Finovate Fall ’13: Numbrs, Pixeliris, Word Sentry and Mitek Come on Strong

The afternoon of the second day of Finovate Fall brought on fatigue, mild hallucinations, and euphoria, sometimes all at once. Our demo reviews appear below.

Previous sessions from this year’s Finovate: Morning Day 1, Afternoon Day 1, Morning Day 2.

SEPT. 11 AFTERNOON SESSIONS

Simple Verity

Simple Verity is another lending solution for small businesses, which was a major theme at Finovate Fall. Thin files exist for 6 million small businesses. Simple Verity helps borrowers develop profiles to inform lenders.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 3

Spreedly

Online payments provider Spreedly went live last March. It has grown 30% month over month and has processed some 100,000 credit card transactions, with a $100 million annual run rate. The company touted its Credit Card Vault in the cloud and described itself as “Payment as a Platform” — catchy. Spreedly has partnered with e-commerce veteran Shopify. Nice visualizations of transaction activity were shown off in its Gateway Index.

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 3

Mitek

Mitek’s smartphone camera technology is used by all of the top 10 banks and over 1,000 other banks. Remote deposit capture of checks is a major contributing factor to empty bank branches today. Yet, 75% of checking accounts are opened in-branch, and 25% of mobile on-boarding attempts fail. Mitek is stepping in to play a role in the branch with mobile photo account opening, which aims to help customers open accounts on tablets in branches. This acclimates customers to self-serve via the mobile UX and cuts down on fail rates and unfunded accounts. MiSnap auto photo-taking is rolling out nationwide as well. Snap!

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 4

QuarterSpot

QuarterSpot’s platform was built to connect small businesses with investors. The platform’s default return rate is an enviable 35%. QuarterSpot also lowers small business capital costs. It seems to be a product for investors that has a byproduct of helping small businesses.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 2
Profit Potential – 3

BehavioSec

BehavioSec is a Swedish IT and mobile security solution employing behavioral biometrics — yes, another fraud prevention solution. BehavioSec detects the speed and other cadences of an individual’s typing and builds a signature. Apparently this product is in widespread use in Scandinavia. The demo was done on localhost, a Finovate no-no.

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 3

Fiserv

Fiserv demoed Popmoney’s instant payments feature, which the company said moves funds in real time. But how, unless both banks are Popmoney banks? Money moves from debit accounts at banks. Fiserv also showed off instant payments over mobile, launching in 2014. Europeans in the crowd scoffed, but realtime is exciting stuff in the US.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 3

Biometric Signature ID

Star Trek music led off this gesture-based biometric security offering, but not as a joke. The product asks users to create biometric signatures by writing words in boxes. The process seemed a bit laborious. Biometric security is big — and no one mentioned Apple’s announcement on the fingerprint scanner built into the new iPhone 5S, which was the elephant in the room at every biometric presentation.

Cool Factor – 2
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 3

Financial Guard

Financial Guard helps investors save for retirement. The system analyzes retirement packages and makes recommendations. This is tackling a clear problem using machine intelligence. The presenter did a great handling of technical difficulties.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 3

MasterCard Worldwide

MasterCard, with help from prepaid offers veteran inComm, has created a “wellness program” to incentivize healthy behavior through their employer or healthcare provider. Prepaid accounts receive discounts for employer or healthcare provider-approved items, defined at the SK U level. Is this new, though?

Cool Factor – 2
I Want It – 2
Profit Potential – 2

Pixeliris

French company Pixeliris demoed contactless mobile payment technology that uses NFC and sound waves. What? Yes, sound waves — it’s like Clinkle, but real! It also works through phone calls for non-compliant phones (gee thanks, Apple) so it can function at points of sale in Africa, where feature phones reign. This is serious innovation and they’re looking for FI partners. But will it ever fly in the US?

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 3

Place2Give

Place2Give is an asset management tool for those looking to give to charities. The service includes nearly 7 million registered charities for advisors to provide clients. The company has a social mission, which is always great to see. The product is being integrated into CRM tools.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 2

Narrative Science

Narrative Science showed off its natural language tool Quill. The company also touted its Credit Suisse partnership. Taking a set of data points, Quill writes reports that highlight the most important points and also analyzes the data for financial advisors to use. Hmmm. After the demo, we wondered, who needs people?

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 0
Profit Potential – 4

P2P Cash

An Innotribe graduate, P2P Cash says it can help people around the globe send cash for free. “Trusted agents” around the world, often prepaid mobile phone minutes providers, dispense the cash. The company rides the SWIFT rails and makes its money on retail vs. wholesale foreign exchange rates.

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 3

Word Sentry

Word Sentry patrols the text communications for companies in regulated industries. Before emails and texts leave the walls of your company, they can be vetted for profanity or false claims and corrected. The annual cost, remarkably, is just two hours of an FTE’s time. People will always do stupid things, but, gee, that’s an intelligent system.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 4

PhonyInvoices

Fake invoices are a problem and hit big businesses quite frequently. Great (and rare) use of storytelling in this demo. PhonyInvoices uses a variety of tools to scan invoices to find scammers. Frequent use of both “scan” and “scam” was a bit confusing here.

Cool Factor – 3
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 3

Apprenda

Wake up, CIOs, this one’s for you! This technology helps improve how cloud platforms work.  The IT staff sets up rules for applications in a secure and compliant framework. This complex product seems like it makes life easier for some very smart, hardworking people.

Cool Factor – 2
I Want It – 3
Profit Potential – 4

Numbrs

Numbrs is a data aggregation tool out of Zurich but it also powers P2P payments. It projects future transactions, such as taking Uber to the airport. How does it know you’ll take Uber to the airport?  Because it knows you use Uber and knows you bought planes tickets leaving on such and such a date. Golly. The company recently announced it raised more than $3 million and is coming to the US. Welcome!

Cool Factor – 4
I Want It – 4
Profit Potential – 4

Winners for the afternoon session are Numbrs, Mitek, Word Sentry and Pixeliris.