinovateEurope 2013 Sneak Peek: Part 2

By David Penn Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: Backbase, Biletu, Birdback, FinovateEurope 2013, Heckyl Technologies, Holvi, Kalypton, mBank & Efigence, Metaforic, Pockets United, rplan, SumUp

Here’s part 2 of the sneak peek of the companies that will demo at FinovateEurope on February 12 and 13 in London.

Each company provided a short summary of the innovation they will debut on stage. We published 27 last week and we will complete the preview next week.

Don’t miss the opportunity to experience the hottest innovations in financial technology. Get your FinovateEurope ticket here.

______________________________________________

Backbase

Digital Marketing professionals can use Backbase purely for digital marketing purposes: e.g. collecting user behavior and running campaigns in specific sections of existing websites and platforms, then assigning certain areas where Backbase collects data and shows campaigns.

With Backbase you can now start small. Just embed in your existing site and expand from there, creating a full cross-device user experience platform.

Innovation type: Marketing, mobile, online

Heckyl Technologies

Heckyl FIND (Financial In News & Data) is real time news and data analytics platform for retail traders and brokerages.

FIND is integrated with trading terminals to provide high quality information, visuals, heat maps of sentiment and market data to help traders find trading opportunities in this fast moving market.

FIND helps you explore new ideas and keep pulse on current business events/issues. Whether you are a short term trader, investor, or fund manager – whether you prefer equities, futures and options, forex or commodities – you will find a wealth of information that matters to you streaming at your fingertips.

Innovation type: Investing & asset management, online

Holvi

Holvi is the long tail of retail banking. It changes the whole concept of the bank account from a passive utility to an active enabler of any activity. Out-of-the-box Holvi comes with built-in payment acceptance, tools for financial understanding and the ability to share it with a group. We bring in building blocks from our banking and payments partners that our customers can add to their Holvi accounts.

Holvi is used by small businesses, non-profit organisations, projects and individuals. Holvi is regulated by the FIN-FSA and is located in Finland. Holvi is launching Europe-wide in 2013.

Innovation type: Online, payments small business

Kalypton

Point solutions for payments? Why limit yourself? Proven at scale in Africa, Tereon is a complete payments ecosystem and toolkit designed to support rapid innovation.

With Tereon, you can implement any number of innovative products and payment services, be they point solutions or new networks. You can support any business logic, and you can use existing core systems and settlement processes to provide secure, inter-operable, account-to-account, payments that meet stringent regulatory standards.

We will demonstrate a four-party deployment that supports payments from phone to phone, phone to card terminal, card to terminal and on-line in multiple currencies.

Innovation type: Banking

Metaforic

Metaforic has a product that protects mobile applications from unauthorized changes and subversion of the existing code. In effect, by using our solution, the financial institution has control over what the application does if it is compromised. It can quit, display a message, send a silent security alert to bank servers or any other behavior the developer cares to define.

For financial institutions that have a lot of mobile developments underway, Metaforic technology can be integrated with existing developments at the end of the software development lifecycle. This technology is an automatic process not requiring significant developer time or security expertise.

Innovation type: Security

Pockets United

Pockets United occupies a hot space: carriers see their business threatened by all-encompasing data flats, while traditional banks and credit card companies see payment shifting to mobile devices – whose users are owned by the carriers, ultimately leaving both seeking for differentiators.

BAM! ‘Social’ is the next big thing in mobile payments, yet it is not easy to implement for existing PSPs or banks. A category killer in this field must be social by design.

Think of us as Paypal, just with a lot more pal – and get excited about a cutting-edge user experience that is fun to use day after day! Because, after all, dividing expenses should lower the burden for all, not cause additional effort for some.

Innovation type: Mobile, payments, PFM

rplan

Investing can be time-consuming. rplan has created a simple, easy-to-use tool to create your own personal investment portfolio from over 2,400 available investments to find the ones best suited to you.

rplan is for customers who want choice, but who don’t want to become finance specialists just to manage their investments – because there are better things to do in life than researching mutual funds.

Innovation
type: Investing & asset management, online, PFM

SumUp

SumUp’s vision is to change commerce on a global scale starting with a real and existing payments problem.

Today, millions of small businesses are missing out on customers because they cannot accept card payments due to high fees and long contract durations. SumUp offers the easiest way for small businesses to accept card payments.

Using only a portable card reader and an app for iOS and Android, merchants can accept card payments on their mobile device, with a transparent fee of only 2.75% per transaction.

SumUp will demo a new cashless point-of-sale solution that will radically simplify the way people pay in every day life.

Innovation type: Cards, mobile, payments, rewards

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Mobile Wallet Providers Woo Retailers at Annual Convention

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: Google, Mobile Payments, PayPal, Wal-Mart, Wallets

Last week I was just at ground zero of the mobile wallet battle, the National Retail Federation annual convention in NYC. It was a great opportunity to see what the folks from MCX, ISIS, PayPal and Google were telling the audience of 25,000+ retailers.

No one has won the war, but a few winners emerged at the skirmishes I witnessed:

Best Tradeshow Branding: ISIS absolutely owned the show in terms of branded impressions. They had their name on the bags (inset), on the registration desk, at two lounges and at their purple booth. Congrats to its Seattle-based marketing/PR team who made quite a splash with that six-figure buy.
Best Product Launch: Google was the only one of the four which launched a new product, its digital coupon/POS initiative, Zavers. The new service isn’t solely a mobile wallet, and the Google Wallet is a key piece of enabling technology. Although its booth was buried in the back, Google had a lot of traffic when I stopped by on day two.
Best Partnering: PayPal was the clear winner, announcing a huge partnership with NCR. (NCR, which owned the front of the show floor, seemed to have a huge buzz going at all times, and I don’t think it was a coincidence that the color scheme of the whole show seemed to revolve around the NCR booth). See the post at our Finovate blog for a summary of the deal making.
Retailer BFF award: The MCX panel featured execs from Walmart, Gap Inc., Lowe’s, Dunkin Donuts, and WaWa doing some serious bonding for an hour. It made me want to become a retailer, just so I could join MCX. It was impressive.
AWOL award: The bank networks, Visa and MasterCard, had virtually no presence, neither exhibiting nor speaking. Square was not represented either, unless you count the keynote by Howard Schultz of Starbucks, which owns a small chunk of the startup.

Bottom line: Things are still wide open and it’s impossible to see the winners yet to emerge. Silicon Valley remains enthralled with Square (which is partly owned by Visa), valuing it at around USD3 billion. NFC technology is hotly debated, and so far ignored by Apple, PayPal and MCX. There are 280 mobile payment startups hoping to become relevant. And all eyes are on PayPal and Google to further their partnerships with Discover.

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PayNearMe Raises $10 Million in Series D Funding, Launches Express Merchant On-Boarding Option

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: PayNearMe

Today, cash payment network PayNearMe announced a $10 million round of funding along with the launch of a self-service Express option for merchants.

Funding
August Capital led the $10 million Series D round, bringing the company’s total funding to $30 million. Existing investors Khosla Ventures, Maveron, and True Ventures also participated.

Express option
The new Express option for merchants is offered alongside Pro and Custom accounts that each provide different levels of service, including API access and receipt customization, as seen in the chart below.

Along with a lower price tag, the Express option also benefits merchants by requiring less backend integration, so they can begin using the service in less than an hour without the help of IT staff. Setup requires banking information and unique data about each customer, such as customer number and address.

The new Express option opens the possibility for PayNearMe to serve a large number of small merchant accounts, as opposed to just a handful of large accounts, such as existing clients Greyhound and H&R Block.

2013 plans
From 2011 to 2012, the San Francisco-based company tripled its volume. BetaKit adds that, for 2013, PayNearMe plans to expand beyond its 7,000 7-Eleven stores and 1,600 ACE Cash Express stores to add more partner retailers, likely more convenience stores. Also, it aims to support more small, ecommerce retailers.

To learn more about PayNearMe, watch its FinovateFall 2011 demo.

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Prosper Announces New CEO, $20 Million in New Financing

By David Penn Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: Prosper

Major new executive-level changes and a big financing round have U.S. peer-to-peer lending pioneer Prosper starting off 2013 with a bang.

Stephan Vermut will be taking over as chief executive officer. The company will also separate the president and CEO roles, and appoint Aaron Vermut to the former position.

Both Stephan and Aaron, as well as new addition Ron Suber who will serve as Head of Global Institutional Sales, previously worked together at Merlin Securities, a brokerage firm acquired by Wells Fargo last summer. Stephan was founder and managing partner of the firm.

The funding comes courtesy of venture capital heavyweight Sequoia Capital. The VC firm led the $20 million round, along with all Prosper’s current crop of investors. More information on the P2P lender’s investors is here.

This latest round of funding brings the company’s total to $95 in venture capital raised.

Prosper has more than 1.5 million members and more than $400 million in funded loans. The company demoed with Finovate as part of Finovate Startup 2009

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Bridge Community Bank Becomes First in the U.S. to Adopt TASCET’s Financial ICONN

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: TASCET

Identity verification expert TASCET announced today that Bridge Community Bank has become the first bank in the U.S. to adopt its Financial ICONN solution.

Account holders at the Iowa-based bank can request their own Financial ICONN at the bank’s three locations:

Mount Vernon
Solon
Mechanicsville

To take advantage of Financial ICONN, a customer must provide their name, address, date and country of birth, gender, two Fingerproofs and a Faceproof. Using this data, Financial ICONN assigns the consumer a Financial Security Number that is used for authentication in future transactions.

To learn more about TASCET, watch its FinovateSpring 2012 demo.

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