American Banker on How Four Finovate Alums Unwrap the Payments Genome

Earlier this week, American Banker described the science that FinTech companies use to learn the spending habits of consumers, the Payments Genome.

All four fintech companies cited in the article are Finovate alumni. Here are the techniques employed:

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for TruaxisLogo9.11.jpg

  • Truaxis uses an algorithm to infer consumer behavior.Thumbnail image for T8WebwareLogo.jpg
  • T8 Webware uses a modified version of an algorithm used by gene scientists to create new crop species, Hidden Markov ModelBillGuard.jpg
  • BillGuard uses its userbase to flag questionable transactions (i.e., crowd sourcing)
  • Micronotes performs regression analysis on each customer’s transaction data to cross-sell products.Thumbnail image for Micronotes (2).jpg
To learn more about each of these companies, watch Truaxis’ FinovateFall 2011 demo, T8 Webware’s FinovateFall 2011 demo, BillGuard’s FinovateFall 2011 demo, and Micronotes’ FinovateFall 2010 demo.

Finovate Alumni Website Traffic in August

Each month we survey the Web-traffic performance of Finovate alums using data from Web-analytics company Compete
Out of 268 alumni, 75 had more than 10,000 unique U.S. visitors in August 2011 and are included in the tables below. Of those, 41 (55%) had more visitors in August than July. Year-over-year, 45 (60%) had traffic increases.
Private Companies
  • Seeking Alpha — the most-trafficked in August with 2.5 million unique visitors — also had the highest increase in number of unique month-over-month visits with 300,000 more visits in August than in July.
  • Budgettracker.com saw the highest monthly growth percentage with more than 6.5 times the number of unique visitors in August compared to July.
  • Betterment had the highest percentage growth year-over-year, up 88x.
  • Cortera had the highest number of unique year-over-year visitors, growing by 1.5 million. 
August2011PrivateWebTraffic4.jpg
Source: Compete.com retrieved week of October 3, 2011
1) The previous month recorded was July 2011
2) Truaxis was formerly BillShrink
4) Kasasa is powered by BancVue
5) Checkingfinder.com is powered by BancVue

Public Companies

  • Fiserv had the highest month-over-month percent growth, with 50% more visitors.
  • CheckFree had the highest percentage growth year-over-year, with over 5 times the number of visitors.
  • S1 also had a high percentage growth year-over-year, doubling its visitors.
August2011PublicWebTraffic5.jpg
Source: Compete.com retrieved the week of October 3, 2011
1) The previous month recorded was July 2011.
_______________________________________________________
Notes:
1. We reviewed 268 Finovate alumni. Only those with at least 10,000 unique visitors in July are listed. 
3. NM = Not measurable
4. t= Tie
5. Compete estimates online visitors based on the activity of a panel of more than 2 million U.S. Internet users. It is only an estimate of traffic and may undercount at-work usage.

Finovate Alumni at BAI Retail Delivery Conference

BAIIMG2.jpg

The BAI Retail Delivery conference begins tomorrow with 29 Finovate alumni participating in sessions and/or exhibiting on the trade show floor.
Session Speakers
  • Tuesday, Global Game-Changer Session
    Speaker: Jim Taschetta from FreeMonee
  • Wednesday, Technology for Business Summit 
    Speaker: Mitch Jacobs from On Deck Capital
  • Wednesday, Technology for Business Summit Session 
    Speaker: David Eads from Kony Solutions
  • Thursday, Technology for Business Summit Session
    Speaker: Eric Connors from Yodlee
  • Thursday, Marketing & Product Management Summit Session 
    Speaker: Rod Witmond from Cardlytics
Exhibitors 
BAI Mobile Link
Mobile Link Panel Discussions
Solutions Theatre
Jim Bruene and I (julie@netbanker.com) will be in attendance and will update the blog and Twitter with new developments throughout the event. 

Finovate Alumni News– October 7, 2011

  • Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Finovate-F-Logo.jpgMountain West Capital Network names Lendio fastest-growing company in Utah.
  • Business Insider recommends signing up for BillGuard if you’re a victim of ID theft.
  • Firmology profiles Samurai by FeeFighters.
  • Truaxis wins the Innotribe Start-Up Challenge for StatementRewards Platform.
  • Kony names Sriram Ramanthan as Chief Technology Officer.
  • The Examiner advises using Credit Karma’s Credit Simulator and reading LearnVest’s blog to keep aware of money matters.
  • Dave Enjoys’ blog highlights features of BankSimple.
  • Credit Karma’s CEO Ken Lin reports What Banks and Lenders Know About You From Social Media on Mashable.
  • KAPITALL launches interactive news site KAPITALL WIRE.
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.

Truaxis Debuts Purchase Insights

TruaxisLogo9.11.jpg

This morning, Truaxis debuted Purchase Insights:

“This StatementRewards enhancement provides the industry’s first social benchmarking for consumers. Detailed transaction summaries will use merchant, category and location data to give users insight into their spending and how it compares with their preferred social groups. Purchase Insights integrates directly within the bank’s existing online and mobile interfaces and is completely free to users without any setup. In turn, banks need zero additional integration to offer StatementRewards to their customers.”

Product Launched: October 2010 
HQ Location: Redwood City, CA 
Company Founded: June 2007 
Metrics: Truaxis, the company behind StatementRewards and BillShrink.com, is working with the country’s leading financial institutions and merchants to deliver the market’s most comprehensive purchase-based services platform. The StatementRewards platform has been launched to more than 8 million online bank customers this year.
Website: truaxis.com
Presenting Schwark Satyavolu (Co-Founder & CEO) & Samir Kothari (Co-Founder & VP Products)

IMG_0852.JPG
IMG_0855.JPG