More Security Startups, Blockchain Still Absent at Finovate Day 2
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Day 2 of FinovateSpring has come and gone, and curiously, there were still no demos focused on blockchain technology.
Among the 54 fintechs that demoed here over the last two days, more than half showcased products and services that used artificial intelligence in some shape or form, but none of the companies presenting showed a blockchain-based solution. The technology was only mentioned in passing by companies such as Averon and PaySend.
Is this an indication that blockchain isn’t as prevalent in financial technology as it is made out to be?
While AI and lending continued on Day 2 just as strongly as Day 1, the other theme that emerged was security and authentication, a longstanding problem all across the digital world.
Here are the six companies that directly dealt with security or authentication in some form or the other:
Of these six companies, Averon and ProxToMe both use mobile phone-related solutions for authentication and identity verification.
San Francisco-based Averon uses realtime mobile network signaling to authenticate the customer’s identity. Check out the video on how it works here. ProxToMe, as the name implies, uses proximity-based interaction to do the same. Trusona, whose description includes #nopasswords #usernames, provides the user QR codes when they log onto a site on banking account on their computers. The user verifies their identity by taking a picture of the QR code with their smartphone (checkout this video).
Fiserv and Samsung’s solution dealt with biometric authentication, as did Mastercard-backed NuData. However, in addition to biometric authentication, NuData also uses behavioral data as an extra layer of security.
One major takeaway from these fintechs is that they are not a fan of using passwords, but then again, who is? And yet, here we are with dozens of passwords, or in some (unwise) cases, one password used across dozens of sites.
Finovate is not completely devoid of blockchain discussion, however. Today the conference features a keynote called “How blockchain will revolutionize the industry.”
Maybe blockchain is still better suited to discussion than live demos?
Read Bank Innovation’s Day 1 coverage here.
