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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.

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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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Finovate Alumni News– January 22, 2013

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 22, 2013
Categories: Comarch, Corduro, Dwolla, EZBOB, Fenergo, SmartyPig, Standard Chartered Bank, TASCET

Netbanker reports: SmartyPig Launches OneClick, Goal-Based Savings Account Browser Plugin.

Bridge Community Bank becomes first in the U.S. to adopt TASCET’s Financial ICONN.

EZBOB offering interest-only small business loans to online merchants.

Fenergo‘s FATCA solution featured in Datamonitor.

ING BusinessMobile for iOS and Android leverages Comarch Mobile Banking.

Corduro wins partnership, investment from Shopforbags.com.

Standard Chartered Bank launches “Remote Causes” to promote charitable giving through Internet Banking.

Ribbit Capital initiates $100 million venture capital fund.

Dwolla brings government payments partnership to Iowa.

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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Paypal Partners with NCR and Expands Retail Presence

By David Penn Posted on January 21, 2013
Categories: PayPal

When payments companies go to sleep at night, do they dream of Paypal?

Paypal’s latest headline-making move is a deal with NCR that will allow restaurant shoppers to take care of their bill using their Paypal account. This comes courtesy of NCR’s new mobile payment app, Mobile Pay, launched in December.

In addition to making it easier for consumers to pay the tab (re-order drinks and opine on their evening out via social media), Mobile Pay eventually will allow patrons to place orders from their mobile devices.

There’s more to the partnership than a good meal at a nice restaurant, however. The plan is to further integrate Paypal into other NCR products, such as Convenience-Go and Netkey Endless Aisle. Convenience-Go is an app geared toward gas stations, mini-marts, and convenience stores. The Netkey Endless Aisle app is a digital companion for in-store shopping.

How big of a deal is this for Paypal? Here are a few facts and figures about NCR:

It has 1.2 million point-of-sale systems deployed by retailers
Its Aloha point-of-sale system is used by more than 60,000 restaurants
It has deployed more than 100,000 self-checkout kiosks at retailers
It is used by more than a third of the top 100 U.S. restaurant chains.

This is far from Paypal’s only foray into the food business.The company is testing a mobile, pre-order app in 30 McDonald’s locations in France. The system allows consumers to order meals ahead of time and pay online. The company is currently testing a similar system with Jamba Juice in the U.S.

Paypal, Retail, and Putting the Shopping Back into Window Shopping

Paypal continues to prove itself more than capable of playing well with others. The company announced new brick and mortar partners in Radio Shack and Dollar General, adding to a roster that already includes a variety of retailers from Aeropostale to Tiger Direct.

With 23 retailers on board nationally as of the end of 2012 Paypal’s in-store technology allows shoppers to make payments via a PIN code or a Paypal credit card. One significant attraction of the new technology is that it does not require merchants to swap out their existing payments infrastructure.

And while Paypal has no professed interest in moving merchants away from their current POS systems, the company continues to compete aggressively against traditional credit cards and other mobile payment systems.

In fact, as reported late last year, Paypal is experimenting in Amsterdam with a QR code strategy to really put the “shopping” in “window shopping.” When fully implemented, window shoppers will be able to scan and order items they spot in store windows and have them delivered to their homes.

Paypal By the Numbers

Forecast $10 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012
Has more than 100 million active accounts
Provides in-store service at 23 national retailers and 18,000 brick-and-mortar stores
Plan to have Discover Financial Systems merchant locations accept Paypal payments by Spring 2013

See Paypal’s most recent Finovate demo here.

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SmartyPig Launches OneClick, Goal-Based Savings Account Browser Plugin

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 21, 2013
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Desktop Presence, SmartyPig

It’s not easy making savings accounts sexy, but Social Money, with its GoalSaver and SmartyPig brands, is trying. The latest innovation? A Google Chrome browser extension called SmartyPig OneClick (link), that allows users to create savings goals on the fly while shopping online.

The service launched last week and can be found in the Extensions: Shopping section of the Chrome app store. The app has 30 users according to stats displayed in the store. In comparison, the most popular shopping extension, from Amazon, has more than 600,000 users.

The SmartyPig OneClick system can be licensed by banks looking to juice their savings account feature set.

How it works
1. Install from Google Play app-store (see screenshot 1 below)

2. A SmartyPig icon is added to the upper right of the browser (see inset)

3. When shopping online (at any website), users click on the SmartyPig icon in the upper right, which launches a popup (screenshot 2)

4. After logging in (screenshot 3), users establish a goal and automatic savings plan to fund the purchase of the desired item (screenshots 4 & 5). SmartyPig automatically imports the item’s price and image and stores it for the user at SmartyPig.com.

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Analysis
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Goal-based savings is an important feature to add to online banking (note 1). And shopping helpers are a relatively popular browser extension (Amazon’s Chrome extension has 600,000 users). So marrying the two is an interesting play.

Will this boost savings-account balances? Perhaps a little. But the more important FI benefit is getting a branded button in the corner of the user’s browser (whether anyone will remember it’s there is another matter). That’s a bit of a Trojan Horse that can be used for a variety of services (note 2).

Bottom line: I like SmartyPig’s move. Smartphones have conditioned users to look for specialized apps. I believe consumers will use full-featured online banking via direct desktop links (see also Mint’s QuickView). Although, it will take education and marketing support.

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1. Installing browser extensions is a painless process (Chrome store link)
Note: Users must allow SmartyPig to “access your data on all websites” and “access your tabs and browsing activity.” The first one is likely to give users pause.

2. Creating a goal on the fly while shopping

3. Login to SmartyPig via popup box

4. Confirm the savings goal

5. Customize the savings goal

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Notes:
1. For more info, see our Online Banking Report (Nov. 2008, subscription) detailing various ways to leverage your online/mobile channel to boost deposits.
2. Long ago, we wrote a report (Aug 2002, subscription) on ways to put your bank onto the computer desktop. The strategy is still the same, though the specific techniques are somewhat different today.

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Finovate Alumni News– January 21, 2013

By David Penn Posted on January 21, 2013
Categories: ACI Worldwide, BBVA, Credit.com, Dwolla, Lending Club, Movenbank, Pageonce, SafetyPay

Android Does takes a look at the latest update to Pageonce Money & Bills app.

ACI Wordwide announces winners of its Excellence Award for 2013.

Forbes considers Movenbank’s view of online reputation. See Movenbank demo live at FinovateEurope February 12 and 13.

The Des Moines Register takes an inside look at Ben Milne’s thoughts on the future of Dwolla.

SafetyPay announces record growth: Number of transactions in 2012 increased 149% over 2011, the dollar value of transactions increased by 88.5% in 2012 over 2011.

BBVA announces mobile RDC for iPhone. Come see BBVA demo its new tech at FinovateEurope in London.

Lending Club issues the 100,000th loan on its lending platform.

Credit.com‘s “Credit Cards” app now available on Google Play.

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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BankersLab Launches New Android App to Support ScoringLab

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 18, 2013
Categories: BankersLab

BankersLab, the company that gamifies training for bankers, recently launched a new Android app, Banc-it: Scoring Edition.

The app supports ScoringLab, a training product intended to help bankers improve their knowledge of credit risk scores. The gamification aspect of the app increases user engagement for an effective training experience.

Banc-it, the new app, tests users’ knowledge of:

Credit scoring data
Credit score usage
Model development
Credit monitoring

The app, priced at $4.99, is available for Android devices in the Google Play store. BankersLab will release the iOS version next month.

To learn more about BankersLab, watch its FinovateAsia 2012 demo.

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Angel Investing Round Earns Azimo £300,000

By David Penn Posted on January 18, 2013
Categories: Azimo

Money transfer start-up Azimo is beginning the year with positive news on the funding front. The company just announced £300,00 ($480,000 USD) in angel investment.

Although the complete list of investors is undisclosed, among them is Matt Cooper according to reporting in The Next Web. Cooper is chairman of Octopus Investments. Before that, he was principal managing director of Capital One Bank.

Based in the U.K., Azimo serves the growing population of foreign-born residents in Great Britain by providing a means to send money to any bank account or to send cash to 150,000 locations around the world. Azimo processes payments faster than banks traditionally do – between 2 and 24 hours compared to three to five days – and launched its mobile app last September.

See Azimo in action at FinovateEurope in February. More information available here.

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