Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Xero Buys Paperless Accounting Firm Hubdoc
  • NestReady Collaborates with Alterna Savings on Home Buying Solution.
  • PayActiv Partners with ADP Marketplace.
  • IdentityMind Global to Help ZED Network MTOs Meet KYC, AML Compliance.

Around the web

  • ProfitStars to automate commercial lending for Ion Bank.
  • Fenergo earns Top Performer status in the Overall Rankings of the RegTech 2018 Report.
  • One World Identity highlights Averon as a Company to Watch in its annual report on innovations in identity and authentication. See Averon at FinovateFall 2018 in September.
  • Arxan experiences double-digit revenue growth, expands global reach.
  • Flashtalking and Neustar partner to fill the void created by the removal of DoubleClick ID.
  • Insight on Business interviews Dwolla’s Stephanie Atkin.
  • Immervox features Bluescape and CRMNext in its list of Five Companies Leading the Charge in the Changing Workplace.

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

On Finovate.com

  • Vipera Acquires SoftTelecom for $1.5 Million
  • FutureVault Appoints John D. Orr as New CEO.
  • Handle Financial’s PayNearMe Partners with Blackhawk Network.

Around the web

  • CrowdFlower earns Gartner “Cool Vendor” status for Information Innovation and Governance.
  • Braintree surpasses one billion transactions per quarter milestone.
  • Infosys wins three out of seven Catalyst Awards at TM forum Live.
  • Baidu and PayPal announce strategic partnership.
  • International Air Transport Association chooses fraud prevention technology from Featurespace.
  • Top Image Systems announces eFlow AP 5.2 integration with SAP S/4HANA.
  • Wipro and Compuware partner to launch mainframe center of excellence.
  • Agreement Express ranked among top 100 technology companies in British Columbia by Business in Vancouver.
  • SearchUnifiedCommunications features Bluescape in its look at use cases for digital collaborative whiteboards.
  • Pendo Systems announces trio of new hires to support a “banner year” for the company.
  • Central Bankshares now uses Jack Henry’s Banno for online banking.
  • UN Migration Agency Selects Kony to Accelerate Digital Strategy to Reach More Migrants.

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 Debuts: Bluescape Helps Banks Create Products from Napkin Sketches

Finovate Debuts: Bluescape Helps Banks Create Products from Napkin Sketches

screen-shot-2016-11-21-at-3-53-16-pm

Bluescape’s visual collaboration solution is an interactive, visual platform to help banks bring products to market faster. It gives teams tools they need to ideate, design, and create better products while offering the structure necessary to keep the new product within the bank’s boundaries by using a process-approval flow.

In the company’s demo at FinovateFall in New York City, Bluescape’s VP Products and Marketing, Nick Brown, mapped out an idea for a new credit card on the company’s multitouch display board. From there he showed how multiple teams, including marketing, legal, and compliance, can generate end-to-end workflows using tools such as drag-and-drop, sketch, media uploads, and more. Brown went on to demonstrate how the Bluescape platform enables screen sharing and audio visual conferencing to facilitate remote collaboration.

Bluescape has a markedly unique background. The company is a subsidiary of Haworth, a workplace furniture and interior architecture firm. The idea for Bluescape was conceived when Haworth partnered with Obscura Digital. The two companies wanted to find a new way to interact with large data sets. Read more about Bluescape’s launch in our interview with CEO Scott Poulton, below.

Company facts:

  • 70+ employees
  • Privately owned and funded by Haworth Inc.
  • Headquartered in San Carlos, California
  • Founded in 2010
  • Clients include Marriott and Mazda
29644025721_a0ac6212ec_kNick Brown, VP, products and marketing, demoed the Bluescape platform at FinovateFall 2016 in New York.

After the company’s demo at FinovateFall in New York, we caught up with Bluescape CEO Scott Poulton to ask about the company’s current targets and future plans.bluescape-scott-poulton-16x9

Finovate: What problem does Bluescape solve?

Poulton: The financial services industry is facing major disruption on just about every front. This large-scale disruption is requiring companies to significantly accelerate their pace of innovation. Bluescape helps financial services companies create better products, and more engaging and cohesive customer experiences, faster. Its visual collaboration platform lets UX/UI design teams see the whole picture as they ideate, design, refine, and develop in a workspace that’s ultra-scalable, all-capturing and accessible from any device.

bluescape-workspace-finovatefall-2016-demoBluescape’s visual collaboration platform

Finovate: Who are your primary customers?

Poulton: Bluescape works with design and development teams within some of the most innovative enterprises in the world, from leading financial and professional services firms, to top media and entertainment studios (and even) the federal government.

Finovate: How does Bluescape solve the problem better?

Poulton: Bluescape connects teams across disciplines and time zones so everyone can see and play with concepts, plans and every iteration of those plans in one easy-to-use, easy-to-access place—where no idea is ever lost. Unlike other collaboration offerings, Bluescape is hardware and software tools agnostic: Users access Bluescape from any device, working with the tools they already enjoy using. Using Bluescape, individuals and teams can share ideas in real time, ignite breakthrough ideas, and bring better products to market more quickly.

Finovate: Tell us about your favorite implementation of your solution.

Poulton: A bio-tech institution, top design firm, and large pharmaceutical company are working together using Bluescape to share information, collaborate, and discover in real-time the important patterns around genetic research, which is revolutionizing scientific research. That implementation means a lot to us.

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Poulton: Our founding company, Haworth, saw a need to have a better way to design products. The inspiration for Bluescape came from a love of designing new solutions that make the process of work and design better. We had the luxury of being able to test the proof of concept within Haworth—one of the top privately held furniture companies in the world with more than a $1B in revenue—and see firsthand the possibilities for this technology. Since then, Bluescape has been implemented in multiple Fortune 500 companies. This has given us all a high degree of confidence in Bluescape’s future success.

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from Bluescape that we can look forward to over the next few months?

Poulton: We have redesigned our thin-client interface and are certifying our solution on some new, large-scale, tiled wall platforms in the last quarter of 2016. These new solutions will greatly change the price performance for the ultimate experience with Bluescape.

Finovate: Where do you see Bluescape a year or two from now?

Poulton: We see Bluescape changing the way design and development teams work. We believe it’s the kind of product that once you employ it, there is no going back. To quote a Bluescape customer, ‘Bluescape is what we’ve all been waiting for. It’s the way we were all meant to work.’

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: Bluescape Helps Banks Create Products from Napkin Sketches”
  • “Tradeshift Earns Undisclosed Investment from Santander”

Around the web

  • Fenergo rises 25 places in global Chartis Research’s RiskTech100 rankings.
  • Blackhawk Network partners with Apple to offer ApplePay rewards.
  • The Australian reports: OurCrowd goes on start-up funds-drive.
  • SafetyPay and VTEX sign a global agreement for electronic commerce.
  • Expensify selected as preferred expense-management solution by the AICPA and CPA.com.
  • Professional Planner quotes SuiteBox CEO Ian Dunbar in discussion on technology and millennials.
  • Top Egyptian retail FI, housing and development bank goes live with Temenos core banking solution.
  • Avanzia Bank and TSYS renew card-processing partnership.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. Follow our alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Bluescape

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Bluescape

Screen Shot 2016-08-23 at 9.37.52 AM

FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

Bluescape, a visual collaboration platform, enables financial UX/UI design teams to see the whole picture as they design, refine, and develop better products faster.

Features:

  • Cloud-native interactive workspace with an intuitive interface that encourages teams to defy conformity
  • Faster decision-making with real-time collaboration
  • Ultra-scalable, all-capturing

Why it’s great
With Bluescape, design teams can see the forest and the trees.Screen Shot 2016-08-23 at 9.42.37 AM

Nick Brown, Vice President of Products
Brown leads a team of designers to drive product strategy, user experience and product management. He brings more than 25 years of experience, including leadership positions at SAP and Oracle.
LinkedIn

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • NCR launches innovation lab at its new global headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
  • London-based BACB to replace its legacy IT systems with CorporateSuite from Temenos.
  • TransferTo integrates paysafecard as payment option within Safemoni app.
  • Slice launches browser add-on to send an email when the price of an item drops.
  • Kasasa now has 400 community FIs using its rewards account offering.

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.

 

Ready for a Sneak Peek? How to Best Prepare for FinovateFall

Ready for a Sneak Peek? How to Best Prepare for FinovateFall

StageIMG

To give you a sense of the many new ideas at the upcoming FinovateFall conference in New York, we’ve launched our Sneak Peek series. Eight companies are featured each week leading up to the 8/9 September event (tickets now available).

In the meantime, here is a quick summary of the 66 announced companies (six more are in stealth mode). It’s a lot to take in; pace yourself!

  • Agreement Express offers an an end-to-end platform that helps traditional financial institutions automate labor-intensive parts of the customer onboarding process to remain compliant while quickly opening customer accounts.
  • Aleo’s marketplace uses e-procurement, e-commerce and supplier financing bundled in a single open platform to offer small and medium enterprises an online procure-to-pay solution.
  • AutoGravity’s mobile-first digital marketplace helps digitally minded customers, looking to buy and finance a vehicle, circumvent the inefficiencies of the auto-financing process by leveraging the full potential of their smartphone.
  • Avoka’s customer-acquisition platform integrates multiple fintech services to help banks, wealth managers and insurers use mobile and digital channels to onboard customers.
  • Backbase offers 60-second onboarding for financial services companies to accelerate customer acquisition with a simple, fast, and seamless omnichannel onboarding journey.
  • Bankjoy offers developers a banking API for a modern, real-time, holistic interface for credit unions and community banks.
  • Bitbond’s automated, international credit-scoring mechanism compares small business-loan applicants from different countries by using machine learning and data from the applicant’s business accounts.
  • Bluescape offers large financial services companies a highly interactive, visually collaborative platform that uses real-time, cloud-based architecture that’s ultra-scalable, all-capturing, and accessible anytime from any device.
  • BondIT offers financial advisers and portfolio managers a data-driven solution that uses machine learning advanced algorithms to manage fixed-income portfolios and solve optimization challenges.
  • brandCrowder has developed an alternative investment platform focusing on branded franchises. It leverages 45+ years of franchise-operations experience to help retail investors finance franchises, helping to bring them to market quicker.
  • Clinc’s mobile, voice-activated personal financial adviser uses artificial intelligence to help consumers get answers to financial questions and tasks.
  • Consdata offers banks and financial institutions a comprehensive platform for e-form management and customer-communication complexities.
  • Currencycloud’s dedicated API services use intelligent APIs to help businesses with the cost, limitations, and boundaries of existing payment infrastructure.
  • Daon bridges convenience and security by offering financial services companies a mobile biometric authentication platform that turns a smartphone into a mobile capture device.
  • Divy’s app and social investing community uses an approachable interface and engaging content to help first-time and emerging investors access direct marketing and financial literacy material.
  • Dynamics offers issuers and their cardholders interactive payment cards and an authorization-based, real-time loyalty processing system.
  • ebankIT’s platform offers financial institution clients an omnichannel experience.
  • Econiq’s Conversation Hub uses color-coded conversations to help bank and insurer frontline staff, and operational management and executives avoid disconnected customer conversations in branches and contact centers.
  • Envestnet | Yodlee offers millennials a solution for measuring financial health and promoting a healthy financial lifestyle.
  • Experian CrossCore is a single platform that helps manage customer identities, fraud-prevention tools, workflows and decision strategies in an easy-to-use and scalable format.
  • EyeVerify’s Eyeprint ID offers banks and other financial services companies eye biometrics via smartphone cameras for convenient, secure and private authentication.
  • Featurespace’s ARIC Engine helps financial services clients spot and prevent fraud attacks in real time using adaptive behavioral analytics.
  • Finicity offers an API for companies to build financial apps.
  • Fiserv helps financial institutions enable social finance by providing customers access to a safe, collaborative bank-secured social funding product.
  • Full Profile uses the blockchain and smart contracts for real-time settlement and reporting of physical agri-commodities to help farmers, buyers, banks and government counter party and credit-risk exposures.
  • FutureVault’s cloud-based filing cabinet helps financial service providers and their clients organize asset documents and accounts using a secure, structured and collaborative B2B2C cloud environment.
  • GainX’s SaaS platform uses decades of market research and leading-edge technology to help large financial institutions overcome innovation and adaption failures.
  • GoodData helps large banks, credit-card processing and insurance companies commercialize and monetize their data using a scalable, manageable and secure platform that is exclusively designed for data products and embedded analytics.
  • iBank Marketing offers millennials a multifunction digital wallet to help them achieve personal goals around life events by using its local eco-system that bridges consumers and small- to medium-sized enterprises.
  • identitii uses tokens and blockchain to help financial institutions with KYC, CTF and AML compliance using an information layer over legacy systems.
  • InSpirAVE’s social e-commerce platform curates advice and financial support from the user’s friends and family, financial institutions, and merchants. It helps multiply savings, for big-ticket purchases for customers who otherwise may not be able to afford them, by placing important goals for life’s special moments within reach, without the crushing burden of debt.
  • KORE’s platform transforms enterprise applications, online banking and mobile apps into personalized, conversational engagements to help financial institutions meet customer-experience expectations using the power of bots and simplicity of messaging.
  • LendingFront’s lending platform leverages a cloud-based system that furnishes small businesses with capital using their cashflow data.
  • Lidya offers African small- to medium-sized enterprises access to finance using online receivables-based lending and proprietary credit scoring.
  • Liferay’s Digital Experience offers banks a richer understanding of customers by orchestrating personalized customer experiences.
  • M1 Finance places assets held in low-yielding cash accounts into an asset-linked bank account and intuitive investment platform.
  • MapD’s Immerse helps quantitative hedge fund and asset managers query datasets with billions of rows in real-time by applying the parallel processing power of GPUs to the challenges of databases, visualization and analytics.
  • MarketX’s cross-border investment platform helps international investors with the lack of liquidity for U.S. startup shares and limited access to U.S. pre-IPO investment opportunities.
  • ModoPayments offers financial companies a digital payments hub to connect disparate sources of value to diverse destinations using Modo’s COIN technology.
  • Moonraft Innovation Labs helps banks innovate and evolve by rapidly adapting to changing market needs using Catamera, its unique customer experience delivery framework.
  • Moven’s growing platform reaches the millennial, mobile first, digital native audience by bringing banking (specifically savings) into the moment.
  • MX helps financial institutions become true advocates for their account holders by using analytics to power a revolutionary category of data-driven money management.
  • nanoPay offers a payments and loyalty solution for merchants.
  • Overbond’s digital platform offers transparency, efficiency, and liquidity in the fixed income market for corporate issuers, investors, and dealers.
  • Personetics offers financial services providers a digital personalization platform that uses real-time, ultra-scalable predictive analytics to keep customers engaged in the digital age.
  • ProActive FinTech uses a phone app and debit card featuring unlimited mini bank accounts and pre-purchase categorization to help millennial moms with cash-flow management.
  • QE Data offers commercial banking systems a real-time predictive model for net cash-flows that uses machine learning, rich visualization, speedy deployment and real-world banking experience.
  • Qumram uses 100% real-time, video-like recording of every mouse movement, keystroke and button click to help financial services organizations with compliance and transparency issues relating to digital business.
  • RightCapital’s financial and tax-planning platform helps advisers deliver unbundled, quality financial planning and tax-planning services. It works to efficiently and digitally help consumers with the lack of viable business and technology solutions.
  • SaleMove offers financial institutions a live engagement platform to help sell and service complex financial services products online. The platform uses instant video chat and guided browsing with no downloads or installations.
  • Sindeo’s self-directed consumer rate quote and prequalification tool simplifies home financing and refinancing using an integrated platform that offers consumer, real estate partner, and adviser tools that conform to CFPB regulation and ensure a simple and easy consumer experience.
  • SpeechPro’s customer onboarding solution offers multichannel access to help CTOs, developers and other technologists focus on KYC, identity and verification.
  • Swych’s mobile gifting platform offers gift-card recipients a better way to buy, gift, and manage gift cards.
  • Tango Card’s RaaS API 2.0 uses simple-yet-complete delivery technology and domain expertise to help enterprises deliver incentives efficiently and effectively.
  • TokBox’s Financial Services Accelerator Pack offers banks and financial organizations secure and easy-to-embed, real-time communications technology.
  • TransUnion’s interactive data-visualization solution uses big data and analytics to connect and interpret consumer financial data for lenders.
  • Trulioo’s GlobalGateway uses traditional and cyber ID data sources to offer banks, financial services providers, and online marketplaces secure access to reliable, global data sources for instant ID-verification.
  • Trusona’s anti-replay and TruToken technology offers an insured identity platform for sensitive assets.
  • Unbill’s API enables companies to offer bill pay in their app or technology platform without complicated integration or high costs.
  • Uniken’s REL-ID, a card-not-present approval solution, uses mobile API tool kits and DMZ software appliances to help enterprises secure mobile communications.
  • Urban FT’s enhanced, white-label digital banking platform gives financial services organizations, wireless carriers, and other consumer-facing organizations a long-term, competitive advantage that makes their brand integral to customers’ daily financial and online social activities, financial tools, and social features.
  • Xentral Station’s supply-chain funding app helps vendors of all sizes receive cash for trade financing within 24 hours.
  • Zenmonics uses a single, common platform to help banks and their customers minimize friction in customer engagement with channelUNITED.
  • Zooz offers an agnostic, cross-border payments platform to help merchants act on payment processes and save money to maintain their client base.

Stay tuned on the blog for more detailed descriptions. And don’t forget to register now to reserve your spot.