CEO Interview |

Blockchain-Based Payments and Rebooting the Financial System

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on November 25, 2019
Categories: CEO Interview, PayStand

Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond knows a thing or two about business payments. Since co-founding the company in 2013, Almond has implemented numerous improvements to the company’s payments engine, taking full advantage of the blockchain.

Among Paystand’s most recent debuts are the company’s 2018 launch of a blockchain that ensures payment, storing an immutable record of every transaction the company processes. Earlier this year, Paystand launched the Assurety-as-a-Service API that leverages the company’s blockchain to prevent fraud. Paystand also unveiled Automated Receivables, a tool that leverages the blockchain to automate invoice collection.

Almond is a 15-year veteran of the tech industry, having served as a serial entrepreneur, startup advisor, and occasional investor. Almond helped co-found Paystand in 2013 and has since been at the helm of the company as CEO. We caught up with him in an interview earlier this month.

Finovate: What is Paystand and how does it differ from other online payment gateways?

Jeremy Almond: Paystand is a commercial payments platform that automates the entire cash cycle, from invoicing to reconciliation, to make payments an easy, effortless experience.

Today’s financial system is plagued by costly fees, inefficiencies, and paper-driven processes. We believe this broken system is holding businesses back, so we created Paystand to eliminate fees and build the payment framework for the digital era.

Much the same way that Netflix came along and completely re-thought consumption of media or how Tesla has come to market with not just a new vehicle but a business model and mission focused on energy independence, Paystand differentiates itself with its Payments-as-a-Service model. The outdated, inefficient, fee-based approach to commercial payments and money movement no longer makes sense. Instead of taking a cut from every customer sale, our customers pay a flat monthly rate to use our payment software. Essentially, it is unlimited “consumption” for payments with predictable costs. This means that as our customers’ businesses grow, their profits increase instead of their fees.

We’ve also built the most complete digital payment network available to businesses. Using the Paystand Bank Network, customers can move money electronically without paying any fees. It’s the industry’s first zero-cost rail, and the easiest way for businesses to get paid today. It’s also the only blockchain-based payments infrastructure that has been tested at scale with millions of transactions and enterprise volume.

Finovate: You’re a startup investor yourself. How does that influence how you’ve built Paystand?

Almond: Most venture-backed startups fail, especially the high-potential ones. Everyone is hungry to find the next Uber or Facebook, so it’s easier than ever to start a company and get funded. But building a startup that lasts isn’t easy. I think many founders underestimate that and end up spending their time and resources chasing quick exits and unicorn status.

That’s why we do things completely different at Paystand. We’re focused on building a sustainable business that solves real, meaningful problems. There’s a certain business pacing you have to keep up to attract the right investors and gather momentum around your vision. So driving that kind of sustainable growth is our top priority.

Over time, I believe we’re going to see a shift away from companies constantly raising equity to this sustainable growth approach. If you look at the market today, especially after Zoom’s IPO, there’s a real appetite for businesses with a clear path to profitability.

In many ways, being an investor has been an advantage to building Paystand.

Finovate: Tell us about Paystand’s new Fintech Advisory Council launched earlier this year. What was the impetus for this?

Almond: The need for the Fintech Advisory Council really came from our growth. We’ve nearly tripled our revenue this year, which is more than an 8x increase since raising our Series A round. So we built the advisory council to help us scale our product innovation and better meet this demand.

We didn’t make the appointments lightly. These are people who are literally the top of the top for financial services and B2B fintech. CheckFree founder Pete Kight, for example, made it possible to pay bills online with your bank account. Other advisors include the former president of Bill.com and the former president of PayPal. Having these pioneers on our side, guiding us, is going to be a massive value ad as we build the next chapter in commercial finance.

This is a huge mission we’re talking about — rebooting the financial system. Our Fintech Advisory Council is going to help us make that happen.

Finovate: Paystand recently surpassed 100,000 businesses using its platform. What new features does Paystand have in the works to garner its next 100,000 users?

Almond: Although we recently surpassed 100,000 businesses using the platform, we know we’re still just scratching the surface. There are over 6 million B2B companies in the United States alone. And 18 trillion dollars still moves between businesses via paper check every year in this country. That’s a staggering figure. Those businesses need a modern payment solution that doesn’t penalize growth via more and higher fees. So, we’re focused on continuing to deliver the best payment solutions to that market with our core payment platform. We plan on deepening our integrations and relationships with core systems of record like NetSuite to further provide seamless automation of accounts receivable workflows.

At the same time, we’re continuing to build innovative products to enable automation and reduce friction for the entire downstream network involved in payments. We recently launched Autopilot, our receivables automation product that helps companies reduce DSO, decrease late payments, and improve the customer payment experience. And our newly launched Payment Portal gives all of their downstream payers an intuitive interface to view their payments, payer history, and access our payment platform.

Every day, more businesses are making the shift to a more open, inclusive commercial payments infrastructure and are rejecting the outdated, fee-based model that no longer makes sense. We’re proud to help them on their journey.

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Saving for What Matters: A Q&A with INSPIRAVE Founder and CEO Om Kundu

By David Penn Posted on October 23, 2019
Categories: CEO Interview, inSpirAVE

From a renewed focus on holistic financial wellness to the way technologies like predictive analytics can improve financial decision-making, the personal finance management (PFM) space has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years.

We caught up with Om Kundu, founder and CEO of social savings network INSPIRAVE, to find out what his company has been doing to help the average person leverage relationships with friends and family to save smarter. Headquartered in New York City, INSPIRAVE demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2016.

Finovate: Among the big news from INSPIRAVE this fall was the fact that you were recently issued a patent. What was the patent for and what does it mean for the company going forward?

Kundu: By combining intelligently planned direct deposits with social gifting and the best savings offers, we have combined the power of three separate solutions of social discovery, savings, and fulfillment into one. This enables INSPIRAVE to be a relentless advocate, and maintain our users’ best interest in mind at every step. INSPIRAVE empowers users to travel from Point-A to Point-B not only by increasing the value of their existing principal, but also by reducing the price-point of their chosen goal whenever possible as part of a thoughtfully orchestrated plan that does not stop until the goal is fulfilled without the risk of credit turning into debt.

Our most recently issued patent is part of a series of filed patents that we expect to be issued internationally. What you see today is V 1.0 of the roadmap (image below) we are furthering for an end-to-end, iTunes-like ecosystem to fundamentally realign retail financial services, commerce and goal-fulfillment. In its simplest form, the systems and methods of the inventions are inspiring users on a journey to fulfill the goals that matter the most to them by setting funds aside over time to make a purchase you may not have afforded otherwise.

The fact that our INSPIRAVE patent has been cited by some of the world’s leading institutions spanning across the Americas (Bank of America) and China (FUZAMEI Tech) should speak for itself on our proprietary technology’s far-reaching scope and scale. The issuance of the patent is a testament to INSPIRAVE having pioneered social savings as much as social commerce.

Looking ahead as part of our roadmap, INSPIRAVE users and partners will benefit from technologies enabling smart contracts for co-ownership/co-access of the merchandise being saved up for. They will also power our SaveAway Pay-It-Forward Scores™, through which we have further aligned incentives for people saving towards their goals and their friends-and-family who have the option — but not the obligation — to contribute.

Finovate: A lot of fintech companies are getting involved in financial wellness, moving beyond PFM. For those who are new to INSPIRAVE, how does your solution differ from other savings-oriented platforms on the market?

Kundu: Far too many solutions in the market today induce more (impulse) spending to qualify for what is often the mirage of saving (i.e., credit card cash-back rewards, or rounding-up a fraction of what you spend into saving). Instead of resuscitating the dying saving muscle, they end up putting the spending muscle on further steroids. Included in these is seemingly “convenient” point-of-sale financing, including those you pay in installments festered with egregious interest rates with credit, that far too often translates into debt.

Yet other card-linked solutions throw advertised offers at you based on your past transactions, which often end up encouraging frivolous purchases and overspending. At a time when the debt crisis is upon us (over $1 trillion in credit card debt alone), we absolutely can and must do better than what retail financial services and commerce often is today: impulsive, punitive, and asocial.

INSPIRAVE stands for that more perfect union – one that aligns fulfillment of goals by users to that of our retail partners who equally benefit from customers, sales, and positive impact they would not have had otherwise. Our singular focus is on helping you “save more, faster,” to fulfill the purchase-goals that matter most, and help you avoid the distractions of the frivolous purchases that don’t.

The result? Even while INSPIRAVE is devoid of advertising, our powerful model is free for end-users (unlike many existing solutions which charge fees for their savings service.)!

Our INSPIRAVE user research indicates in no uncertain terms that “saving for saving’s sake” or saving limited to monetary goals — which is what many solutions today in the market provide — is not intrinsically fulfilling for people. Beyond numerical goals, our goal should be to fulfill experiential goals — i.e., having the purchase-goals that matter the most to us and the people around us delivered at your door.

Finovate: As a social savings network, users of the platform are also critical to the network effect of community-building. Are you seeing these effects in the beta testing of the platform that you are currently doing?

Kundu: INSPIRAVE’s social foundation is borne out in no uncertain terms with over 90% of our users referring other users to the platform. The INSPIRAVE platform’s latest release adds social and direct messaging capabilities making it extraordinarily easy for users to selectively engage their “friends that count” (in contrast to the more public “friend count” or crowd) on purchase decisions.

By cultivating a community of “friends that count,” users not only benefit from social nudges that help them make better purchase-decisions, but also equally increase the likelihood of benefiting from social gifting in the form of monetary contributions from those very same friends. Beyond taking advantage of access to our private beta, our SaveAway program empowers users to recommend their own favorite brands and retailers to join our network. This is making SaveAway a truly democratized marketplace that is equally accessible by well-regarded brands big and small.

Rather than the zero-sum game of getting consumers to “buy more stuff,” INSPIRAVE empowers users to “save more, faster” in ways that enable them to focus on the big purchases that matter most which they wouldn’t have afforded otherwise. In so doing, our SaveAway platform equally unlocks a wholly new channel of underserved customers and sales that expands the total addressable market for retail and financial institutions.

Finovate: How important are partnerships to building the INSPIRAVE community and brand? Who are the other players in fintech that you have synergies with or with whom you might collaborate?

Kundu: Our noteworthy partners run the gamut from Microsoft — which has inducted us into their “Microsoft for Startups” program for The Top Startups in the World — to Stripe, as well as leading e-commerce destinations and retailers including eBay and Best Buy. Given the volume of recent partner inquiries, we are focused on the ones most aligned with our progressive vision. Looking ahead, you can expect to see more of INSPIRAVE’s solutions directly embedded in the retail and e-commerce platforms of our partners.

Finovate: Can you tell us a little about the team you’ve put together and who’ve helped the company get to where it is today?

Kundu: From interns and hires straight out of universities such as Cornell, RIT, Carnegie Mellon, et.al. to senior executives in our board, the common attribute that stands out among them all is this: the courage and the tenacity to solve for tough — and hitherto unsolved — problems. Each one is resolutely focused on alleviating the pain that hundreds of millions are living with, manifest in the staggering amount of consumer debt and gaping holes in financial wellness that get in the way of fulfilling the big goals that truly matter.

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George Anderson, Founder of Ninth Wave on Keeping Up with Fintech

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on September 24, 2018
Categories: CEO Interview, Ninth Wave

The following interview is with George Anderson, CEO and founder of Ninth Wave, a Gold Sponsor of FinovateFall.

In the run-up to FinovateFall, we interviewed George Anderson, CEO and founder of Ninth Wave (formerly Enterprise Engineering) to get the scoop on how the company keeps up with ever-changing trends in fintech.

In addition to serving as an expert on information management and technology to solve business problems, Anderson has authored several books and articles on enterprise architecture, relational database design, internet development, and high performance computing. He has 25 years of experience working with leading banks and technology companies in the development of emerging information systems.

Finovate: You founded Ninth Wave (originally Enterprise Engineering Inc.) in 1995. How has the company’s focus shifted to help financial institutions serve clients when customer expectations are changing faster than ever?

George Anderson: I spend a tremendous amount of time with Ninth Wave customers. It is critical to clearly understand the challenges they are facing in a constantly evolving market. This allows Ninth Wave to advance its platform, remain leading edge, and provide constant and ongoing value.

As a platform provider, Ninth Wave must maintain its deep business and technology expertise through continuous communication with our clients. Having founded and run a tech company for 23+ years, I know that contributing to the client’s bottom line is key to success across volatile financial cycles.

Our clients are premier, sophisticated Fortune 500 firms who are ahead of the curve – investing in top talent and the development / acquisition of innovative solutions. As a trusted partner, we have to ensure we are offering a platform that aligns with their requirements and capabilities.

Lastly, by spending so much time with customers, you can anticipate trends and meet customer expectations much faster than they could reasonably expect you to. We are focused on exceeding our clients’ expectations every day.

Finovate: Ninth Wave’s corporate mantra is – “If you’re not moving ahead, you are falling behind!” Tell us about key processes you use to keep the company pushing forward in an industry moving faster than ever.

Anderson: Ninth Wave is a company that has a unique culture of passion about everything we do. This passion for excellent client service, continuous learning, deep expertise, employee engagement and being best-in-class has been the driver that has differentiated us and has us leading the competition.

We hire top talent who thrive in a fast-paced, complex and ever-changing environment. The mixture of collaboration, curiosity, client focus along with the desire to win have been the fuel that powers our creation of new products and make the Ninth Wave platform the preferred solution for our clients.

Our associates are immersed in the financial industry and emerging technologies through learning forums, advisory sessions, client interactions and brainstorming with both Ninth Wave and industry peers. The goal is to align the technology we deliver with the business strategy of our clients to be relevant today and in the future.

Finovate: Ninth Wave has multiple Fortune 500 clients. What is your strategy for capturing and keeping such high-profile clients?

Anderson: The Ninth Wave team has unparalleled experience with Fortune 500 clients. We understand their jobs from the inside, we understand their challenges and the pressure they are up against every day. Given this experience, there is no learning curve for us when we walk in the door. Odds are, we have fixed their problem or addressed their opportunity for one of their peers. We are often told that we cover in one meeting what takes others weeks to do.

We are also in a great position to tell our clients about how they stack up against their competition. What gaps do they have? What is their edge? Their differentiation? Perhaps even more importantly, what are their opportunities for time-to-market for competitive advantage? And what are others doing to leap frog them?

Finovate: Ninth Wave offers a range of products, from data aggregation tools to tax form data. What’s next on the horizon?

Anderson: We believe there is tremendous room for improvement in the financial data ecosystem. The world between banks and consumers is still filled with inefficiencies and cyber risks. Consumers are focused on data access and custom views and are often unaware of the dangers that currently exist.

Already at the next point on the horizon, Ninth Wave is now launching advanced solutions for fintech connectivity that deliver the control and security required by financial institutions and consumers while streamlining the integration of fintech applications.

After this? Ninth Wave is developing a unique and compelling new technology that truly offers business value and best-in-class services. These revolutionary innovations will simplify and provide full transparency to replace the opaque and often fragmented current environments.

Ninth Wave will continue to focus on providing unparalleled connectivity to unlock data for authorized and secure delivery for financial institutions. We will keep you posted as we finalize the reveal date.

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CEO Interview: Jumio’s Stephen Stuut

By David Penn Posted on September 29, 2016
Categories: CEO Interview, Jumio

A few weeks ago, we sent some questions to Jumio CEO Stephen Stuut (pictured). The digital ID-verification company he runs made headlines a little over a month ago with news that it had raised $15 million from its new owner, Centana Growth Partners. A Best of Show winner from FinovateEurope 2015, Jumio fell on challenging times this spring when it filed for Chapter 11 protection. Stuut, who took the helm at Jumio in May 2015, struck a positive tone, saying that the “restructuring process will allow us to strengthen the company’s financial structure and extend our leadership position in ID verification.”

So far so good. In addition to its recent funding, Jumio has forged ID verification and KYC/AML partnerships with companies ranging from European online gaming operator, Tipico; to the Paris-based mobile scooter-sharing network, Cityscoot; to Spanish crypto-currency specialist Krypto Commerce—all in the past few months alone. Combined with Jumio’s summer announcement that it has completed more than 30 million ID verifications, and it looks like the comeback trail for Jumio is clear.

Here’s what CEO Stuut had to say about his company, its current initiatives, and what we can expect from the Palo Alto-based security specialist in the months and years to come.

Finovate: Where will ID scanning and technologies like FaceMatch make the biggest impact in terms of replacing passwords and security codes?

Stephen Stuut: With the rise of online and mobile transactions, the growth of banking transactions like mobile account opening, money transfer, and bitcoin, and the rapid adoption of shared services, individuals are at greater risk to protect their security, and companies are further challenged to provide processes that will both build trust with their customers, while ensuring safety and security by helping reduce fraud.

Multifactor-authentication methods are missing the mark; the use of a password or security code is not a secure enough way to verify an individual is in fact the owner of the account. Passwords and codes passed via mobile devices can be hacked, and there is no proof that the mobile device is in the possession of the owner.

A recent report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology referred to this process as insecure because the phone may not be in possession of the number and the SMS may be interrupted.

However, for a better approach, utilizing a combination of one or two government-issued IDs, with live photo and facial recognition, companies can ensure that an ID is valid and the person in possession of the ID is in fact the genuine ID owner.

Finovate: As much as most people hate passwords, they are a fairly embedded part of online and mobile culture. What will it take to start moving people away from passwords and toward these new technologies in significant numbers?

Stuut: To enable these markets to foster, regulations are being put in place that force compliance with KYC (know your customer) and address AML. These issues are driving the need for more robust ID-verification models that move beyond common passwords and security codes to more robust verification like ID scanning with Face Match.

Finovate: What is unique about Jumio’s approach to ID verification?

Stuut: Jumio replaces laborious and unreliable systems including knowledge-based authentication (KBA), inferred verification, and in-person verification by untrained individuals. The Jumio technology platform is industry-leading, providing computer vision technology, and face-match with human ID experts. This process provides the optimal combination of accuracy and user convenience while providing KYC requirements.

In addition, Jumio is PCI Level 1 compliant and regularly conducts security audits, vulnerability scans and penetration tests to ensure compliance with security best practices and standards. To ensure our security remains PCI compliant year after year, we have a yearly on-site validation assessment by a Quality Security Assessor (QSA).

Finovate: What are the advantages to working in so many different verticals—from financial services to travel to online gaming—beyond the opportunities for growing the company?

Stuut: Our work with companies in varying verticals has led to many opportunities for Jumio, but this opportunity, most notably and arguably most importantly, has allowed us to transform a more robust solution.

As varying industries seek ID-verification solutions to aid their business processes, success via these technologies may look different. For example, many of Jumio’s customers in the travel vertical use our ID-verification solution to deliver great mobile customer experiences with mobile check-in. Conversely, Jumio customers in the financial services vertical utilize our solution to help verify customer identity while also improving remote account-opening completion rates.

Because Jumio is focused on meeting the requirements and regulations of specific verticals, each industry benefits from the added expertise gained across these major markets. As a result both our platform and our customers have immensely benefited. Instead of a solution that is adequately built to address needs in one industry, Jumio’s solution is built to meet the needs of varying verticals, allowing for a more robust solution.

Finovate: You’ve been on the job as CEO for Jumio for just over a year. What accomplishments in this time are you most proud of and what do you hope most to accomplish in your second year?

Stuut: Over this past year I have been exceptionally proud to work with the talented individuals across the Jumio organization. Our team of highly skilled developers and seasoned executive team have been leading the industry, delivering on our vision of the next generation of digital ID-verification solutions.

The team is delivering great success and we recently closed out Q2 2016 with a greater than 65% growth in recurring revenue year-over-year, and a record 30 million transactions completed to date. Jumio’s customer base continues to expand, closing more deals than at any other time in company history, with Q2 2016 resulting in a more than 50% increase in deals year-over-year. This high momentum has been fueled by continued growth across every aspect of its business.

In addition, in August of 2016, Jumio continued its momentum, securing a $15 million round of financing from Centana Growth Partners LP and Millennium Technology Value Partners. The investment will enable us to continue to lead the digital ID verification space, aggressively expand sales and marketing, and accelerate product development and international expansion.

Check out Jumio’s Best of Show demonstration from FinovateEurope 2015.

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CEO Interview: Aire.io’s Aneesh Varma

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 22, 2016
Categories: Aire, CEO Interview

We recently caught up with Aneesh Varma, founder and CEO of Aire.io, for an interview. Varma launched the London-based company in 2014 to help thin-file customers qualify for essential financial products.

He graduated from Lehigh University as an engineer with a secondary degree in quantitative finance, and in 2014 was nominated as the European Commission’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

Finovate: What is Aire doing that its competitors are not?

Varma: At Aire, we don’t focus on competitors. We instead are focused on building the best product based on our core principles of what we would like to see in the world.

One such core principle at Aire is to go beyond just the data, and understand the story of the applicant. Many companies these days get carried away by big data—throwing 20,000 data points at the problem. But in reality it can lead to situations such as Ben Bernanke not being able to re-mortgage when he changed jobs. The ‘data’ was changing jobs; the ‘story,’ however, was still that he had a strong income.

At Aire, our research has been focussed on leveraging artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences to evaluate more meaningful and deeper data. Understanding the individuality of each applicant and not relying on population-based statistics.

All of our personal data comes directly from the user—via our virtual interview, done in an adaptive interface. It’s like having a human underwriter to interview every applicant, but automated, so we can run it at scale with real-time scoring.

This is really powerful, as the Aire process can score anyone without any dependency on external data. This is especially important as we expand into new geographies.

Aire’s multichannel application form

Finovate: What is the biggest challenge Aire faces in achieving its goal of offering fair access to finance?

Varma: The work we are doing at Aire is really personal to us. In many ways, we have ourselves been victims of the cracks in the current system of credit scores. We know what it means to be financially excluded. It’s really tough.

Our work is to onboard more lenders who share the same ethos as Aire about ensuring people aren’t getting marginalized just because they don’t fit into the standard boxes.

We know the Aire product works. Over the last few months, we have been able to observe empirical evidence data of our performance, and it is really phenomenal how we can boost acceptance up to 14% while still ensuring over 90% of candidates get through our process.

It’s a changing world. More and more of us are going to be self-employed, become freelancers and or migrate to other countries. We shouldn’t be left out.

Finovate: How do you engage with developers?

Varma: Ours is a startup with a purpose. We are solving a real problem—and, in fact, a really hard problem. There is no hype to our work. It is pure performance which is why we have to carefully leverage technology, research and human emotions to build a great product.

This attracts a very particular type of people who genuinely care about making an impact with their work. This really has become part of the DNA of our company.

For most of us in the team, this is our second or even third startup. And we constantly trying to optimize on everything we have done in the past. Most importantly, we focus on culture and hiring the right people.

We have a very rigorous hiring process over six stages. But once someone gets through that, we provide one of the most exciting work environments in London. You are surrounded by leading experts in each field and get to learn from them. And even teach them a few tricks! Perhaps a reason why we are attracting some great minds to join us on this journey (and a place on the European breakout list via Scott Sage).

Finovate: What’s on the horizon for Aire in 2016?

Varma: The biggest push now is to take our product to more people, in more markets. North America is next on the horizon, and we are launching there shortly. The emerging markets are also relevant, and we are starting to prepare the groundwork there.

Naturally, ongoing research is very important to improve our product. We continue to invest in research across the various fields that will enhance our offering for new markets, including fellowships with our partner universities. Ultimately, there are going to be multiple versions of how we end up delivering our scoring product to consumers.

And other than that, it’s about focussing on hiring great people. This problem we set out to solve requires not just engineers and scientists, but people across various disciplines. We have baked that into our culture as a company. So a major part of my role ends up looking at how to bring together various people to collaborate as we invent new dimensions to our product.

At FinovateEurope 2015, he debuted the Aire Credit API which enables lenders to use Aire to check credit for a thin-file client.

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CEO Interview: Nexmo’s Tony Jamous

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 25, 2016
Categories: CEO Interview, Nexmo

Nexmo is a global cloud communications platform company providing communication APIs and SDKs for voice, text, messaging, phone verification, and chat-app connectivity.

At FinDEVr San Francisco 2015, Nexmo showed how its APIs and SDKs help companies such as Expedia, Zipcar, and Viber increase security, decrease fraud, and protect user identity—without compromising the user experience. To dig a bit deeper, we recently spoke with the San Francisco-based company’s CEO, Tony Jamous.

To dig a bit deeper, we recently spoke with the San Francisco-based company’s CEO, Tony Jamous. Prior to founding Nexmo in 2010, Jamous worked at Paymo, which was acquired by BOKU in 2009.

In his interview, Jamous spoke with us about the inspiration for Nexmo, the company’s competitive advantages, and its challenges.

Finovate: What was the impetus behind creating Nexmo?

Jamous: Nexmo was created to reduce the barriers to entry for developers to innovate with communication technologies and enable scalable and global high-quality communication infrastructure. Imagine how hard it would have been for Airbnb, one of our global customers, to individually connect to more than 200 carrier networks using arcane telecommunications protocols.

Early on, we were obsessed with building networks and investing in cloud technologies to sustain quality of network as our customers scaled their businesses. Nexmo uniquely connects our customers’ traffic as closely to carriers as is physically possible to reduce message and call latency. We also measure quality feedback for every transaction and adapt how each message or voice call is being routed in real time to continually improve overall quality.

Finovate: Your solutions are used in a number of industries. What is unique about the communications and fraud problems in the financial services sector?

Jamous: The phone number has emerged in recent years as a user-friendly way to identify and authenticate real people. Our APIs, especially Verify (pictured below) and Number Insight, are designed to enable financial services players to easily embed two (or more) factor authentication, and gather data on the phone number during the transaction. These tools enable financial service providers to reduce fraud without the need to gain expertise in teleco rules and regulations.

Finovate: What is the most creative solution you’ve seen a financial services company build using a Nexmo API?

Jamous: Bitcoin platforms have been driving innovation in fraud prevention at a faster rate than any other segment within the fintech space, and Nexmo works with many of the leading bitcoin companies.

To secure your bitcoins from theft, enabling phone-number two-factor authentication with the Nexmo Verify SDK or API is strongly recommended. This involves sending a one-time password (OTP) to a user over a separate communication channel (SMS or voice) rather than the IP channel (internet) used by the bitcoin exchange or wallet. Aside from sending payments, phone-number verification can also be required for registration, login, resetting passwords and authenticating changes made to your [specific] bitcoin exchange or wallet account. Bitcoin theft might be irreversible, but you can prevent it with an extra layer of protection using Nexmo’s Verify API or Verify SDK.

Finovate: What are the biggest challenges for Nexmo?

Jamous: Nexmo has reached a phase in which we need to both scale the business and improve operational efficiency, all while keeping a priority on customer-facing teams and tools. We have a long journey ahead, which will be both challenging and exciting for the team.

Nexmo will demo what’s new with its Verify SDK at FinovateEurope on 9/10 February in London. Tickets are selling fast; register today to secure your seat.

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Redesigning the Value Chain: Q&A with Michiel Schipper of Topicus

By David Penn Posted on July 14, 2015
Categories: CEO Interview, Topicus

Topicus demonstrated its Force Business Lending solution in February at FinovateEurope 2015. The technology is a straight-through business process platform for loan origination for SMEs and corporate businesses.

The idea was to help companies not able to take advantage of more sophisticated BPM solutions such as the self-serve loan origination technology that Topicus demonstrated in its Finovate debut the previous year.

“Our internal processes are not really ready for self-service, yet,” Topicus Managing Director Michiel Schipper said, quoting from queries about his company’s technology. “What’s your solution for that?”

The solution, Force Business Lending, is a financial business process engine built specifically for the needs of lending institutions. The platform “knows” financial products, their structures and pricing, and provides fully automated ratings, dynamic pricing, and the ability to customize policy rules and other lending criteria.

We exchanged e-mails with Schipper earlier this year to find out what Topicus has been working on since its FinovateEurope appearance. We also wanted to know what to expect from the Netherlands-based, cloud-banking software specialist in the second half of 2015.

Finovate: You mentioned at FinovateEurope 2015 that your second appearance at Finovate was largely influenced by comments you received at your first appearance. What was that feedback and how did you take it to heart?

Michiel Schipper: During our first appearance, we showcased a solution where medium-sized enterprises could build their own financing solution from the bank’s assortment. Visitors to our booth told us that they’d love to be able to provide that service, but their mid-office ICT systems and processes would not cope. Therefore, we decided to take a step back and showcase our mid-office solution for loan origination and review that was servicing last year’s portal.

Finovate: Your company’s mission is described as “redesigning the business lending value chain.” Can you tell us a little more about that? What is the problem with business lending right now as you see it?

Schipper: It’s a very in-transparent marketplace for SMEs and mid-corps to be in right now. The traditional role of the banker taking time to challenge the business plans and financial health of his clients is disappearing. And the bank is no longer a one-stop shop for finance. Who is going to help the client find the right solutions for financing growth? Who is monitoring his financial health and acting as a true stakeholder?

New intermediaries, innovative accountants, and smart ICT will need to fill this gap. We believe that the crowd could play a role here as well.

At Topicus, we have been redesigning the value chain by equipping accountants and intermediaries with Basel-II ratings and instruments, software to play “what-if” scenarios for financing solutions, and stacked finance products.

Finovate: This year you demoed the Force Financial Business Process Management (FBPM) solution. How was the reception and how does FBPM differ from other BPM platforms?

Schipper: The most important discriminator is that traditional BPM platforms with a rule engine lack the product dimension. Our system knows about financial products, acceptance criteria, qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, risk-based pricing, etc. The process will adapt itself depending on which products are part of, say, a potential credit agreement. This results in a shorter time-to-market and a roadmap that has a strong focus on the financial industry.

Pictured: Force Business Lending provides a credit risk rating based on the financial data provided, displaying the risk profile in an easy, read-at-a-glance format.

Finovate: What were some of the biggest technical challenges when it came to developing the FBPM solution?

Schipper: The sheer complexity of the business-lending domain. Our aim is to achieve a very high level of automation, or Straight Through Processing. This requires that all aspects of business lending are specified. Most banks still work with paper product sheets, a simple data-entry system for the mid-office, Word templates for the credit proposal, and manual data entry on the back-ends. Harvesting the requirements for Force Business Lending was and is more complex than the mortgage domain.

Finovate: Thinking about user interface and experience for a moment. What does the business user want that is different from what the average individual technology user wants in terms of UI/UX?

Schipper: A professional user wants a lot of information and many buttons on a single screen, because he will quickly learn where to glance to find the info he needs. This results in screens that seem ugly and hard to use at a first glance, but reduce the need to flip back and forward across pages. Casual users need more explanation, canned customer journeys, and something pretty to look at to keep them going. Therefore, casual users and professional users should never have to share screens.

Finovate: More players are getting into the market for developing financial models for SMEs. What is your edge?

Schipper: Our domain is slowly moving from traditional statistical models based on finances to big data and risk assessment. Creating a risk model based on big data and open systems is not very hard any more. The hard part is enabling banks and risk departments to take those steps, as well. Our software embraces the traditional risk models that are still leading today, and allows banks to add qualitative scorecards and external data sources into the equation. The underlying data can be used not only as input for traditional statistical analysis to create a better risk model, but also for correlation discovery methods. We enable change through evolution.

From left: Topicus Head of Business Lending Jamie Burink; Managing Director Michiel Schipper.

Finovate: What fintech innovations are people talking the most about in the Netherlands?

Schipper: That would probably be crowdfunding, with blockchain technology coming in second. We currently have around forty crowdfunding platforms, which seems too much. It is impossible to identify which platforms will survive, so it’s a real immature market.

Finovate: What are your growth goals? Is European expansion a major priority? What about the U.S. or Asia?

Schipper: We are currently working with Gartner to take our next steps in internationalization. The U.S., Middle East, and Northern Europe are the regions we are focusing on. International expansion for our mortgage and business lending propositions is a major priority within the organization. In fact, this receives higher priority than starting new verticals like software for pensions or insurances.

Finovate: What can we expect from Topicus in the second half of 2015?

Schipper: Expect a lot of highlights from Topicus this year. The two most important ones are:

We are launching our software for crowdfunding, which is based on our fund broker software. It will have all the Force BPM magic built in, as well, so crowdfunding platforms can scale incredibly well with products of all levels of complexity. Crowdfunding a mortgage with automatic execution of all applicable rules and directives can be done against low operational costs, even down to automated arrears processes. We are looking into combining consumer crowdfunding with business crowdfunding to create crowdfunding funds that investors of all sizes can invest in.

Another highlight is the launch of Force Business Lending as-a-Service, which should enable small funds to reach SMEs through a professional process. These funds now lack a go-to market option, and remain unused. This would really open up the non-banking finance market in the Netherlands and change the business-lending value-chain again.

Learn more about Topicus and its Force Business Lending platform in the company’s demo video from FinovateEurope 2015.

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Interview with CurrencyTransfer.com Co-founder Daniel Abrahams

By David Penn Posted on March 9, 2015
Categories: CEO Interview, CurrencyTransfer

If there is one of area where innovation—and venture capital investment—is most abundant, it may be international money transfers.

Whether it is the worker abroad looking for the best and safest way to send money back home, or the enterprise trying to find the best rates for converting thousands of dollars every day, the challenge of moving money across borders safely and efficiently is a growing one.

CurrencyTransfer.com is one of the pioneers. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, CurrencyTransfer.com works to bring about the same competitive pricing to small- and medium-sized businesses as that experienced regularly by large corporations.

SMEs trading up to £200 million annually can take advantage of CurrencyTransfer.com’s forex price-feed aggregator and execution platform, gaining access to competitive international payment quotes from a variety of providers all in one place.

We exchanged emails with Daniel Abrahams, CurrencyTransfer.com co-founder and managing director, to learn more about the company and its unique role in the money-transfer industry. His responses are below.

Finovate: You’ve earned some great press heading into into the end of 2014. What have you been doing that’s been attracting so much positive attention.

Daniel Abrahams: For a start, CurrencyTransfer.com is doing something different. We’re not a bank, we’re not a broker, nor are we a P2P matcher. We’ve built the world’s first online marketplace for international payments, saving businesses up to 85% in hidden fees. Thinking differently runs through everything we do, and this is certainly capturing the imagination of both journalists and end-users alike.

At the capital markets level, FTSE 100 companies have the basic right to get live, multiple-price feeds. We simple try to democratize this down to the everyday SME, deserving of the same access as the big guys.

Finovate: Where did the idea for CurrencyTransfer.com come from?

Abrahams: Personal pain. My co-founder and I were getting ripped off on our own currency exchange when traveling around Europe and living in Australia. We were shocked at hidden fees; namely, profit built into the exchange rate by banks and bureaus.

My co-founder Stevan and I also observed other verticals closely. In any industry where there is inefficiency, we see marketplaces disrupt. Whether it is the way we book flights, hotels, taxis—the list goes on. In such a huge, opaque industry, we spotted a real opportunity to bring transparency and efficiency.

Finovate: There are a variety of players in the currency-transfer space. How do you distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack?

Abrahams: It’s a hot space that has attracted a significant amount of VC funding over the past 24 months. I see distinct layers in the currency-transfer space, rather than any “winner-takes-all” scenarios. Some focus on cracking remittance, others 100% pure play digital private clients.

While we do onboard private clients, there is a minimum trade size and our sweet spot is regular business foreign exchange. We actively trade and onboard companies with many millions of pounds worth of FX exposure annually. The average transaction size is in excess of £25,000 and rising the whole time. These customers have very regular foreign-exchange exposure and often use our platform for more than just a basic spot-transfer.

We offer anything from same-day spot, up to 12-month forward, and whilst all transfers are booked online, we also offer a more managed service through in-house currency experts. For larger companies—our sweet spot—we learned they need and often want to have a trusted specialist on the other end of the phone.

Daniel Abrahams, managing director and co-founder; Stevan Litobac, technical director and co-founder; and Aviva Tabachnik, partnerships executive, demoed at FinovateEurope 2014.

Finovate: What are some of the biggest challenges on the technology side, in terms of building a platform that works well for users?

Abrahams: Marketplaces are notoriously tough to build. Building out a reliable system—one that works reliably across multiple external API systems—can be challenging as you have to amalgamate various different formats of data coming in from these providers.

The second biggest challenge is optimizing the speed of service across these providers when the customers are getting quotes.

Finovate: You’ve talked about building the world’s first multibroker KYC form. Tell us more about this project and why it’s such as big deal.

Abrahams: At CurrencyTransfer.com, we let customers set up a payment, aggregate LIVE rates, and book transfers—all within our web or mobile environment. This sounds easier to execute than it is.

For customers to get a live, bookable quote from non-bank FX suppliers, they need to be onboarded for compliance and anti-money laundering. When [creating the architecture for] our product, we realized we needed to onboard our customers with multiple providers in one hit. It would make no sense to fill in 5+ forms, then come back to our environment. You would lose stickiness and get quickly frustrated with the product and process. As a result, we coupled neat-tech with engaging with the various stakeholders behind the scenes to make this a reality for our customers.

Clients now never need fill out multiple forms, call up multiple brokers for an inaccurate and time-consuming rate-quote. Everything happens in one venue.

Finovate: Are you in the process of raising funds? If so, how is it going? What are some of the things that are impressing investors the most?

Abrahams: Yes. We’re looking to aggressively grow both side of the marketplace in 2015, and want to hit ambitious milestones we’ve set for ourselves. FinovateEurope was a great platform for announcing CurrencyTransfer.com, and as a result we’ve had a lot of inbound interest from both traditional VCs and, would you believe it, funds set up by banks. Investors like our fresh approach to the deep problem we’re tackling, the tech, and momentum we’ve built without raising a single penny of outside funding to date.

Finovate: You spend time in both London and Tel Aviv. How do you compare the two cities in terms of being fertile ground for fintech innovation.

Abrahams: We think we’re well set, marrying two of the best startup ecosystems in the world. Both are regularly seeing success stories and have growing fintech activity. London is certainly more mature when it comes to fintech, boasting more employees in the space than either New York or Silicon Valley.

In Israel, we’re seeing significant companies including, among others: Payoneer, eToro, and BillGuard to name a few. Budding entrepreneurs are looking at these successful companies, and are constantly looking at ways to cut costs or deliver better user experience than banks or legacy businesses. Bank Leumi, Citigroup, and Hapoalim are looking at ways to engage with startups through hackathons and accelerator programs. Innovative bitcoin startups are popping up the whole time.

At CurrencyTransfer.com, we organize a monthly FinTech Aviv, which brings together the smartest minds in the Israeli fintech ecosystem.

Finovate: You had an interesting column on the relationship between banks and startups. Overall, your outlook seemed very positive for both banks and fintech startups. Why do you think that the relationship between banks and startups is more mutually beneficial than we are sometimes led to believe (with the focus often on “disruption”)?

Abrahams: Banks are very good at certain things, and with the greatest respect, suck at others. Startups get UI/UX, and how to deliver a best-in-class customer experience. Startups want to push all boundaries with cost saving and product, but are not the smartest when it comes to the regulatory landscape and the intricacies of holding client funds. As such, I truly believe where there is a match (and there isn’t always), banks and startups will continue to lean on each other to revolutionize finance.

At CurrencyTransfer.com, we’re an open and democratic marketplace, and whilst cutting excessive bank fees by up to 85%, we are more than happy to engage with banks.

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Interview With Nostrum Group CEO, Richard Carter

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on February 23, 2015
Categories: CEO Interview, Nostrum Group

Between the risk involved with lending and the number of resources needed, it can be costly for banks. Nostrum Group is helping banks on both fronts with a set of tools that reduce friction in the lending process.

At FinovateEurope 2014, Nostrum Group showed off Virtual Collector, a system that automates loan delinquency management. This year it applied for FinovateEurope and was selected to debut a new iteration of its core system that aims to make lending cheaper, faster, and safer.

Richard Carter, CEO, has an extensive background in the credit and lending space. We interviewed him recently about Nostrum’s loan platform:

Finovate: In addition to its Virtual Collector, Nostrum offers loan application technology. What role does big data have here? What role do you see big data taking on in the lending industry in the future?

Carter:
That’s right, in fact at FinovateEurope 2015 we launched our new Virtual Finance platform, which is our fully digital loan management platform. This platform enables lenders to completely automate the loan application and servicing process, including delinquency management, which is where Virtual Collector fits in.

The focus of our efforts when developing the Virtual Finance platform was on automating a truly personal and bespoke customer experience. Big data plays a vital role in the way lenders can optimize their lending decisions, as it offers such a rich source of insight to inform their scorecards.

The driver of all of this of course is that smartphone adoption is nearing saturation. A person’s Facebook activity can probably tell you much more about their loan affordability than bank statements from six months ago for example and therefore lenders can expect to make better lending decisions and improve the performance of their loan book.

On a more simplistic level, the interaction of the applicant with the site can be used to supplement the lending decision. If a customer applies for the largest loan amount available with the shortest term in milliseconds and skims through the T&C’s are they entering into a loan agreement with strong intent to pay?

Finovate: What can you tell us in the way of metrics?

Carter:

Perhaps the most telling metric is the fact that Nostrum’s lending platform processes a loan application every 10 seconds on behalf of our clients. When you consider that we only employ around 80 staff, the efficiencies of automation are clear.

Historically (and even now), some paper based lenders would take several weeks to confirm their decision on a loan application. Using our systems this can be done within seconds, but not only that, we can have the funds in the applicant’s bank account within minutes. We’ve not quantified the financial or operational benefits to lenders because, quite frankly, the case in favour of automation is an overwhelmingly compelling one. However, you’d call out the ability to process applications and service queries without the requirement for agents as a major overhead reduction. The flip side is that we know customers want to engage in this manner, so that will drive acquisition.

The strong demand for our product shows how the lending industry is transforming. Over the last two financial years our turnover has increased by 137% and based on our current line of sight of our order book, this digital trend is set to continue for some time to come. You only have to see how many banks have created senior digital leaders to understand that this isn’t a short-term play.

Finovate: Do you view alternative lending sites, such as Lending Club, as competition or complementary to traditional bank lending?

Carter:

We see alternative lenders as complimentary because in most instances they are fulfilling demand for loans in areas of the market where banks don’t want to lend. The alternative lending sector has grown quickly though and combines the latest technology with highly efficient operating models, so the threat to the banks is an increasingly real one. On a slightly controversial note, we would highlight payday lenders as having driven technology adoption. They pushed high levels of automation through their lending operations – they had limited appetite to staff up contact centers, so the whole application process was automated including electronic signatures on agreements and immediate disbursements. That legacy is now continuing through mainstream lending as customers demand immediacy of service with mainstream banks and other product providers.

The challenge the alternative lenders face is whether they can scale up their operations to compete not just on rate, but in terms of the volumes of business they can write. The question that needs to be asked is whether these alternative lenders are trying to supply a product that customers want, or do they just represent a great idea looking for a home? Looking back at previous examples, prepaid cards were in a similar stage of maturity, and a great product, but lack of demand stifled growth.

Digital banks now face a similar journey, and our view is that the most successful alternative lenders and digital banks will find themselves being acquired by the major banks, who will inevitably retain the vast majority of the customers. At the end of the day, the banks or lenders who have the customers are the ones who will be the winners. That’s generally the case in most industries.

In the UK, for example, we are already seeing collaboration between major banks and peer-to-peer lenders, to pool resources and drive progress to critical mass.

Finovate: Tell us an original fact about Nostrum Group that you’ve never before shared.

Carter:

The fact I would really like to tell you is the list of high street retailers and well-known global consumer brands who use our systems to provide finance facilities to their customers. We’ve never shared this before because we’re not allowed to name most of our clients.

So, although I’d like to tell you, I’m not allowed! However, what I can say is that if you search for a list of the top 20 UK retail brands you’ll find at least six of our current
clients, and nearly the same number again who we are actively in talks with.

Finovate: As CEO, what past experiences do you have that help you provide lenders with a better way to serve borrowers?

Carter:

My entire career has been spent working in technology in financial services, specifically in the lending industry. So I’m a subject matter expert and I’ve got experience and relationships that span three decades. I’ve been at the heart of the industry through boom and bust periods, and some of the most pivotal innovations the market has experienced including telephone banking, internet banking, and most recently the dawn of the cloud, social media, smartphones and tablets.

I think what really helps me to add value to our clients though is the simple fact that I’m a consumer myself, and one who is fascinated by technology and gadgets, and obsessive about customer service. I follow innovations and success stories across consumer industries with great interest and these have been the source of many sparks of inspiration for our own technology.

I can sit down with our clients and talk to them from combined perspectives of a technology provider, a lending industry expert, and an active and passionate consumer. I think it’s a combination they value.

Nostrum Group is self-funded and is based in the UK. Check out the debut of Virtual Collector at FinovateEurope 2014. Its FinovateEurope 2015 video will be available on the demo video archive pages later this week.

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CEO Interview: Mike Iacobucci of Interactions

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: CEO Interview, Interactions

For many in attendance at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose watching the Interactions demo, the “Aha!” moment came when the virtual agent began speaking flawless Spanish.

The demo was already impressive, with murmurs of appreciation from the audience as the seamless call and response back and forth between the presenter and the Interactions virtual agent made believers of everyone in the room.

But the Spanish might have been the breaking point, that moment when technology seemed to do that thing that the great Arthur Clarke insisted it could always do: become indistinguishable from magic.

Magical as the technology may seem, Interactions‘ virtual agent technology is far from magic. Rather, it is the result of a patent-pending technology that succeeds where other virtual technologies, including Apple’s Siri, have struggled.

Interactions technology has been deployed in industries ranging from retail to hospitality to healthcare, and include Fortune 500 financial services corporations. The company, founded ten years ago, is headquartered in Franklin, Massachusetts, and includes Softbank Capital, North Hill Ventures, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Sigma Partners, Prime Ventures, and Updata Partners among its investors.

We talked with Interactions President and CEO Mike Iacobucci about his company’s technology, how it came to be, and the ways it can be put to use to save money, improve efficiencies, and help improve the customer/client experience.

Finovate: Interactions is a two-time Best of Show award winner. What is it about Interactions that draws such a positive response?

Mike Iacobucci: There are two reasons our demo was impactful: first, because it was a live demo and second, because our technology works flawlessly.

We’ve all used an automated system in the past, be it an IVR when calling for customer care or Siri on an iPhone. And we know from these experiences that they’re far from perfect technologies. Many of us have seen the replays of Microsoft’s live speech-recognition failures during keynotes in 2006 and 2012.

The other reason is because our technology appeals so much to the audience as consumers. Not only do we have a cool technology. It also addresses a serious problem that people know all too well – that a five-minute customer-service call can raise our blood pressure more than our teenage children.

Our technology makes contacting customer service a value-added experience, and that innovation makes our presentation even more exciting.

Finovate: What has Interactions been working on since FinovateSpring in April?

Iacobucci: Interactions is working to expand our product portfolio by bringing enhanced human-like text and speech-based conversations to every channel and device. Our services are rooted in customer care, but we’re moving into more revenue-generating areas like marketing and sales.

We’re rapidly expanding into Asia and delivering customer implementations in newer channels like mobile chat and proactive messaging.

Finovate: What makes Interactions’ “Adaptive-Understanding (TM) technology” different from other voice-automation technologies?

Iacobucci: Speech recognition averages 75% accuracy with simple, open-ended prompts in the best conditions, which means that it’s going to fail for consumers in at least one out of every four attempts. Comparatively, our patented Adaptve-Understanding technology performs with 95+% accuracy on simple to complex open-ended prompts, which really changes the game.

Our technology focuses on how computer and human intelligence can work together to achieve a desired outcome. We always use automated speech recognition to apply business rules. When needed in small doses, we supplement with our Human Assisted Understanding capability to leverage a trained analyst’s natural proficiency at noise discrimination and interpretation.

In short, it’s automation with a human touch. And we’ve accomplished this and made it scale for very large multinational enterprises.

Finovate: Are there things that a virtual assistant does better than a live human customer service representative? Do you see this changing as VA technology becomes more sophisticated?

Iacobucci: Absolutely. Customer service representatives are great at handling unique situations, troubleshooting complex issues, sales inquiries, and retention calls. However, there’s nothing value-added by having customer service representatives handle data-collection processes. For example, we can fully automate a loan application. It’s a lengthy process, but for us, it’s just capturing a few dozen fields of data. Nothing we can’t handle. And by automating these transactions, the savings are incredible.

When your virtual assistant is handling all of these data-collection transactions successfully, your agents can then spend more time with the call-types best handled by people. And that improves agents’ job satisfaction and retention rates. And, it keeps them more engaged.

Additionally, a virtual assistant is much more secure than a live agent, and collecting private information is an area where we excel. Moreover, we’re consistent, and this is extremely relevant to the financial services sector. The virtual assistant engages in a consistent manner from conversation to conversation, and if anything needs to be read back word for word, our solutions are a much safer bet than a live agent.

Finovate: Two years ago in an interview with the Boston Business Journal, you hinted at an initial public offering. Is that still under consideration?

Iacobucci: We have no specific plans for a public offering. The company has the characteristics of a company that can be an innovative institution to a large market.

Finovate: What is the clim
ate like in Boston for fintech innovation? How does it compare to that of Silicon Valley?

Iacobucci: In many ways, Boston and Silicon Valley are extremely similar. With an incredible amount of talent pouring in from the top institutions in the country and an entrepreneurial spirit rivaled by few other cities, Boston is an extremely inviting climate for fintech innovation.

This is only magnified by a strong presence in venture capital as well as progressive banking and financial institutions like Fidelity, State Street, and Putnam Investments. Additionally, there is a highly concentrated and rapidly growing focus on speech recognition, as seen by recent investments in Boston from Amazon. Google, Nuance, and Interactions.

Finovate: What can we expect from Interactions in the coming months?

Iacobucci: We’re looking to be a broad provider of services to the market beyond the customer care market. We want to leverage our platform to reach other market segments and other regions in the world where speech technology is otherwise inefficient or incapable.

We’ve created interactive systems in both speech and text that can foster the types of conversations that were never thought possible with automation, and with our technology, our potential applications are limitless.

Learn more about Interactions. Watch their Best of Show winning live demo from FinovateSpring 2014 here.

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CEO Interview: Mike Iacobucci of Interactions

By David Penn Posted on October 14, 2014
Categories: CEO Interview, Interactions

For many in attendance at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose watching the Interactions demo, the “Aha!” moment came when the virtual agent began speaking flawless Spanish.

But the Spanish might have been the breaking point, that moment when technology seemed to do that thing that the great Arthur Clarke insisted it could always do: become indistinguishable from magic.

Finovate: Interactions is a two-time Best of Show award winner. What is it about Interactions that draws such a positive response?

Mike Iacobucci: There are two reasons our demo was impactful: first, because it was a live demo and second, because our technology works flawlessly.

Our technology makes contacting customer service a value-added experience, and that innovation makes our presentation even more exciting.

Finovate: What has Interactions been working on since FinovateSpring in April?

We’re rapidly expanding into Asia and delivering customer implementations in newer channels like mobile chat and proactive messaging.

Finovate: What makes Interactions’ “Adaptive-Understanding (TM) technology” different from other voice-automation technologies?

In short, it’s automation with a human touch. And we’ve accomplished this and made it scale for very large multinational enterprises.

Finovate: Are there things that a virtual assistant does better than a live human customer service representative? Do you see this changing as VA technology becomes more sophisticated?

Finovate: Two years ago in an interview with the Boston Business Journal, you hinted at an initial public offering. Is that still under consideration?

Iacobucci: We have no specific plans for a public offering. The company has the characteristics of a company that can be an innovative institution to a large market.

Finovate: What is the clim
ate like in Boston for fintech innovation? How does it compare to that of Silicon Valley?

Finovate: What can we expect from Interactions in the coming months?

Learn more about Interactions. Watch their Best of Show winning live demo from FinovateSpring 2014 here.

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CEO Interview: Matchi’s David Milligan

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on August 29, 2014
Categories: CEO Interview, Matchi

Banks have problems. Innovators have answers. This is the way that Johannesburg-based Matchi, the online platform that pairs banks with relevant innovations, sees things.

Here at Finovate, fintech innovation is always on our minds, so we wanted to interview David Milligan, CEO of Matchi. Milligan has a passion for

innovation and has headed a number of innovation and new business units throughout his career. He has served as Matchi’s CEO since January of 2014. You can check out his LinkedIn profile here.

Finovate: Where did the idea for Matchi, a platform that matches banks with innovations, come from?

Milligan: The idea for Matchi came as a direct result of challenges encountered by our co-founder Warren Bond and me, in our respective histories. I ran innovation and new venture business units in a large bank for over 10 years, and Warren successfully launched and licensed technologies to banks. Both of us experienced first-hand how banks can benefit from working with smaller, more innovative fintech firms, but also how hard it is and how long it can take to do a deal with a bank.

On the other side of the table, banks need consistent and clear approaches for sourcing and evaluating possible innovations, and anything that can extend their reach and help them find the next right thing is of great benefit. We realized that a global innovation platform that would assist innovators to reach the right people in banks globally, without having to pay high marketing costs, would fulfill a clear market need.

Finovate: What are the top three ways in which Matchi benefits banks?

Milligan: The top three ways Matchi benefits banks are:

Connecting banks to the best innovations from around the world and giving them a way to curate
Pro-active matching of innovations in the market in accordance to banks’ priorities
Banks can negotiate fees directly with innovators

Finovate: What trends are you seeing in fintech innovations?

Milligan: We have noticed an increasing demand for innovations that are designed for banks’ core purposes such as:

Managing and granting credit
Opening new accounts
Security solutions

Finovate: What types of metrics can you share?

Milligan: We’ve doubled the number of banks on the platform since January of this year. To date, 30 banks from around the world have signed up as Matchi members, including banks from Europe, U.S.A., Asia, Australia, and Africa. This includes 3 Sponsor Banks across Spain, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Israel.

Additionally, we are currently signing three to four fintech firms a week which ensures our banks regularly receive interesting value propositions.

Finovate: What’s the next development for Matchi?

Milligan: Increased functionality for Sponsor Banks as well as exciting new opportunities for innovators to respond to specific challenges as set by our Member Banks. We are also looking at developing Innovation Simulations for the workplace and will be hosting our first Innovation Sponsor Summit in December this year.

Finovate: What is your personal favorite innovation on the Matchi platform?

Milligan: There are many great innovations on our platform that span so many different areas, but one of my favorites is a solution that helps to prevent card fraud in a very unusual way.

To learn more about Matchi, check out its demo video from FinovateEurope 2014 or come see its new technology at FinovateFall 2014 in New York.

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