PayTech Awards, brought to you by FinTech Futures, are exciting awards in their second year that recognize excellence and innovation in the use of IT in the finance and payment industry worldwide, and the people who make it happen.

The 2019 Awards are now open for entries in the following categories:

Judged awards

• Best Consumer Payments Initiative
• Best Corporate Payments Initiative
• Best Mobile Payments Initiative
• Best Use of Biometrics in Payments
• Best Prepaid Initiative
• Best Cards Initiative
• Top Paytech Innovation
• Best E-commerce Initiative
• Best Paytech Partnership
• Paytech for Good

Leadership awards

• Rising Paytech Star Award – free to enter
• Woman in Paytech Award – free to enter
• Paytech Leadership Award – free to enter
• Paytech Team of the Year

OVUM Payments Innovation awards

• Best Real-Time Payments Solution Provider
• Best Open Banking Solution Provider
• Best Solution Provider for Payment Systems in the Cloud

Think your project deserves to win this year? Or do you know someone that should receive special recognition? The deadline has now been extended to the 19th April, so get nominating >> 

Last year attendees of the PayTech Awards enjoyed the hospitality of a luxurious Silver Sturgeon yacht as it cruised along the river Thames. This year the awards will be announced on 5 July, and will be hosted at the HAC (Honourable Artillery Company), a historic 18th Century mansion accompanied by a six acre garden in London’s Moorgate. Check out last year’s highlights and see what’s in-store:

For more information or to enquire about sponsorship opportunities, please visit the PayTech Awards website or get in touch with Jon Robson via email jon.robson@knect365.com.

The identity verification specialist formerly known as miiCard has launched its new income verification solution. The ID Co.has leveraged bank data, its own unique algorithms, and a comprehensive data-set to build a solution that enables lenders to get a better accounting of a loan applicant’s income.

“Once again, the capabilities of bank data have allowed us to build a new tool that is unrivaled and unparalleled anywhere in the market,” The ID Co. CEO James Varga said. “We know the challenges that banks and lenders have in accurately establishing applicant income, and now, using our experience in bank data, we have a solution that will present this information in mere seconds.”

To use the new tool, participating banks run application data through The ID Co.’s Income Verification API. The solution provides a calculated salary amount, with the option to factor in benefits, and a confidence score. The technology is especially helpful for lenders working with thin file customers and other borrowers without a significant credit history. The ID Co.’s Income Verification solution also provides information such as material supplemental income and changes to an applicant’s salary or wages over time.

“We’ve known for some time that this would be of value to banks and lenders and have worked tirelessly to ensure that this product fits their requirements,” The ID Co. Product Owner Helen Stewart said. “The solution has already been highly commended by banks and lenders that have trialled using it.”

The ID Co. (as miicard) demonstrated its Identity-as-a-Service technology at FinovateFall 2013. More recently, the company unveiled its DirectID Decisioning Platform and DirectID Insights, an online decisioning solution for underwriters, fraud analysts, and credit risk officers. The tool requires no integration, and provides prepackaged reports for lenders and underwriters to help them make better lending decisions faster while reducing operational costs.

Last fall, The ID Co. launched its consumer app, NoMo. The mobile app leverages Open Banking to enable users to conduct basic financial cashflow tracking. This includes cash-flow averaging, spending recommendations, personalized updates, as well as a financial performance overview.

Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, The ID Co. has raised $9.1 million in funding. The company includes New Wave Ventures, Par Equity, and angel investor Rob Dobson among its investors.

As if disruption in the global banking sector was not already confusing enough, traditional institutions must now deal with the rise of neo-banks banks.  This new breed of competition are organizations that are purely digital. They don’t require the licensing, nor do they incur the regulatory burden of traditional banks. They exist without brick and mortar and provide fast, simple, easy to use, highly personalized services that are entirely done via mobile device.

Their rapid growth and success is a result of both a lower cost structure and a regulatory environment aimed at increasing competition and consumer choice. Additionally, they don’t try to be everything to everybody. They excel by offering a limited range of digital products like checking, savings, and a subset of consumer lending products, while deferring things like credit card and mortgage services to more traditional institutions. This results in a lower regulatory burden and reduced overhead which is passed on to the consumer via lower fees.

Their agility and speed is due to the absence of the burden of legacy technology. They are true digital natives — whereas most traditional banks offer a digital front end built on top of outdated and monolithic legacy system-based banking applications.

“These banks don’t carry the weight of legacy technology, so they can leapfrog over traditional infrastructure and disrupt the status quo.”

– Judd Caplain, Head of Global Banking & Capital Markets, KPMG International

Neo-banks target millennials who are more receptive to change. With each passing year the influence of Gen Y changes the shape of the delivery of banking products and services – and that is the long-term bet Neo-banks are making today.

The disruption being driven by this demographic shift has not gone unnoticed by traditional banks. Not only is it forcing banks to accelerate plans to modernize their legacy IT systems and infrastructure, but also to discover new ways of delivering customer value.

The good news is that traditional banks have several advantages over the neo-banks including:

• Well established and recognizable brands
• Long histories and well-established customer relationships
• Massive amounts of content and data on their customers
• Deep insights into customer saving and spending habits

And although traditional banks are starting from a position of competitive advantage, in order to retain and extend that advantage in the digital age, they need to quickly learn how to

• modernize and extend the same customer value that digital-based neo-banks deliver;
• shift the mindset and the culture from business transactions to providing experiences; and
• focus on helping people with their financial lives, not simply selling products.

No one wakes up in the morning and wonders what the next product offering from their bank is going to be. To that end, traditional banks need to extend and grow the value of the customer relationship beyond increasing products per household and focus on increasing value through improving digitized customer experiences.

To learn how one of the top 15 banks in the world partnered with Nuxeo to extend customer value, join us at Finovate Europe on February 14th at 11:15am for “The ticking time bomb of data: Making sense of legacy data in different systems.” presented by Norman Wren, former Director of Technology and Operations for Santander.

“There is no right or wrong answer,” says Chrystina (Tina) M. Giorgio, president and CEO of ICBA Bancard about how banks can work best with fintechs. Ahead of her session at FinovateSpring 2018, Giorgio gives banks some best practice tips from the perspective of someone who has worked as a banker, board member, and innovator.

As community banks look to blend the strength of their operations with fintech innovations, bankers are questioning how to best work with fintechs and their core system providers to bring new products and services to market.

To navigate this terrain, bankers should first prioritize fintech opportunities that complement their banks’ strategic plans. Opportunities could include real-time payments, digital delivery, data analytics and artificial intelligence. They should then share these priorities with their core processors. Due to the present lack of an open banking standard in the United States, a community bank’s core processing system remains a top infrastructure element, and as such, can significantly influence software decisions. Most core processors are already working with or investing in fintech. However, open and ongoing dialogue can help guide core vendors’ investment choices.

There are three primary models banks can follow when choosing how to develop a fintech project that each come with its own risks and rewards:

• Banks can build a proprietary solution in-house.
• Banks can collaborate with a third-party to build a solution.
• Banks can purchase a fintech solution.

There is no right or wrong answer. Ultimately, the “three T’s”-time, treasure and talent should drive the decision. When working with a fintech company, banks will want to follow the process they would for any new vendor and should be sure to look at additional risk factors that pertain specifically to the solution they are acquiring. For example, depending on the solution, more thorough review may be required to properly assess fraud risk, data encryption standards, and KYC (know your customer – the process used to identify and verify customers). More general questions to ask include how long the fintech has been in business, whether it is connected to your core, how much capital it has, who is investing in it, and who its customers are.

Banks will also want to do their diligence to assess whether the vendor can meet regulatory expectations. Fintechs are not regulated like FIs, so bankers should thoroughly evaluate the vendor and the solution for regulatory compliance. Ultimately, balancing fintech utilization against the risks to consumers is the responsibility of the bank. It is vital to put compliance and regulatory issues at the forefront of any fintech deployment, whether the bank builds, collaborates or buys the solution.

ICBA released its Fintech Strategy Roadmap for community banks as they increasingly work in partnership with fintech firms to deliver services to their customers. The roadmap, written in collaboration with Hunton & Williams LLP, offers a look at how community banks can successfully create, collaborate, or invest in fintech partnerships while providing necessary considerations to ensure these strategic decisions fit within regulatory risk parameters.

The Fintech Strategy Roadmap is available exclusively to ICBA members and is the first community bank resource that takes a deep dive into the legal and compliance elements associated with fintech partnerships.

Join Chrystina Giorgio at FinovateSpring 2018, May 8 through 11, 2018 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. Find out more >>

How do traditional financial services firms successfully innovate to move nimbly from fintech idea to full customer availability? Ahead of speaking at FinovateSpring 2018, Jim Van Dyke, Founder & CEO at Futurion reveals his truths around the idea of ‘successful innovation.’

Last year, I interviewed leaders from banks, credit unions, and other FIs (ranging from the nation’s largest to smallest) to reveal specific speed bumps, potholes and pitfalls amidst rare fast stretches of smooth pavement. These leaders all know that without finding a faster and better way to innovate quickly on the path toward fulfillment of customer, competitive and market opportunities, organizations will quickly become irrelevant. This research report asked 30 leaders the same three questions about their largest innovation processes: how they work, how long they take, and what they’ve learned along the way.

At FinovateSpring, the ‘Innovator Insight: Speeding up the time to market for new products and services‘ panel brings actual interviewee respondents on-stage to Finovate to discuss their best practices for getting key fintech innovations to market faster and better.  Here are a few highlights of what we’ll be discussing in our fast-paced and no-holds-barred panel:

• Project durations vary widely­—ranging from a 6 months to five years—with the most common response being 21 months and the average being 24. Specific project management methodologies make all the difference.
• Innovation practices at financial services firms appear to be significantly less mature and productive than those at software firms, representing risk that the latter will outmaneuver the former. Financial sector firms’ project stages vary dramatically among all respondents and had very inconsistent mention of lean methodologies (such as prototyping or customer journey maps).
• Some traditional financial sector firms only allow innovation ideas to originate from top executives. At all such firms, demonstrated respondent confidence and morale was markedly lower (when compared to all other interviewees).
• There was a strong observed (i.e. generally not explicitly stated) correlation between an organization’s current ability to rapidly execute and a respondent’s demonstrated morale and level of engagement. In turn, the author predicts that a likely by-product of the ability to rapidly innovate with high alignment to customer needs might be the benefit of a stronger ability to attract, motivate, and retain top quality talent in the competitive fintech labor market.
• Many top innovations are viewed as neither discretionary nor of direct contribution to customer value, but are ultimately viewed as no less important than others. For example, many cited efforts to adopt an API framework or particular vendor relationships that only make future areas of direct customer value more possible. In addition, several smaller FI executives lamented actions on the part of their technology vendors that they viewed as standing in the way of their ability to release new innovations to market.
• Risk or security-focused team members are unexpectedly incredibly valuable in ideation or problem-solving at several FI shops, possibly because they are required, on an ongoing basis, to creatively address dynamic and formidable problems.

Join Van Dyke at FinovateSpring 2018, May 8 through 11, 2018 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. Find out more >>

John Waupsh is Chief Innovation Officer of Kasasa, an award-winning financial technology and marketing technology provider. Ahead of his session at FinovateSpring where John will talk about the role of the branch in a digital world, he discusses how loans should help people save for retirement.

Building retirement savings is not a strong suit for many Americans. According to a 2018 survey by GoBankingRates, more than 40 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, including the 14 percent with $0 saved for retirement. Financial planning experts frequently recommend having at least eight times your salary saved for your post-career future, and with life expectancy continuing to increase, the minimal recommend savings will likely rise even higher.

It’s so easy for consumers to put off saving for retirement. Their last day on the job seems so far away, and bearing today’s financial burdens like bills and loan payments often means restricting, reducing or simply never beginning to save for tomorrow.

But there’s a better way.

Historically, consumers have often felt like they must jump through three hoops before starting to save for retirement or increasing investments in their future. First, they must be meeting their primary needs like paying power bills and buying groceries. Second, many want to build cushions of both emergency and “fun money,” in case the need arises to pay for a last-minute home repair, an unforeseen medical expense or even a spontaneous weekend vacation. Last, many want to pay off their debt before beginning to save or increasing retirement contributions. These second and third hoops are where many consumers are missing out.

Despite the fact that most Americans want to pay off their loans faster to increase retirement savings, those that meet their primary needs rarely pay extra toward their monthly loan payments because it’s money they can never get back if they need or want it later.

That’s changing with the Kasasa Loan. It is the only loan product that can serve as a tool for building savings through the ability to take-back extra payments.

A loan that allows borrowers to pay ahead to reduce debt, but take that extra back if they need it, eliminates the fear of parting with ‘extra money,’ enabling the consumer to make better financial decisions like paying down debt faster. And when debt is paid down sooner, consumers are freed up to boost retirement savings earlier, when it really counts due to the power of compound interest. Consumers like this option. In fact, according to a recent study, nine out of ten consumers prefer a loan with take-back functionality over comparably priced loans, and 98 percent of consumers say they would refinance existing debt at the same rate to have the flexibility of taking back their extra payments.

In addition to flexibility, visual transparency is something that the lending world has been lacking until now. The innovation of sleek, mobile-friendly dashboards in personal financial management (PFM) apps have long helped consumers budget and visually understand their money. Consumers should now expect the same features from a loan. Having the ability to actually see the impact of extra payments enables borrowers to comprehend better the impact of paying down their loan faster and therefore, make smarter financial decisions for their future.

As Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and even Generation Z inch closer to retirement, there is an opportunity for these consumers to make better borrowing decisions by choosing a loan that is extremely flexible, easy to work with, and visually transparent. In the past, taking out a loan has prevented consumers from saving for their future. Now, it is possible for them to borrow in a way that not only doesn’t hurt their retirement funds but actually helps them save.

For more information on Kasasa, visit www.kasasa.com, or visit them on Twitter @Kasasa, @KasasaNews, Facebook, or LinkedIn.