Come see the future of global financial technology debut live at FinovateAsia and FinovateEurope!

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Over the next few months, we’re very excited to be organizing not just one, but two showcases of the best new global financial and banking technology innovations.

First, on November 6 (that’s less than 3 weeks away!), we’re holding our first FinovateAsia in Singapore. Thanks to the help of our awesome sponsors & partners, we have a top-quality audience gathering to watch 36 cutting-edge companies debut their latest innovations. Tickets are still available but going fast so please register today to lock in your seat! 

btn1_ov.pngAfter FinovateAsia, our focus will shift to London in February 2013 where we are running our 3rd annual FinovateEurope to showcase the best new fintech innovations from and for the European market.

This year, we’ve expanded the conference to two days to be able to put even more interesting ideas and companies on stage. Judging from the early flood of high-quality applications and ticket sales, it promises to be our biggest and best European event ever.

If you’re interested in doing a demo in London, please email us at europe@finovate.com. If you’re interested in attending, super-early bird tickets are on sale through this Friday at a significant discount.

We hope you’ll consider joining us at one of these international events to watch the best new global fintech innovations debut live!

Braintree Rakes in $35 Million in Series B Funding

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Yesterday Chicago-based payment platform, Braintreeannounced it raised $35 million in capital.

Contributors to this Series B round include:

    • New Enterprise Associates
    • Accel Partners
    • RRE Ventures
    • Greycroft Partners

The $35 million matches the funds of the Series A round Braintree received in June of last year, bringing its venture funding total to $69 million.

To learn more about Braintree, watch its FinovateSpring 2011 demo.

Finovate Alumni News– October 18, 2012

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgBrightScope adds Dr. Stephen Coggeshall, CTO of ID Analytics, to Advisory Board.
  • Channel News Asia features PlayMoolah.
  • ChannelAdvisor partners with Kabbage to enable retailers to secure funding for e-commerce growth.
  • Fiserv adds features to wealth management platform.
  • The Paypers interivews Andreas Baumhof of ThreatMetrix.
  • The New York Post features SecondMarket.
  • Compliance Week explains how Bolstr enables small business capital ahead of JOBS Act.
  • Digital Money Blog features podcast of Michael Laven of The Currency Cloud.
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.

Alumni Updates from BAI Retail Delivery 2012

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Last week, I attended BAI Retail Delivery in Washington D.C. where over 200 exhibitors lined the trade show floor of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

There were 31 Finovate alums on the expo floor, and even more in attendance. My schedule was packed, but I was able to catch up with a handful of Finovate alums.

Here’s what I learned.

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The card-linked offers company is in the middle of a successful mobile deployment effort with BofA, PNC, Regions, and a few other unnamed FIs. After launching their respective rewards programs on mobile, the FIs have seen an increase in user engagement and an increase in the number of online banking visits per user.

It is also working on International expansion. So far the top 3 European card issuers have signed.

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BofA’s BankAmeriDeals on tablet interface


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BofA’s BankAmeriDeals on iPhone mobile app

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The consumer credit reporting agency recently launched its Insight Score for Retail Banking, a solution that will help FIs generate a risk score for underbanked individuals with no credit data or history. It does this by using non-FI-related payment data from companies like Telco and other TV and cable providers.

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The fintech provider showed me its SpotPay payment dongle and back-end solution. It appears to be Fiserv’s response to Square that it will co-brand with FIs. Fiserv is able to on-board FIs with SpotPay in a couple of days, so it is a quick way for FIs to get into the payments game. 
While there is an $8.95 per month fee, it is competitively priced, charging only a 1.99% fee on a swipe, and a 3.19% fee on card-not-present transactions.

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Fiserv’s SpotPay dongle being used on an iPhone

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Because volume and sophistication of fraud has grown, Guardian Analytics started bank-sourcing (think crowdsourcing) fraud by bringing multiple institutions together to collaborate on the types of fraud they’re seeing so the whole industry will be better at fighting it. Tiffany Riley, Guardian Analytics’ VP of marketing tells me they’ve received positive feedback so far.

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Mobile banking solutions company, mFoundry launched its Fin.X platform. This platform can be thought of as a type of app store for FIs to select which products/services they want to include in their mobile app. 
At BAI, mFoundry announced partnerships with Blackhawk Network, Dwolla, and Micronotes 
to white-label their solutions within the Fin.X platform.
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An example of what the Fin.X app platform could look like on a tablet

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The PFM won CUNA Tech Council’s Best of Show Award at BAI. This counts as its 5th Best of Show award.
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MoneyDesktop team with BAI President & CEO, Deborah Bianucci

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After the mobile money solutions company acquired Clairmail 3 months ago, Monitise now has 17 million active users. It is in trials of an NFC solution with a few banks. The solution uses a sticker as opposed to a chip inside of the actual device.

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The electronic banking solutions provider launched Q2clarity, a tablet-optimized dashboard that provides customizable analytics and visibility to how customers are using an FI’s mobile and online platform. Providing these metrics to a branch manager, gives them the ability to make more informed decisions about which products and services to offer.
These eight companies are just a fraction of what I saw at BAI this year. For more information on who attended the trade show, visit here.

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Finovate Alumni News– October 17, 2012

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgBazaarvoice unveils newest edition of its Bazaarvoice Connections offering.
  • Yodlee Interactive doubles annual growth in its API business.
  • Filene conducts independent review of SaveUp program.
  • GigaOM reports PayPal offers small businesses simple Bill Me Later financing option.
  • Taulia teams with SAP HANA & Amazon Web Services.
  • Equifax introduces EFX Link, advanced customer data integration solution that gives a 360-degree view of customers.
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.

Display Ads in Gmail Morph into Email Ads with One Click

image Evidently, Google has been testing new Gmail ad formats for a year. But yesterday was the first time I’d tested it. It’s a very different experience, one that could be appealing for financial advertisers.

How it works
Yesterday, Lifelock served me a display ad within Gmail. Once you click on it, the ad  morphs into an email (see first screenshot below). It is not only a quick way to evaluate the offering (saving the trip to a web-based landing page), but also allows users to treat the ad like an email by saving it to the inbox, forwarding it, or dismissing the ad forever (the action items run above the message).

If you choose “Save to Inbox” the message shows up in the Everything Else category as a message from yourself (see second screenshot). At that point it’s just like any other message and can be flagged, archived, forwarded or deleted.

Bottom line: The ad format could make offers more sticky. It’s a promising model for financial products, which are usually not quick, spur-of-the- moment purchases. It’s worth testing anyway, if you have a big enough customer base using Gmail.

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Lifelock display ad in Gmail opens up into an embedded email (16 Oct 2012)

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Once saved in the inbox, the ad shows up under “Everything Else” as a message from yourself

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Lifelock landing page (after clicking on Join Lifelock Now) in email ad

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FinovateAsia 2012 Sneak Peek: Part 1

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For our first ever FinovateAsia conference, we’ve selected 36 leading innovators to take the stage in Singapore on November 6.
Each company provided a sneak peek of what they’ll demo next month. Below is the first installment of these teasers. We’ll have more next week.
Don’t miss your chance to see the live demo from each company and be a part of our inaugural FinovateAsia conference. Get your ticket here.
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Airline pilots train in flight simulators, known to be one of the most effective training methods. After the financial crisis, isn’t it about time your risk managers have access to the best training techniques?
BankersLab offers training products designed to enhance a banker’s ability to develop and test strategies in a range of real-world market conditions. Utilizing a blended learning model, BankersLab integrates numerical simulations, scenario games, the gamified classroom, and m-learning for optimal understanding and knowledge retention. 
BankersLab’s comprehensive suite of products suits all skill levels; ensuring your teams are the best trained in the industry.
Innovation type: Cards, lending, payments

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BellaDati launches BellaDati agile analytics and reporting cloud tool for financial data analysis. 
BellaDati reinvents the way business users can interact with data. BellaDati will introduce features like GEO analytics, mobile reporting BellaDati Piccolo or social network for business data analysis. All this topped with easy connectivity to various data sources. Stay tuned to the new wave of business analytics inspired by gorgeous Isola Bella island located close to the Sicilian coast. 
Innovation type: Back office, mobile, sales

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Bank lending to thin-and no-file small businesses in emerging markets is a billion dollar opportunity – yet traditional lending requirements make it inefficient and expensive. EFL’s Credit Screening Tool, which uses non-traditional data such as psychometric principles that statistically relate entrepreneurial qualities such as intellect, business acumen, ethics, attitudes and beliefs to credit screening, makes lending scalable and profitable. 
EFL will show how seamlessly its partners have integrated Credit Scoring Tool to their existing lending processes to increase their loan portfolios by over 100% and decrease defaults by over 40%.

Innovation type: Banking, identity, lending

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Fiserv will demonstrate its world leading mobile banking platform – Mobiliti – used by over 1,000 banks and credit unions around the world. The focus on the demo will be on Mobiliti Reach – a product to help banks profit from servicing underbanked and unbanked market segments.
Innovation type: Back office, mobile, payments

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Heckyl FIND is a simple and yet powerful platform which integrates real time news, analytic, and sentiment mining in your trading terminals.
Heckyl FIND provides the first and a very powerful enterprise social trading terminal enabling your analyst to collaborate in real time with Traders, exchange great ideas, trading insights and empower your Traders with all the information to take the next action, here on Heckyl Dashboard.
Heckyl FIND is exclusively for financial institutions, brokerages and the trading community to get access to real time trading ideas, research reports, economic alerts and much more.

Innovation type: Investing, online UI, PFM

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Innovation Café is an advanced crowdsourcing innovation platform for companies to engage their innovation communities. It is highly configurable and able to provide for both private and public ecologies, as well as emergent and structured innovation approaches. 
Innovation Café is a lightweight platform with advanced white labeling, and custom theme capabilities. It has the ability to integrate with different systems and provide detailed reporting. Crowdsourcing and community collaboration are used to focus the attention on business objectives, enhanced through idea challenges.

Innovation type: Banking, mobile, online

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Get peace of mind knowing that your company’s financial mobile app is secure. Metaforic technology stops malware and hackers in their tracks. See live, an attempted malware attack on a mobile app and the technology that st
ops it.
Innovation type: Security

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With fewer people going to branches due to the convenience of internet, it weakens banks’ ability to acquire, develop a face-to-face personal relationship and recommend relevant products to their customers. 
Users are also spending very little time on internet banking due to a very transactional “touch-and-go” behavior. So how do you get the right customized products to the right customer at a time when they most need it?
Innovation type: Marketing, PFM, rewards

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Sandstone will be showcasing its ‘next generation’ consumer banking solution combining internet and mobile banking, personal financial management and loan origination capabilities to form a powerful end-to-end customer acquisition and retention tool.
Building on the “anytime, anywhere” capabilities of emerging tablet and smart phone platforms, Sandstone will show how consumers can interact with their bank for a range of integrated banking services.
For example, we will demonstrate the customer’s experience of finding and purchasing a new home, including property suggestions based on their savings, property selection, valuation, credit assessment and loan approval – all in real time from any device
Innovation type: Lending, marketing, PFM

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Strands Finance is presenting new “What If” functionality that takes PFM historical data and makes it relevant for the future. Users will gain greater insight and control of their financial health with little to no effort. 
For banks, the data is invaluable to better advise their customers. Strands has developed and leveraged pattern identification algorithms that help model future scenarios and the impact to the user’s short-term cash flow to long-term net worth.
Innovation type: Mobile, online, PFM

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The 21st century customer is all about the experience. 
To be ahead of competition, retailers and banks need to drive revenue through new channels and differentiate themselves through unique customer experiences to build loyalty. With the combination of time, relevance, and behavior, TIBCO offers an integrated solution linking the end-users, retailers and banks – anytime, anywhere.
Innovation type: Mobile, payments, rewards

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Wipro will debut its Wipro SmartOffers solution at FinovateAsia 2012. The innovation provides bank customers with Digital Offers which can be redeemed at merchants for availing benefits/discounts at the time of purchase. These offers may be merchant-or-bank-funded at the bank’s preference. 
The solution is different from the aggregator-centric models currently in practice in the market, championing the bank centric offer model. Wipro’s solution gives the power back to the banks, by making them the center of the Digital Offers Universe. By making the entire offer landscape bank-centric, banks reap the benefits hereto left for aggregators.
Innovation type: Banking, rewards

Finovate Alumni News– October 16, 2012

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgArctic Startup reports: Holvi’s Banking Service Used To Provide Open Budgets For Political Campaigners.
  • VentureBeat features BankersLab’s new CollectionLab simulation game.
  • Team Capital Bank partners with SecondMarket.
  • InComm acquires On-Line Strategies, a software & services company.
  • AT&T signs a multi-year, sole provider agreement for Fiserv’s CheckFreePay walk-in bill payment service.
  • Australian IT reports MyCyberTwin plans to expand into mass uptake market after setting out to prove itself in the enterprise sector.
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 Alumni News– October 15, 2012

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgTradeshift announces strategic partnership with PrimeRevenue SCF.
  • Thomson Reuters launches mobile web app for investor relations.
  • CashStar and Comet launch UK’s first comprehensive eGift card program.
  • PaySimple appoints former PayPal employee Andrew Lanthier as CTO.
  • Upstart Business Journal looks at the approach Kabbage and Lighter Capital take on small business financing.
  • Q2ebanking introduces Q2clarity, customizable analytics across mobile, online and security platform.
  • Barron’s recommends using findabetterbank.com to cut bank fees.
  • City AM reports Monitise user numbers quadrupled in the last year to 17m.
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.

Finovate Alumni News– October 12, 2012

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgIDentity Theft 911 to offer Humana members ID management & credit monitoring services.
  • ThreatMetrix honored as bronze winner in the 4th annual 2012 Golden Bridge Awards.
  • Euromoney looks at SoMoLend as a funding alternative.
  • ReadyForZero answers questions about debt on Lifehacker.
  • Geezeo opens API to third party developers.
  • Monitise CFO John Brougham retires.
  • Finsphere issued 4th patent.
  • TIO transforms bill pay options for growing Hispanic marketplace through partnership with Progreso Financiero.
  • Arroweye Solutions’ digital tech powers growth at GiftCard.com.
  • Allied Wallet partners with Swedish e-commerce payment services provider Klarna.
  • Janrain and Bazaarvoice team to enhance social shopping experience via social login.
  • Pageonce and Blackstone Tech Group partner to bring utility companies a mobile payment option for customers.
  • Idaho Central CU launches RDC powered by MShift.
  • MyBankTracker reports Fifth Third Bank Statements Now Available on Manilla.
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.

American Express Now Serves Walmart with Bluebird Prepaid Card

image Wow, the national press jumped all over the American Express and Walmart partnership to sell/service the Amex-branded Bluebird prepaid card nationwide (882 articles linked from Google news).

Analysts waxed eloquent about how Walmart is building out its “banking” services and how much cheaper the prepaid card is compared to a checking account.

But in fact, there will be little impact on Walmart shoppers, who can already buy a similar Walmart-branded prepaid Visa card in its stores. And that Green Dot-powered Moneycard will continue to be available, though it sounds like Bluebird could get more prominence. But that will depend on which company is paying the highest slotting fees/revenue share. 

But what almost all the press coverage overlooks is that Bluebird is only good at locations that accept American Express (4.5 mil in US), whereas the Green Dot card is good anywhere Visa is accepted (8 mil in US). While most major retailers take both (note 1), that’s still a huge difference in value for many Walmart customers.

Look at the current Walmart financial services menu (pre-Bluebird). It already offers every money-handling service under the sun, including a general purpose reloadable prepaid card with no fees for heavy users (see screenshot below).

Walmart MoneyCenter homepage (9 Oct 2012)

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Pricing for both the Amex Bluebird (inset) and Visa MoneyCard are low (see below). The main difference is that BlueBird eliminated monthly fees, while MoneyCard charges $3 per month for anyone who loads less than $1000.

Bottom line: Amex got amazing press out of the deal that should help establish it as a leader in prepaid. But it’s a real unknown how many Walmart shoppers want to carry around an Amex card with less merchant acceptance.

I think it may even cause quite a bit of confusion in-store if the BlueBird card is pushed ahead of the Green Dot version.

And while American Express seems to have made important in-roads, it’s not possible to assess the ROI since we do not know how much it is paying Walmart for the distribution deal.

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Current MoneyCard fees (9 Oct 2012)
Note: Monthly fee is waived for those loading at least $1000 per month to the card

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Notes:
1. Costco takes only American Express, so score one for Bluebird.
2. Customers involved in the Bluebird pilot (sold this year at 80 western U.S. Walmarts) must close their old account prior to 8 Dec 2012 and open a new one. The company is offering a $20 bonus to cover the hassle (link).
3. Amex acquired the website Bluebird.com which currently redirects to BlueBirdMoney.com. A greeting card company operates BlueBirdCards.com, which currently ranks high on Google, but will get crushed by BlueBird.com once the product launches nationwide.