FinovateSpring Grades: BancBox, Mitek, eWise Lead the Pack

This is the largest Finovate to date, and the demos are wildly varied. We’ll be updating our grades for the demos and startups dynamically through the conference. I do want to make it clear that this is not a complete list of the demos, but rather only the demos I saw.

So, without further ado, the grades.

MasterQueue 

Collection system. Nothing new.

Cool Factor – F
I Want It – F
Profit Potential – D

Xero

Accounting software. Easy reconciliation of accounts; task has a gaming element, which is nice. Working with a number of banking providers in the US to allow for full bill pay. Beyond that reconciliation function the functionality is not so revolutionary. Google Docs compatibility is nice. More than half the accountants in Australia and New Zealand are using Xero. Have added a kind of review element to the site.

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – B-

Gold Bullion International

Online gold trading platform. Very clean interface, but the back end is super complex. All gold trading is done over-the-counter today, so the company had a big challenge making the process seamless. The back end offers buy-sell bidding among metals dealers. Trying to “democratize” metals trading.

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – A-

Kabbage

Provides working capital to small businesses. Introducing profile building feature. Supports Amazon sales. The sales data gets inputted into Kabbage and is included in the automated underwriting.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – A-

Code Green / Ratecast

Problem: banks and credit unions need to make loans, and they need help marketing. Rate broadcasting app. Getting rid of config files. Allows the FI to centralize its rates for distribution to various marketing channels, like Facebook. Does not appear to interface into core banking systems. Partnership with Ratewatch (I think that was name) to bring in competitive rates. Can eventually bring in a competitor’s rate as a comparison. Virginia Credit Union is beta-testing the service. Can inject and update the rate information throughout the FI’s marketing efforts, even into the FI’s personal finance articles for consumers.

Cool – B+
Want – A-
Profit – B

BancBox

“An API to the US banking system.” Banking as a service platform. Essentially, they are offering anyone the ability to start a bank a la BankSimple. Integrated with Experian data. This is disruption at its most fundamental level. Integrating payment services to lenders. Couple of dozen customers. Tens of millions of deposits. Cash flow positive. New functionality to come. They take care of the regulatory “plumbing.” 

Cool – A+
Want – A+
Profit – A+

Hoyos Group

Mobile iris scanning solution for security. Allows for logging in to a computer or websites with an iris scan. The device is connected to the computer via USB cord. It looks pretty fast. Each login requires the iris login. Each device costs $99, which seems expensive considering that keyfobs cost a fraction of that.

Cool – B+
Want – B-
Profit – B-

Doxo

Digital filing cabinet. Allows direct marketers to give you their marketing pieces and bills electronically, so you don’t get junk mail. First bank launching in a few weeks. [Scores upgraded after talking to some folks about this during the cocktail reception. -JJ]

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B-

Arroweye Solutions

A private-label credit card engine. Consumer can generate their own credit card with their own creative. The production center includes some new innovation, such as one-off card production that includes the card issuer logo. Allows Arroweye to create a “card of one.”

Cool – A-
Want – B
Profit – B

Billeo

Unveils an iPad app called Shop Smart. Features FI rewards offers. It’s kind of a frame around shopping app that integrates billing functionality. FIs are “partnering” with Billeo to offer the system.

Cool – B-
Want – B-
Profit – B

Profitstars

The Jack Henry unit pitches its Margin Maximizer Interactive platform. Loan pricing engine for commercial lending. Uses the Microsoft Silverlight platform. Why does a bank just need a pricing engine without the LOS/core banking system? I would think the bank needs to use Jack Henry’s core banking system in order to use Margin Maximizer, which marginalizes the new product.

Cool – C-
Want – C-
Profit – C+

BillFloat

Short-term personal loans to help consumers pay their bills. Less Is More feature introduced. The automated underwriting is tweaked to require what are essentially real-time principle payments immediately. Who knows what BillFloat’s credit performance is like?

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – B+

Wikinvest

Changing name to SigFig. Aggregates brokerage account data for consumers. “Mint for investors.” Very slick UI. Key element is the recommendations feature. Helps consumers make decisions on investments based on analytics. Breaks out the brokerage company’s fees. SigFig launching later in the summer.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – B+

PeerTransfer

700,000 international students in the US – this services aims to provide tuition payments services to them. International student payments solution. International students generally get extremely poor exchange rates on large tuition payments. The wires are a problem for the schools, too, because they are tracking thousands of wires. Offers better exchange rate by bundling the currency exchange. Interesting market slice that the company is targeting. Not sure about the brand, though. And is it too niche-y? [Score adjusted after meeting with the founder, Iker Mercaide.]

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – A-

Bill.com

Billing service. Doesn’t QuickBooks do this, too? Doesn’t Bill.com need the accounting system to make it holistic?

Cool – C
Want – C
Profit – C+

Mint

Mint has become a mobile app. 1mm iPhone installs and 800k android installs. +50% of users have a smartphone. 20-25% of new Mint users register via smartphone. About 20-22% of Mint users rarely go to the Mint.com website, rather just use the service via mobile device. Healthy advertising business and driving leads to FIs. Application launching that brings “advice” to users via mobile device. Advice is essentially targeted advertising offers. The advertising will also be performance based, leading the user to actually fill out, say, a product application. “Working with advertisers” to create better conversion to offers made by advertisers. Mint has basically become an advertising channel, and that is how Intuit appears to be positioning it.

Cool – B-
Want – B
Profit – B

Braintree

Works with sites like LivingSocial to provide a more seamless credit card transaction portal.

Cool – B-
Want – C+
Profit – B

Figlo

Personal financial planning platform. Very comprehensive platform with customization for what looks like every country and currency in the world.

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – B-

Dwolla

Mobile payments to retail. Dwolla FiSync facilitates the onboarding across various financial products. Dwolla aggregates geolocation data for banks to better understand what is happening in their footprint, such as determining how many customers are using the iPhone vs. Android phones. Product is called Dwolla Dashboard — it’s essentially market and FI-specific analytics. Could be profound, but requires that Dwolla hits a critical mass among consumers.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – B+

Bankons

Coupons for banks. Crazy presentation with some guy spinning a huge sign that reads “geo.” Private label service to show geolocated coupons to bank consumers. Is this what a bank does? Show coupons? Launching today.

Cool – A-
Want – B+
Profit – B-

oFlows

Paperless process for onboarding across all products. Oflows Mobilized lets FIs onboard/product application remotely. Includes automated underwriting/risk-based pricing and cross sale products. Some clients get cross sale rates +40%.

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B-

ID:Analytics

Introduces a consumer service to notify them of ID theft. Real-time alerts come to the consumer’s smartphone. MyIDAlerts.com. No word on how ID:Analytics is going to market this service to consumers.

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B

Balance

“Personal bookkeepers” for consumers. This is for the consumer that does not want to DYI their bills. Bills can be sent to Balance and it digitizes it. Introducing iPhone app with photo bill pay. Take a picture of the bill and Balance will enter the bill into the system. That’s a cool feature. I spoke to the Balance team later in the day and they said users are happy to pay a reasonable premium for the service, because they know it’s a value add — and that goes for consumers across the credit spectrum, not just in the higher income tiers.

Cool – A-
Want – B
Profit – B-

Lend Street Financial

Debt restructuring platform. Refis delinquent borrowers and then sell the paper to credit investors. Allows for informal syndication of the refi among investors. Brings a social networking element to the investor side. Lenders can commit as little as $25. “Prosper for restructuring loans.” Credit scores below 640 on average.

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – B

Mitek

Introducing “mobile photo bill pay.” Compliments Mitek’s mobile RDC. Just super cool. The most remarkable aspect is the onboarding element. But this is also going to be the product’s greatest challenge. Online bill pay is the stickiest of sticky features – this is just going to kill that stickiness.

Cool Factor – A+
I Want It – A+
Profit Potential – A+

HelloWallet

Online wealth building service. Distributed through Fortune 500 companies. Allows users to change their financial behavior, helps users make smarter decisions. Just launched with a Fortune 200 company. Making the product available to the public today. Founder was a consumer finance “scholar” at the Brookings Institute.

Cool Factor – B
I Want It – B+
Profit Potential – B-

Silver Tail Systems

Started with “server not found.” Monitors websites for fraud. Seen this demo before. Looks serious, but I don’t have a feel for whether Silver Tail’s service is beyond what large banks are already doing.

GoalMine

Launched last November. Enables microinvesting of just $1. Launching a mobile app. App gives a geonudge not to, say, buy a latte at Starbucks, but invest it. Uses The Bancorp for ACH. Allows for others to gift investments for investing initiatives. Allows for investing via Facebook.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-

Bills.com

Went live last night “before midnight” with Debt Coach. Help consumers fix their consumers. Takes consumers through a decisioning protocol to determine a course of action. They are taking on the advisory side of debt restructuring and management. No idea what the business model is. We assume it is lead gen to the debt settlement world.

Cool Factor – C+
I Want It – B-
Profit Potential – C+

PayPal / Discover

18 months ago PayPal opened its payments platform. Discover is the first card issuer to build an application on the PayPal platform. Called Money Messenger. Consumers can cend money to anyone using Discover card using PayPal. Basically, a white label of the PayPal payments platform. But it comes up in the purchase statement for Discover. Free to the customer. Earns cash-back bonus on the transfer for money. That’s the real benefit here.

Cool Factor – B+
I Want It – B
Profit Potential – A-

Q2ebanking

Fraud prevention.

RobotDough.com

Working on product for 1.5 years. Investing site. Helps financial statement analysis. Powerful, drag-and-drop stock screener. Expanding coverage to all public companies globally. Allows for historical testing of screening criteria. Alerts will notify users of new stocks that comply with the screening criteria.

Cool Factor – B
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – B-

Billshrink

In-statement rewards. Unifies rewards cards. Billshrink bank card tracks retailer rewards. Facilitates additional reward programs by allowing for sharing of the rewards program participation on social networks. Geolocation of rewards on a mobile platform.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-

eWise

Online payments. US Bank is involved in the venture. Secure Vault Payments is the product. Bypasses the card companies to process the payment directly through the consumer’s retail bank website. Piloting with US Bank. QR code to make a payment. Allows for purchasing directly from a newspaper ad, or bill payment via QR code. It can also allow for POS payments via QR code.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-

This is the largest Finovate to date, and the demos are wildly varied. We’ll be updating our grades for the demos and startups dynamically through the conference. I do want to make it clear that this is not a complete list of the demos, but rather only the demos I saw.

So, without further ado, the grades.

MasterQueue 

Collection system. Nothing new.

Cool Factor – F
I Want It – F
Profit Potential – D

Xero

Accounting software. Easy reconciliation of accounts; task has a gaming element, which is nice. Working with a number of banking providers in the US to allow for full bill pay. Beyond that reconciliation function the functionality is not so revolutionary. Google Docs compatibility is nice. More than half the accountants in Australia and New Zealand are using Xero. Have added a kind of review element to the site.

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – B-

Gold Bullion International

Online gold trading platform. Very clean interface, but the back end is super complex. All gold trading is done over-the-counter today, so the company had a big challenge making the process seamless. The back end offers buy-sell bidding among metals dealers. Trying to “democratize” metals trading.

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – A-

Kabbage

Provides working capital to small businesses. Introducing profile building feature. Supports Amazon sales. The sales data gets inputted into Kabbage and is included in the automated underwriting.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – A-

Code Green / Ratecast

Problem: banks and credit unions need to make loans, and they need help marketing. Rate broadcasting app. Getting rid of config files. Allows the FI to centralize its rates for distribution to various marketing channels, like Facebook. Does not appear to interface into core banking systems. Partnership with Ratewatch (I think that was name) to bring in competitive rates. Can eventually bring in a competitor’s rate as a comparison. Virginia Credit Union is beta-testing the service. Can inject and update the rate information throughout the FI’s marketing efforts, even into the FI’s personal finance articles for consumers.

Cool – B+
Want – A-
Profit – B

BancBox

“An API to the US banking system.” Banking as a service platform. Essentially, they are offering anyone the ability to start a bank a la BankSimple. Integrated with Experian data. This is disruption at its most fundamental level. Integrating payment services to lenders. Couple of dozen customers. Tens of millions of deposits. Cash flow positive. New functionality to come. They take care of the regulatory “plumbing.” 

Cool – A+
Want – A+
Profit – A+

Hoyos Group

Mobile iris scanning solution for security. Allows for logging in to a computer or websites with an iris scan. The device is connected to the computer via USB cord. It looks pretty fast. Each login requires the iris login. Each device costs $99, which seems expensive considering that keyfobs cost a fraction of that.

Cool – B+
Want – B-
Profit – B-

Doxo

Digital filing cabinet. Allows direct marketers to give you their marketing pieces and bills electronically, so you don’t get junk mail. First bank launching in a few weeks. [Scores upgraded after talking to some folks about this during the cocktail reception. -JJ]

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B-

Arroweye Solutions

A private-label credit card engine. Consumer can generate their own credit card with their own creative. The production center includes some new innovation, such as one-off card production that includes the card issuer logo. Allows Arroweye to create a “card of one.”

Cool – A-
Want – B
Profit – B

Billeo

Unveils an iPad app called Shop Smart. Features FI rewards offers. It’s kind of a frame around shopping app that integrates billing functionality. FIs are “partnering” with Billeo to offer the system.

Cool – B-
Want – B-
Profit – B

Profitstars

The Jack Henry unit pitches its Margin Maximizer Interactive platform. Loan pricing engine for commercial lending. Uses the Microsoft Silverlight platform. Why does a bank just need a pricing engine without the LOS/core banking system? I would think the bank needs to use Jack Henry’s core banking system in order to use Margin Maximizer, which marginalizes the new product.

Cool – C-
Want – C-
Profit – C+

BillFloat

Short-term personal loans to help consumers pay their bills. Less Is More feature introduced. The automated underwriting is tweaked to require what are essentially real-time principle payments immediately. Who knows what BillFloat’s credit performance is like?

Cool – B
Want – B-
Profit – B+

Wikinvest

Changing name to SigFig. Aggregates brokerage account data for consumers. “Mint for investors.” Very slick UI. Key element is the recommendations feature. Helps consumers make decisions on investments based on analytics. Breaks out the brokerage company’s fees. SigFig launching later in the summer.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – B+

PeerTransfer

700,000 international students in the US – this services aims to provide tuition payments services to them. International student payments solution. International students generally get extremely poor exchange rates on large tuition payments. The wires are a problem for the schools, too, because they are tracking thousands of wires. Offers better exchange rate by bundling the currency exchange. Interesting market slice that the company is targeting. Not sure about the brand, though. And is it too niche-y? [Score adjusted after meeting with the founder, Iker Mercaide.]

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – A-

Bill.com

Billing service. Doesn’t QuickBooks do this, too? Doesn’t Bill.com need the accounting system to make it holistic?

Cool – C
Want – C
Profit – C+

Mint

Mint has become a mobile app. 1mm iPhone installs and 800k android installs. +50% of users have a smartphone. 20-25% of new Mint users register via smartphone. About 20-22% of Mint users rarely go to the Mint.com website, rather just use the service via mobile device. Healthy advertising business and driving leads to FIs. Application launching that brings “advice” to users via mobile device. Advice is essentially targeted advertising offers. The advertising will also be performance based, leading the user to actually fill out, say, a product application. “Working with advertisers” to create better conversion to offers made by advertisers. Mint has basically become an advertising channel, and that is how Intuit appears to be positioning it.

Cool – B-
Want – B
Profit – B

Braintree

Works with sites like LivingSocial to provide a more seamless credit card transaction portal.

Cool – B-
Want – C+
Profit – B

Figlo

Personal financial planning platform. Very comprehensive platform with customization for what looks like every country and currency in the world.

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – B-

Dwolla

Mobile payments to retail. Dwolla FiSync facilitates the onboarding across various financial products. Dwolla aggregates geolocation data for banks to better understand what is happening in their footprint, such as determining how many customers are using the iPhone vs. Android phones. Product is called Dwolla Dashboard — it’s essentially market and FI-specific analytics. Could be profound, but requires that Dwolla hits a critical mass among consumers.

Cool – A-
Want – A-
Profit – B+

Bankons

Coupons for banks. Crazy presentation with some guy spinning a huge sign that reads “geo.” Private label service to show geolocated coupons to bank consumers. Is this what a bank does? Show coupons? Launching today.

Cool – A-
Want – B+
Profit – B-

oFlows

Paperless process for onboarding across all products. Oflows Mobilized lets FIs onboard/product application remotely. Includes automated underwriting/risk-based pricing and cross sale products. Some clients get cross sale rates +40%.

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B-

ID:Analytics

Introduces a consumer service to notify them of ID theft. Real-time alerts come to the consumer’s smartphone. MyIDAlerts.com. No word on how ID:Analytics is going to market this service to consumers.

Cool – B
Want – B
Profit – B

Balance

“Personal bookkeepers” for consumers. This is for the consumer that does not want to DYI their bills. Bills can be sent to Balance and it digitizes it. Introducing iPhone app with photo bill pay. Take a picture of the bill and Balance will enter the bill into the system. That’s a cool feature. I spoke to the Balance team later in the day and they said users are happy to pay a reasonable premium for the service, because they know it’s a value add — and that goes for consumers across the credit spectrum, not just in the higher income tiers.

Cool – A-
Want – B
Profit – B-

Lend Street Financial

Debt restructuring platform. Refis delinquent borrowers and then sell the paper to credit investors. Allows for informal syndication of the refi among investors. Brings a social networking element to the investor side. Lenders can commit as little as $25. “Prosper for restructuring loans.” Credit scores below 640 on average.

Cool – B+
Want – B
Profit – B

Mitek

Introducing “mobile photo bill pay.” Compliments Mitek’s mobile RDC. Just super cool. The most remarkable aspect is the onboarding element. But this is also going to be the product’s greatest challenge. Online bill pay is the stickiest of sticky features – this is just going to kill that stickiness.

Cool Factor – A+
I Want It – A+
Profit Potential – A+

HelloWallet

Online wealth building service. Distributed through Fortune 500 companies. Allows users to change their financial behavior, helps users make smarter decisions. Just launched with a Fortune 200 company. Making the product available to the public today. Founder was a consumer finance “scholar” at the Brookings Institute.

Cool Factor – B
I Want It – B+
Profit Potential – B-

Silver Tail Systems

Started with “server not found.” Monitors websites for fraud. Seen this demo before. Looks serious, but I don’t have a feel for whether Silver Tail’s service is beyond what large banks are already doing.

GoalMine

Launched last November. Enables microinvesting of just $1. Launching a mobile app. App gives a geonudge not to, say, buy a latte at Starbucks, but invest it. Uses The Bancorp for ACH. Allows for others to gift investments for investing initiatives. Allows for investing via Facebook.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-

Bills.com

Went live last night “before midnight” with Debt Coach. Help consumers fix their consumers. Takes consumers through a decisioning protocol to determine a course of action. They are taking on the advisory side of debt restructuring and management. No idea what the business model is. We assume it is lead gen to the debt settlement world.

Cool Factor – C+
I Want It – B-
Profit Potential – C+

PayPal / Discover

18 months ago PayPal opened its payments platform. Discover is the first card issuer to build an application on the PayPal platform. Called Money Messenger. Consumers can cend money to anyone using Discover card using PayPal. Basically, a white label of the PayPal payments platform. But it comes up in the purchase statement for Discover. Free to the customer. Earns cash-back bonus on the transfer for money. That’s the real benefit here.

Cool Factor – B+
I Want It – B
Profit Potential – A-

Q2ebanking

Fraud prevention.

RobotDough.com

Working on product for 1.5 years. Investing site. Helps financial statement analysis. Powerful, drag-and-drop stock screener. Expanding coverage to all public companies globally. Allows for historical testing of screening criteria. Alerts will notify users of new stocks that comply with the screening criteria.

Cool Factor – B
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – B-

Billshrink

In-statement rewards. Unifies rewards cards. Billshrink bank card tracks retailer rewards. Facilitates additional reward programs by allowing for sharing of the rewards program participation on social networks. Geolocation of rewards on a mobile platform.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-

eWise

Online payments. US Bank is involved in the venture. Secure Vault Payments is the product. Bypasses the card companies to process the payment directly through the consumer’s retail bank website. Piloting with US Bank. QR code to make a payment. Allows for purchasing directly from a newspaper ad, or bill payment via QR code. It can also allow for POS payments via QR code.

Cool Factor – A
I Want It – A-
Profit Potential – A-