While I’ve read TechCrunch since its beginning, I’ve only been able to make it to their semi-annual event, Disrupt, once before. It’s usually just too close to our own Finovate. But this year I made the trek to Pier 94 in Manhattan to see what was going on in tech in general and to meet with the fintech startups in the Startup Alley or Battlefield launch competition.
There were six fintech companies in total. Three offered variations on card-linked offers, one has developed an alternative payment system, one was a newer payments gateway, and surprisingly there was just a single crowdfunding platform.
Startup Battlefield competitors from fintech: TechCrunch selected thirty companies in advance. All have agreed to launch their companies on stage at the event.
Cardify: Card-linked loyalty/offers geared toward local merchants. Sean Rad is CEO and of the West Hollywood company which has raised $750,000. 
Mirth: Same as above. Jeremy Philip Galen is Founder. The NYC-based company is bootstrapped.
Startup Alley participants from fintech: These are companies less than two years old that qualify for a table in the networking hall. Each day one of the Alley companies is voted to the stage to 
compete in the Battlefield.
- LocalBonus: A card-linked offers platform focusing on the local market
Payintele: An alt-payments company using barcodes to pass info between merchant and payee (I’ll do a whole post on them shortly)
- PayLeap: A payments gateway from two previous Authorize.net execs
- The Crowd Funds: A crowdfunding startup from former
E*Trade CTO, Joshua Levine
Observations: It was interesting to see three new card-linked rewards companies all going after the local market. But if you look at what Groupon’s done with local merchants and where Square is headed, you can see there are huge opportunities here.
And the payment APIs available from Cardspring (which both Mirth and Cardify use) are making it relatively easy for startups to tap into a merchant’s card transaction streams to make offers, tally rewards, identify frequent customers, and communicate with them.
As a side note, Cardify has a gorgeous UI. It’s very hip and high-end looking like something you’d see at more well-funded companies such as Square, Simple or Mint (screenshot below). Kudos to the design folk there.
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Cardify homepage (24 May 2012)
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Notes:
1. While not a fintech company, as an auction junkie, I was intrigued by Outbid’s social mobile/online auction platform. The company said it’s talking to four banks looking to host live auctions on their site to use for promotions and social gaming. I think it’s a promising idea, one I’ve explored a few times over the years. But with Facebook Connect you can actually get a critical mass of customers involved very quickly. The company had the cheesiest demo I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying something), but that shouldn’t impact your decision.