Finovate

35 Financial Tech Companies Already on Board to Participate in FinovateStartup 2009

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Conferences, Finovate, Launches

imageOne month ago we announced the 2009 version of our Finovate Startup Conference. Since then, we’ve been busy talking to FinTech startups from around the world. We are glad (and a bit relieved) to announce that we already have 35 committed to demo at the event. There is still an enormous amount of activity and energy in the banking and financial technology sector (note 1).

We are several months out from the deadline, so we expect in excess of 50 startups, along with several hundred bankers, investors and other industry execs to convene April 28 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center (note 2).

While last year’s FinovateStartup was dominated by social-media plays (see logos below), this year we have more diversity, with companies from the following categories:

  • Alt payments
  • Financial shopping/comparison tools
  • Investment management/tools
  • Mobile banking & payments
  • iPhone/Android applications, personal financial management/tools
  • Peer-to-peer lending
  • Personal credit management tools
  • Other technologies

Participating companies will be named beginning Feb. 1, but you can save by reserving a ticket now.

Super-early-bird prices that are easy on the budget
We’ve tried to make the conference as affordable as possible recognizing that travel and conference budgets are under constraints. You still have nine days left to snag super-early-bird tickets for $695. Current Online Banking Report subscribers, including anyone in the same company as an existing subscriber, can grab tickets for even less, just $445 each until Jan. 31 (note 3).

Attendees may register here. More information on the event is here.

FinTech companies interested in participating/demoing should email Eric Mattson .


FinovateStartup 2008 presenters (videos of all 2008 demos are here)

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Notes:
1. See our post, “Why financial technology still matters,” here.
2. The venue is about two miles south of the San Francisco financial district.
3. If you don’t know if your company subscribes to Online Banking Report, email info@netbanker.com to find out. If qualified, we’ll email your subscriber discount code to you.

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Announcing the Finovate 2009 Conference Series: FinovateStartup and Finovate2009

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Conferences, Finovate

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We know 2009 promises to be a challenge, but if history is any judge, more lasting innovations will be put in place next year than any year this century. Necessity truly is the mother of invention, especially for startups. 

Next year, we will again showcase the best and brightest ideas at our Finovate conferences:

imageFinovate Startup:
San Francisco – 28 April 2009
The conference features the launch of new companies in financial tech, as well as young companies launching major new products and features. Last year, we had 40 startups participate (see first screenshot below), and this year we expect even more (see demos from 2008).

imageFinovate 2009: 
New York City – 29 Sept. 2009
We head to NYC for the third year in a row to showcase the best of 2009 in the online and mobile space. Company size is irrelevant; it’s all about what’s new and what’s hot (see demos from 2008, 2007).

Attend a Finovate conference in 2009
About 700 of the most innovative execs in banking, finance and technology attended a Finovate event in 2008. The events are fast-paced, just a single day, and allow you to network with the presenting execs along with the decision makers in the audience. Both attendees and presenters love the format.

If you want to join the excitement, you can sign up up now at deeply discounted prices. Tickets are transferable, and refundable, so the risk is low. If you want to bring your entire team, email Eric Mattson, eric@netbanker.com, for a team price.  

Present in 2009: FinTech startups
If you have a young company involved in the online or mobile finance area, there is no reason not to be at FinovateStartup. This year, we are opening the floor to any qualifying startup. So, for the price of a single ticket, you are ensured a table at the event to show off your company and a chance to demo on stage (see previous FinovateStartup demos). 

The earlier you apply, the more benefits you receive. Please check out the Presenters page or email to eric@netbanker.com.

Present in 2009: other FinTech companies
At Finovate2009 in NYC, we’ll put the best two dozen ideas on stage regardless of the size or location of the company. Last year, we had popular demos from large companies including Intuit and CheckFree/Fiserv as well as startups, Mint, Credit Karma, NeoSaej and others (see previous demos from Oct. 2008 and Oct. 2007).

If you have a dynamite new product and are interested in launching it at Finovate NYC, please email eric@netbanker.com or check out the presenters page.

Press
Last year, more than 50 financial, technology and personal finance press and analysts attended the Finovate conferences. If you’d like a press pass for either event, please email me at jim@netbanker.com.

Presenters at FinovateStartup 2008

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Presenters at Finovate 2008

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CheckFree, Credit Karma, Mint and MoneyAisle Win Finovate Best of Show Awards

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: CheckFree, Credit Karma, Finovate, Mint, MoneyAisle

image As conference host, I haven’t quite recovered from the whirlwind of activity yesterday. I’ll post a final conference wrapup tomorrow, but I wanted to get in a quick update with the Finovate 2008 Best of Show winners. 

We had planned to award it to the top three, but there were four companies in a virtual tie at the top (note 1), so we named four winners this year.

In alphabetic order, the winners:

  • image CheckFree which demonstrated its new online banking platform packed with new features
  • image Credit Karma which showed several new features including a tool allowing “what-if” calculations with your credit file
  • imageMint which announced its move out of beta and demo’d several new investment management functions
  • imageNeosaej which showed its unique MoneyAisle real-time, reverse-deposit auction service

Congratulations to these four companies and to everyone else who made the day so interesting.

About the voting
All attendees not affiliated with the presenters rated each demo on a scale of one to six. The ballots were turned in at the end of the final demo session. Approximately 70% of eligible voters turned in complete ballots.

Note:
The companies didn’t finish with the same average scores, but rounding to the nearest tenth created a four-way tie.

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Finovate 2008 BillShrink

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate, Personal Financial Management

image Drum roll, please. Our final presenter today is Peter Pham, CEO of BillShrink.

Menlo Park, CA-based BillShrink launched its new service in July.

The service is designed to help consumers find the best deal in various categories. Today they showed the credit card selector. The service provides detailed breakdowns of fees and rewards to allow consumers to compare across more than 200 cards in the market.

Launching today is MyAccounts which allows users to track their accounts more easily.

BillShrink also tracks wireless carriers and allows users to find the best mobile phone deals.  

BillShrink announced an $8 million dollar funding today.

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Finovate 2008 Digital Insight

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Digital Insight, Finovate, Small Business

image Next up is Digital Insight, now part of Intuit. Karen Van Kirk, director of small business solutions, will conduct the demo.

Calabasas, CA-based Digital Insight will be demonstrating its Small Business Finance Works online banking platform.

FinanceWorks has all the same functionality of Quicken Online. The small business version has been designed to be simple and easy to use for the small business manager. The accounts receivable function includes integrated email capabilities to send personalized payment reminders on the fly.

The service includes integrated remote deposit-capture capabilities.

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Finovate 2008 mFoundry

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate, mFoundry, Mobile Banking

image The last of our mobile demos is from Carlo Cardilli, SVP business development & sales, at mFoundry. 

mFoundry is a mobile banking provider founded in 2004. The San Francisco-based company has worked with Citibank among others.

What’s New
mFoundry just launched the second native banking app, available through the Apple App Store. The demo showed a fictitious bank, but the bank that launched the app with mFoundry is IBC.

The iPhone app has full online banking and payments capabilities. It also has an ATM/branch finder that uses the location-based or GPS capabilities in the iPhone.

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Finovate 2008 Thrive

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate, Personal Financial Management, Thrive

image The second-to-last presenter today is Thrive from Loudwater Labs. CEO Avi Karnani will be conducting the demo.

New York City-based Thrive is the latest entry in the online personal finance market.

What’s New
Thrive is making its official debut today at Finovate. They use a red light/green light system so it’s easy to see what needs attention quickly.

Thrive calculates a financial health score from the user’s data. Then Thrive shows users specifically how they can improve their score. The recommendations show financial institution products that can be used to achieve cost savings (i.e., product placements such as Mint).

On average they are recommending $1500 worth of savings for users.

Thrive has a wizard to help you see how much house you can afford.

Thrive today is announcing a partnership with Credit.com to allow users to track their credit score over time and improve it.

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Finovate 2008 Mint

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate, Mint, Personal Financial Management

image Mint CEO & Founder Aaron Patzer will be presenting next. 

Online personal finance provider Mint launched a year ago and won a Best of Show award at our first Finovate conference in 2007.

What’s new
Mint moves out of beta today, with 500,000 users. Their sign-up rate has more than doubled in the past 3 weeks.

Today they launched new investment tracking functionality that allows Mint users to track their accounts at more than 1000 investment companies, mutual funds, and retirement services.

A unique aspect of its investment tracking is the ability to see the value of the account vs. the cost basis.

Mint has an IRA Rollover Advisor where they are partnering with Fidelity, Scottrade, E*Trade, and Schwab.

Results: 10% of users have changed investment behavior and 50% of users have changed their spending behavior by using Mint.

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Finovate 2008 mShift

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate, Mobile Banking, mShift

image Next we have Awele Ndili, CEO of mShift.

Founded in 1999, mShift is one of the oldest mobile banking providers and now supports 120 clients.

Today, mShift is showing its new mobile business banking solution with full payment capabilities.

Active Messaging System was also demo’d. It’s a new multi-channel alert system that enables alerts to text, voice, email or fax.

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Finovate 2008 Yodlee

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

image At the halfway point of the afternoon session, Peter Hazlehurst, SVP of products at Yodlee, will demonstrate.

Yodlee introduced its personal finance platform eight years ago.

Yodlee has 15 million registered users across all of its clients.

Today they are showing Pay Today, an expedited payment system that works in partnership with Western Union. They will be working with 5 of the 7 largest credit card issuers by year-end. Payment capabilities now tie together personal finance with payments, so users can take action to avoid fees or improve their returns.

All the capabilities are available through their software developers kit.

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Finovate 2008 MoneyAisle

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Finovate, Lead Generation, MoneyAisle

imageNext up is MoneyAisle from NeoSaej. Mukesh Chatter, president & CEO, will demonstrate.

The Burlington, MA-based company launched its auction-based deposit service this summer.

MoneyAisle demonstrated a reverse auction for a CD with a winning bid of 4% APY by Commerce State Bank. The company emphasized that it’s fully transparent with no ads, and the consumer can choose at the end whether they want to accept the bid and purchase the deposit.

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Finovate 2008 CheckFree

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

image CheckFree is up next. Steve Shaw, director of strategic marketing, will demonstrate this afternoon.

CheckFree, now a division of Fiserv, will be showing its Online Advantage online banking platform. CheckFree presented at the first Finovate a year ago.

What’s new
Online Advantage will be introduced later this year. The platform includes integrated billing statement views and payments.

The service also allows for integrated remote-deposit capture, so customers can deposit paper checks using a scanner.

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