Our live coverage of highlights from Finovate Fall 2014 – Day 2

Cachet Financial Solutions    Youri Bebic (SVP Mobile Innovations) and Kimberly Timmons (Relationship Manager) Cachet describes themselves as “mobile for the prepaid world.” They aggregate best-in-class services (bill pay, remittance, rewards) and offer it as software as a service (SAAS). They are the first virtual agent of Moneygram. ^SR

I’m sure I’ve see these folks before. Now showing very nice IOS app demo of Cachet’s client MoneyGram. Again, very nice UI. Showing Navy Federal CU app. From our friends at BIC: Cachet Financial Solutions is a leading financial services technology company, specializing in commercial and consumer remote deposit capture (RDC) solutions for financial institutions, credit unions, and financial service organizations.

Cachet’s merchant capture solution (for both PC and Mac) and mobile applications provide greater freedom and flexibility for financial institutions and their customers. What’s kind of interesting to me is that I’ve always thought of these folks as more of a remote deposit technology company. Everything I’m seeing now seems to be mobile app payments. Now showing analytics dashboard based on user data.

From their web site:
Cachet Financial Solutions is a leading provider of cloud-based Saas remote deposit capture (RDC) solutions for banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. Remote and mobile deposit technologies are changing business and personal banking forever. And thanks to our leading industry platform, Cachet has simplified the process for delivering, implementing and servicing these remote solutions. ^WM

Hoyos Labs    Hector Hoyos (Founder, Chairman & CEO)    From your mobile phone, they provide facial recognition and retina scan, and logs you in automatically to your account. No usernames, no passwords, no tokens. Launches for consumer use in October. And yes, they do have anti-hack technology (like asking you to raise your eyebrows to make sure you are not a fake picture.) System can tell the difference between live shot of you, and a recorded video. ^SR

Hector is showing the IOS app and the BofA credit card web site and now how it is linked to the mobile app. Using facial recognition for authentication. No user names, passwords, no tokens. “This is the consumer app launching next month for IOS and Android”. Now showing business application/implementation. “BANK OF AMERICAN IS USING THIS”. This is a big deal. B of A doesn’t like to let their vendors publicly speak about how B of A uses apps from bank vendors.

From our friends at BIC: Hoyos Labs is a Digital Infrastructure Security Company devoted to developing highly secured Identity Assertion Platforms capable of authenticating and assuring identities quickly yet accurately. Headquartered in New York City, Hoyos Labs Research and Development Division operates at the various geographies.

Now Hector is trying to “spoof” his own system using a video of himself. As expected, the app rejected the session. Pretty cool. ^WM

Larky    Andrew Bank (Co-Founder) and Gregg Hammerman (Co-Founder)  White-label, merchant- funded, point-of-sale (POS) discounts for consumers. Their aim: drive loyalty and card revenue. The answer is “contextual engagement” with set-it-and-forget-it functionality. My question is if the customer is going to make the purchase anyway, do you really want to offer them a discount?  Perfect use case for predictive analyitcs: let’s just serve up discounts for customers not likely to buy without receiving a discount. ^SR

Larky helps merchants build loyalty programs through their platform. From their web site: “Solutions for Credit unions, banks and health insurers.” Now speaking that most financial products (or at least 1/2) are not from a consumer’s primary FI. Now showing their IOS app but I believe they are launching their Android app today. I know I’m sounding like a broken record but once again, it’s a beautiful interface showing location-based services to show a consumer offer based on location and I assume banking/purchase behavior.

From their company’s blog: Infographic: How Are Millennials Transforming the Banking Industry?

With over 86 million people in the generation known as Millennials (born early 1980?s to early 2000?s), the banking industry is poised to see a major shift in how people want to interact with their financial institutions. LARKY INTELLIGENCE has uncovered some amazing statistics to give you a glimpse into the future.

Now speaking to engaging millennials. This is the FIRST company this event that I can recall that is addressing millenials. ^WM

WingCash    Bradley Wilkes (CEO & President), Steve Curtis (VP & Director, Sales), and Vilash Poovala (CTO)  Cloud-based wallet for gift cards, currency, and “brand cash”. They include US$ currency, waiting to see how that gets funded. Brand Cash is a loyalty currency. The offering is focused on processors and acquirers of merchant accounts.^SR

“Revolutionizing the mobile wallet” Now showing IOS app. Speaking to the challenge of carrying all our credit/debit/loyalty/gift cards and frustration at the register. Their motto is “Life is Better With Cash”. WingCash carries payment cards, loyalty cards and more. I’m interested in how they make their money and their go-to-market strategy. Focused on processors and the merchant business. ^WM

Behalf    Benjy Feinberg (CEO) and Andrew Abshere (Director, Product)  Financing for small business customers – they pay the vendors on behalf of the company. This helps SMBs to manage their cash flow; Behalf pays the vendor, and provides repayment terms.  I see the appeal of this offering and it takes some of the hassle out of vendor management. ^SR

Again, another company that provides small business financing. Like I wrote earlier, this category is HOT. There must be a huge need as so many folks are here showing solutions in this area. Again, I it is my belief that Behalf and other organizations like it leverage 21st century technology to get cash to SMB’s in a way that is just not practical for traditional FI’s. Now showing web-based front end for the borrower. ^WM

Rippleshot    Randal Cox (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist) and Lucas Ward (CTO & Co-Founder)  They offer enhanced detection for fraud and data breaches. Interactive dashboards help to pinpoint vulnerable merchants, compromised cards, and more. They offer their service via PCI-compliant cloud, can provide time/location of every breach, and can quickly identify both large and emerging breaches. This is an important service given increasing exposure to merchants for data breaches. ^SR

Knox Payments    Thomas Nicholas (President & Co-Founder)  Easy to sign up for a merchant account, online and in minutes. Funding accounts is also very straightforward. ^SR

From our friends at BIC: Knox adds an additional layer of security on top of users’ online banking, and allows merchants and other users to make payments to and from bank accounts online for $CONTENT.18/ transaction, without the “middlemen’ of Visa or MasterCard. Now showing web app for a new account setup. New account opening technology is HOT. uMonitor sold to Harland FS (now D+H) and Andera recently sold for a TON of money (Kudo’s to Charlie on that). Knox Payments is now showing how fast to set up the account and then trade on a platform such as FOREX. “We are the only alternative to the credit card networks to underwrite transactions at a much lower cost.”

Thinknum    Justin Zhen (Co-Founder)  This is a web platform for financial analysis; most financial analysts are not computer programmers. The UI looks like Google Docs, with a web-based spreadsheet. They’ve added functions that make it easier to do financial analysis, like grabbing data automatically from 10K reports. Also moves the computing power off your desktop, and over to the compute power of their cloud servers. ^SR

Showing Thinknum’s technology creating Excel data. I’m not quite sure of the Unique Value Proposition so I will have to do more reach on the company. From their web site: A powerful web platform for financial analysis. Our Cashflow Model engine helps you value companies like a genius. I think it’s interesting technology and a fine company but I’m noticing a trend. It seems like 1/2 of all FINTECH companies use the same template for their home pages of their web sites. Perhaps it’s a WordPress template. Again, I think this is pretty powerful technology for those who need this kind of data and presentation. ^WM

Malauzai Software    Robb Gaynor (Chief Product Officer & Founder) and Danny Piangerelli (CTO) They build custom apps for community banks, with an emphasis on next generation of mobile. “Apps running on the desktop.” I like this — really starts to bring a “mobile, first” philosophy to market. Large banks are far along this road, Malauzai Software looks like they are helping community banks with this challenge. Nice drag-and-drop functionality for the desktop. ^SR

Full disclosure: William Mills Agency provides public relations for Malauzai Software. From their web site: “Cool SmartApps, Easily Managed and Easily Measured.”

Based in Austin, Texas,  Malauzai is one of the rare companies I know that have clear, concise vision coupled with smart, experienced talent with one of the best work environments. I believe this is the FIRST time the company is presenting here but Malauzai technology has been a major part of at least TWO other Finovate demos over the years. “We serve over 300 FI’s around the United States. We create smart apps and end users have a much better experience. Internet banking as you know it is DEAD!” Lots of users are demanding a better experience, especially for tablets and desktops.  “Smart phones are where we started.” They are now showing their smart web browser experience.

Now Robb is showing their iPad app and it’s REALLY slick with a “carousel” view. What they are showing, which I have NOT seen from other folks (yet), is the mobile experience in a browser environment. “Smart Web Apps driven by same mobile user experience (because it is easy, people know how to use mobile apps intuitively) (paraphrase). One of their real cool functions is the ability to turn debit cards on and off manually using the Malauzai mobile app and know it looks like it will be very popular on tablets and web browsers on a computer. MOX, Convergence and superior economics. I bet they will be a best of show winner if not a strong contender. ^WM