Bento for Business Archives - Page 3 of 3

Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on December 1, 2015
Categories: Arxan Technologies, Bento for Business, BillGuard, DocuSign, Equifax, eWise, Expensify, EyeVerify, InComm, Insuritas, Jack Henry, Ledger, ProfitStars, Prosper, Spotcap, Tradier, TransferTo, Zopa

On Finovate.com

“Prosper’s BillGuard Unlocks Premium Features for All Users.

“Zopa Partners with Equifax, Boosting its Risk-profiling Capabilities”

Around the web

Ledger launches developer edition of hardware wallet.

Jack Henry’s ProfitStars now has 20+ institutions that have implemented Gladiator Hosted Network Solutions.

RTN FCU to power its insurance agency with Insuritas.

InComm plans Atlanta expansion, will add 200 employees.

TransferTo joins with Continental Money to bring remittance services to Kenya.

Bankless Times features Bento for Business and its solution for helping small businesses control employee spending.

Marx Noctor of Arxan explains the importance of protecting apps “down to the source code” in CBR Online.

Business2Community features Expensify and DocuSign in its list of nine apps to help you run your business on the go. See DocuSign at FinovateEurope 2016 in London.

Adelaide Now profiles small-business lender Spotcap. Join Spotcap in London for FinovateEurope 2016.

Mobile ID World looks at the reception to EyeVerify’s mobile app.

Tradier reaches milestone: 100 financial services firms are now directly integrated with Tradier’s brokerage platform.

eWise reports 2015 growth.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on November 30, 2015
Categories: Arroweye Solutions, BehavioSec, Bento for Business, BioCatch, Comarch, Dealstruck, Dwolla, FIS, Kantox, Klarna, Lendio, Lighter Capital, Markit, Open Bank Project, TESOBE, Zopa

On Finovate.com

“Lighter Capital closes $9 Million Series B Funding Round, Raises $100 Million to Lend to Tech Startups”

“Dwolla Helps Seamless Deploy its Mobile Wallet in the United States”

Around the web

PYMNTS records 2015 payment-trend insights from multiple Finovate and FinDEVr alums.

Arroweye featured in Credit Union Journal.

PSFK features BehavioSec.

Kantox brings free and automatic SWIFT messages to its clients.

Dealstruck and Lendio release eBook.

The Growing Business Awards names Zopa the Growing Business of the Year in the small business category.

PYMNTS features Bento for Business.

American Banker highlights how Tesobe’s Open Bank Project is working toward an API-based banking model.

Markit and CLS unveil new streamlined process for cross-currency-swaps settlement.

Let’s Talk Payments looks at Klarna and its unconventional approach to authentication.

FIS closes SunGard acquisition.

BioCatch adds Gadi Maier and Howard Edelstein to its board of directors.

Comarch implements Field Service Management solution for receivables management specialist, the KRUK Group.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Debuts: Bento Builds Banking Solutions for Small Businesses

By David Penn Posted on June 26, 2015
Categories: Bento for Business, Finovate Debuts

Who is the most underserved community in banking? Immigrants? Millennials? People living in remote or rural areas?

According to Farhan Ahmad, CEO and co-founder of Bento for Business, the answer is: Small business.

“We are solving one of the largest unmet needs in fintech,” Ahmad said, “helping small businesses.” He says that banks want to service small businesses, but “it’s been profitable not to.” For Ahmad, whose company demonstrated its Small Business Prepaid MasterCard last month, small businesses are too important to be overlooked. “Small businesses power economics and culture,” he explained. “We want to work with banks, with service providers, and the like … to curate and build beautiful, simple and most of all useful products that are built just for small businesses.”

Bento CEO Farhan Ahmad demonstrated his card controls for small business technology at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose.

Small business needs are consistent around the world, but it is critical to be able to provide small businesses with the tools and resources they need in exactly the way they need them. “Every small business should build their own Bento box of financial services,” Ahmad said, comparing his company to the Japanese cuisine in which each item in a meal has its own section in a shallow box or tray. And the current product offering at the front of that Bento box is the company’s Business Prepaid Debit Cards.

Prepaid Cards from Bento provide business owners with real-time control over employee spending. Owners can set up individual employee budgets on the cards, or set them up as specific-purpose cards like gas- or travel-expense cards. Cards can be turned on or off with a single click, and the platform provides a dashboard where all of the accounts can be viewed and tracked.

Bento chose the reloadable prepaid card route so that virtually any business can be accepted, and the business owner’s credit is never affected. Ahmad makes a point of saying that while his company’s solutions can work for the tech startups of the world, they are more intended for the sorts of small businesses that don’t make headlines or dream of accessing venture capital. “We’re building a solution for the rest of the world, not just Silicon Valley,” Ahmad said.

The facts:

Founded in January 2014 by Farhan Ahmad, CEO, and Sean Anderson, CPO
Headquartered in San Francisco, California
Raised $2.5 million in seed funding
Has 8 employees
Investors include Anthemis Group, Blumberg Capital, LionBird, and Pivot Investment Partners

How it works

From the “People & Cards” section of the Bento Prepaid MasterCard dashboard (below), company owners can add employees and cards, as well as turn the cards on and off in real time, and set spending limits. Limits can be set by day, week or month, as well as day of the week, and owners can select locations where the card can be used.

The “Account Dashboard” (below) gives the owners an overview of all accounts in a graphic form that is easy to read and easy to manage. Owners can see available balances, total spending, as well as a breakdown of purchases by category. “We give you a full picture,” Ahmad explained. “In one quick glance you can see how much money you are spending, where is it going, and who is spending how much of your money (and) where. A 3- to 5-second glance will tell you everything you need to know about your financial health.”

Owners can move the cursor over any of the data in the graph or table and a small dialogue bubble appears displaying the additional information about the data. Click on a data category like “Operations,” and the user is taken to the Transactions tab (below) for even more detail.

Ahmad points out that the data in the Transactions tab in the Bento platform will help business owners avoid many of the headaches that come with bookkeeping. Owners can create specific tags and leave notes for individual transactions, as well as sort, filter, and group transactions in order to build easy-to-email, print, or export reports.

Bento helps business owners spot and control the kind of small expenses that can amount to huge costs when they go unnoticed for a significant period of time. “One unauthorized cup of coffee a day from 10 employees adds up to more than $6,000 a year,” Ahmad explained. “For a regular small business that only makes $70,000 in income a year, that’s the difference between a family vacation, or not.”

The future

Ahmad has leveraged his experience working in payments at JP Morgan, Discover, and Barclays to create a platform that was “global from day one.” The idea was to build complexity in the backend, with simple controls for the end user. “Transparent and friendly” are how he describes the platform.

Bento is very much looking to partner with banks rather than to compete with them. Ideally, banks who can’t invest in the technology themselves would license the technology from Bento. At the same time, Ahmad is interested in working with companies that offer services to small businesses and even some of his fellow startup alums at Finovate looking for business-operations solutions.

Ahmad said that Bento will probably be launching another “one or two” products in 2015. But the current focus remains on marketing and getting the word out about the Bento Prepaid Commercial MasterCard. “The common thread,” Ahmad said, when asked about what to expect next from Bento, “is anything a business would need from a bank.”

Check out the FinovateSpring 2015 demo video for Bento for Business below:

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on June 26, 2015
Categories: Bento for Business, Betterment, EverSafe, Financial Guard, Global Debt Registry, MaxMyInterest, Nomis Solutions, Personal Capital, Vanguard, Wealthfront, WePay

On Finovate.com

Finovate Debuts: Bento Builds Banking Solutions for Small Businesses

EverSafe and MaxMyInterest Present at Innovation Lab Demo Day in New York

Around the web

Bloomberg Business highlights Betterment, Financial Guard, Personal Capital, Vanguard, and Wealthfront in its look at robo-advisers.

Nomis Solutions teams up with BRG to help FIs improve their mortgage-retention strategies and provide more transparent pricing.

Success Story profiles WePay and its co-founder and CEO, Bill Clerico.

Global Debt Registry wins Stevie Award in the banking category of the American Business Awards.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Bento’s Platform Helps Small Businesses Better Manage and Control Expenses

By David Penn Posted on May 13, 2015
Categories: Bento for Business, FinovateSpring 2015

This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateSpring 2015.

Bento‘s platform enables small businesses to take control of their expenses.

Bento’s first offering, the Bento MasterCard, is a prepaid commercial card solution built just for small businesses. Business owners can set rules by employee, amount, time and category before anyone can spend a dime. Bento cards bear the employee’s name and can be enabled and disabled in a second with just one click. Real-time dashboards enable business owners to see everything in one place and quickly track expenses by place, employee, project, category and more. Bento makes spend management and bookkeeping painless.

Presenters: Farhan Ahmad, CEO and founder, and Sean Anderson, chief product officer and founder

Product Launch: March 2015

Metrics: Raised a seed round of $2.5 million from VCs and private investors; 8 employees and growing
Product distribution strategy: direct to business (B2B), through financial institutions, through other fintech companies and platforms, licensed

HQ: San Francisco, California
Founded: January 2014
Website: bentoforbusiness.com
Twitter: @bentoforbiz

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on April 20, 2015
Categories: AcceptEmail, BBVA, Bento for Business, Betterment, Global Debt Registry, Interactions, Lending Club, Mint Bills, Motif Investing, On Deck Capital, Prosper, WealthForge, Wealthfront, Yoyo

On Finovate.com

Britain’s Second Largest Mobile Wallet, Yoyo, Pulls $10 Million in Funding

Mint Bills Brings Mobile Billpay to One Million Customers of Quester Gas

Global Debt Registry Teams Up with TransUnion to Better Serve Debt Industry

Around the web

Bento for Business founder and CEO weighs in on the future of tech accelerators. See Bento for Business at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose next month.

Global Market Solutions joins the Misys InFusion Partner program.

TechCrunch column on fintech regulation features Lending Club, Motif Investing, Betterment, OnDeck, Wealthfront, Prosper, and WealthForge. Join WealthForge in San Jose for FinovateSpring 2015.

PYMNTS features AcceptEmail.

OnDeck partners with Angie’s List to offer financing to its service providers.

Paybefore selects InComm as a 2015 Paybefore Awards Europe winner in the Change Agent of the Year category.

Banking Exchange: Kabbage hopes to harvest more bank partnerships.

Check Point Software and FireEye partner to share threat intelligence to protect customers from modern advanced attacks.

Bank Innovation’s look at Voice Assisted Banking features Interactions.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek: Part 2

By David Penn Posted on April 9, 2015
Categories: Bento for Business, DoubleNet Pay, FinovateSpring 2015, FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek, Karmic Labs, SizeUp, Stratos, TickerTags, Trulioo, Uncategorized

FinovateSpring 2015 is just over a month away. Our annual spring conference returns to San Jose, 12/13 May for two days of live demos of the latest in fintech innovation.

Today we introduce you to another seven companies that will be on stage presenting their technical solutions to some of the financial community’s biggest challenges—from improving engagement through mobile and social channels to improving security and reducing friction for business and individual consumers.

Be sure to check out Part 1 of our Sneak Peek series featuring Alpha Payments Cloud, CUneXus, DRAFT, FundAmerica, SayPay, StockViews, and TrueAccord, as well.

Tickets are going fast. Register today and save your spot at our second Finovate show in San Jose.

Bento for Business provides financial solutions that fit small businesses, combining the security of a bank with the ease and convenience of a modern technology company.

Features:

The Bento Prepaid Commercial MasterCard provides small business owners with controls, such as where, when, and how much their employees can spend without putting their owners’ personal credit at risk.

Why it’s great
Bento’s solutions are designed to save owners time and help eliminate expense ‘leaks,’ a type of fraud that can cost them up to 5% of their revenue each year.

Presenters

Farhan Ahmad, Co-founder and CEO

Ahmad was formerly managing director at Barclays and the global head of emerging payments and prepaid for Discover Financial Services. He has held leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase, Bank One and First USA.
LinkedIn

Sean Anderson, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer

Anderson was formerly senior director of emerging products at Blackhawk Network, where he built and launched their open API platform, launched an offers platform, and developed a prepaid processing platform.
LinkedIn

DoubleNet Pay automatically pays bills and funds savings goals directly from an employee’s paycheck, eliminating guesswork, late fees, and budgeting hassles.

Features:

Seamless integration with major payroll processors
Allows an employee to simply snap a picture of a current bill stub
Employees can easily create, fund, and redeem custom savings goals

Why it’s great
Bills are paid and savings funded automatically on payday, just like payroll taxes.

Presenters

Brian Cosgray, Founder and CEO

Cosgray has spent his entire career in financial services. Working with customers across the economic spectrum convinced him of the need to simplify and automate how people pay bills and save money.
LinkedIn

Cody Laird, Co-founder and COO

Laird is a financial technology veteran. Prior to co-founding DoubleNet Pay, Cody spent 21 years with SunTrust Bank helping to design and build their current retail banking platform.
LinkedIn

Bret Levy, Co-founder and CTO

Levy has been responsible for the architecture of many innovative, highly scalable software systems, most notably the Scientific Games system that powers most state lotteries.
LinkedIn

Karmic Labs provides API-based payment and SaaS solutions for card issuance (initially commercial market). Karmic offers Dash, FIS, and also uses Karmic’s APIs to offer its own product to FIs.

Features:

Robust API infrastructure for commercial card issuance
Payment virtualization layer
Creates a marketplace of innovative financial technology and SaaS solutions for the commercial market.

Why it’s great
Karmic labs offers API-based payment and SaaS solutions, of which its first product is Dash; the APIs are also used by FIS, a global leader in banking and payments technology, for its own product to FIs.

Presenters

Ryan Weidenmiller, CEO

Weidenmiller is an entrepreneur who built a top-ranked venture capital fund in China, now working on Karmic Labs’.
LinkedIn

Chris Agerton, CTO

Agerton was previously at Google, and was a founding engineer at Pinterest, responsible for developing high-availability architecture at Scribd.
LinkedIn

Troy Land, Group Executive of Emerging Commerce, FIS

Land is the group executive of emerging commerce at FIS within the retail payments division; he holds expertise in business and product development.
LinkedIn

SizeUp: SizeUp FI (financial insitutions) is big-data for small businesses. It enables FIs to provide their customers with business intelligence through the FI’s own website.

Features of SizeUp FI:

Enable your FI’s customers to :
- Compare their business performance with that of industry competitors
- Find customers, suppliers, and competitors
- Discover best locations to advertise

Why it’s great
SizeUp FI delivers a deeper business-customer partnership through success assistance; “sticky” client engagement; FI services awareness; and big-data insights that SMEs couldn’t previously access.

Presenters

Anatalio Ubalde, CEO and Co-founder

Ubalde is a successful entrepreneur leading Software as a Service (SaaS) ventures focused on data-driven solutions for small businesses and economic development.
LinkedIn

Thomas Barron, VP Business Development

Barron has developed corporate partnerships for 15 years from Fortunte 500 companies to 5-person startups. He previously worked at Visa developing strategic partnerships.
LinkedIn

Stratos consolidates cards into one dynamic card, making payments secure and smart. Stratos Digital Card Issuance Platform allows cards to download instantly, digitizing physical fulfillment.

Features:

Ensures virtual top of wallet, increases consumer engagement and loyalty
Provides secure card and wallet data
Eliminates costly physical card fulfillment

Why it’s great
Starts card working with Stratos Digital Card Issuance Platform to reinvent, not only your wallet, but also cards—just like the iPod and iTunes reinvented your CD collection.

Presenters

Thiago Olson, Co-founder, CEO

Olson worked at CERN and the Department of Defense and is a leader in next generation payments. He graduated with honors in engineering and physics at Vanderbilt.
LinkedIn

Henry Balanon, Co-founder, CTO

Balanon brings technical leadership and expertise to Stratos from his previous experience as co-founder of Detroit Labs, a leading mobile-app agency.
LinkedIn

TickerTags connects trending social content to investable companies through the monitoring of 250,000+ crowdsourced Tags that have the potential to impact a company’s business.

Features:

Track social velocity and sentiment of products/brands driving your investment
Create your own Tags to associate with Tickers for personalized trending notifications
It’s free

Why it’s great
We are a community-maintained platform intent on democratizing information-flow by evolving new monitoring from view-limited tickers to social -monitored tags.

Presenters

Chris Camillo, Co-founder, CEO

A pioneer in social arbitrage investing, Camillo’s audited portfolio has averaged 84% annual returns over the past 8 years.
LinkedIn

Trulioo’s bank-grade AML/KYC identity-verification product, GlobalGateway, enables businesses to perform frictionless ID verification for 3 billion people in more than 40 countries via 140 data sources.

Features:

Builds confidence and trust by preventing fraud and identity theft
Saves time, money, and resources through automated online ID-checks
Eliminates barriers to market entry

Why it’s great
Trulioo’s GlobalGateway provides advanced analytics from cyber and traditional data sources to verify identities online by powering fraud and compliance systems worldwide, increasing trust and safety.

Presenters

Stephen Ufford, Founder, CEO

Ufford has founded four data-focused startups over the last decade while working in the role of CEO. As a serial entrepreneur, he challenges the status quo and if it’s broken, he likes to fix it.
LinkedIn

Anatoly Kvitnitsky, Director of Corporate Development

With solid startup and corporate experience, Kvitnitsky leads strategic partnerships and data acquisition for Trulioo.
LinkedIn

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on April 9, 2015
Categories: Arxan Technologies, Bento for Business, CashSentinel, Dashlane, FreeAgent, Holvi, Kreditech, Malauzai Software, Patch of Land, PayPal, ProfitStars, Prosper

On Finovate.com

FreeAgent Scores $5 Million Line of Credit

Patch of Land Earns $23 Million Investment Led by SF Capital Group

FinovateSpring 2015 Sneak Peek: Part 2

Finovate Debuts: CashSentinel’s Mobile Escrow Service

Around the web

Nine Lives Media ranks ProfitStars’ Gladiator Technology in 6th annual MSPmentor 501 Global Edition.

Kreditech brings on Oliver Prill as COO.

PYMNTS: Prosper closes out financing round that pushes its valuation to $1.9 billion.

PYMNTS interviews Bento CEO and founder Farhan Ahmad. See Bento demo live at FinovateSpring in San Jose.

PayPal Makes Acquisition of CyActive Official.

TechCrunch: Dashlane’s “Inbox Scan” Tool Uncovers The Passwords You’ve Saved In Your Email.

Arxan expands application protection to support all major internet of things (IoT) platforms.

Holvi partners with identity-intelligence specialist GBGroup to ensure all customers are verified.

Malauzai Software announces 5 community banks to launch SmartwearApps for the Apple Watch.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook