It promises to be a big day in the world of financial innovations as 57 companies demo new products and services at our FinovateStartup 2009 Conference. Whether you are in the auditorium or not, you can follow the Twitter, blog, and Flickr streams through our FinovateStartup Live page (see screenshot below).

The Live page will also contain the real-time webcast. There is still time to purchase access to the webcast (see note 1). You'll also receive the 70-page PDF summarizing all 57 participants (links to companies here).

Although we've live-blogged in the past, we are moving most of our live coverage to Twitter. At seven minutes per demo and one minute in between, there's really not enough time to do much of a blog post. Twitter is a much better way to keep the info flowing. I'll be twittering under the Netbanker handle and our conference director, Eric Mattson, will broadcast under the Finovate name.

We'll blog about the event afterwards and announce Best of Show winners. There will also be blog coverage during the day at Banktastic and others.

FinovateStartup Live page (link)

FinovateStartup 2009 participants

Note:
1. Online Banking Report subscribers and Finovate alums receive a 50% discount on the webcast, email info@netbanker.com for the code if you don't have it. Press and bloggers can receive free access by emailing jim@netbanker.com.

In previous posts we've announced the innovative young companies participating in our FinovateStartup conference. The entry deadline to demo has passed, so we are able to bring you the final list of 57 young companies showing their latest and greatest on April 28 in San Francisco (see note 1).

There are still a few days left to register for the conference and save $100 compared to last-minute prices. Current Online Banking Report subscribers can save even more. Email info@netbanker.com for more info.

Here's a breakdown of the participants by main subject area with sub-categories in parentheses:

Alt-payments

• CircleUp* (youth, social media, P2P)
• HomeATM (security)
• Moneta*
• Tempo Payments* (debit)

See also, Acculynk (security), Expensify (small biz), Seergate (platforms)

Banking/lending platforms

• Jwaala* (PFM)
• Seergate (alt-payments)
• ZimpleMoney* (lending)

Bill payment

• IOUSOS* powered by Globefunder (small biz, P2P)
• Micronotes* (direct marketing)
• nCore (remittances)

Financial markets (B2B)

• Receivables Exchange* (bill payment)
• SecondMarket* (investments)

Home/real estate

• Home-Account* (tool)
• LowerMyAssessment.com* (tool)

See also, Centrro (search), SmartHippo (search)

Investment management

• AlphaClone
• kaChing*
• Kapitall*
• Portfolio Monkey
• ValueCruncher (tool)
• WeSeed 

Mobile (note 2)

• iBearSoft
• MoBank*

See also, Aradiom (security)

Personal finance management/tools (PFM)

• BudgetPulse
• BudgetTracker
• CalendarBudget
• ChartMechanic 
• GreenSherpa
• Looniesdesk.com
• Mint*
• MoneyStrands*
• PennyMinder
• Rudder
• SimpliFi
• Wesabe*

See also, BillShrink (search), Expensify (small biz), iThryv (youth), Jwaala (platform), OurCashFlow.com (small biz)

P2P lending/credit

• GoalSpring (tool)
• Lending Club* (investments)
• LendingKarma
• Pertuity Direct* (investments)
• Prosper

See also, People Capital (youth/student), ZimpleMoney (platform)

Search/discovery/comparison

• BillShrink* (PFM, tool)
• Centrro* (lending, real estate)
• CreditArray (lending)
• Credit Karma (lending, tool)
• Mozo (lending)
• SmartHippo (lending, real estate)
• Syphr (credit reports)

Security

• Acculynk* (alt payments)
• Aradiom* (mobile)
• Silver Tail Systems
• ThreatMetrix
• Victrio

Small business

• Cooler Inc. * (tool)
• Expensify* (PFM, prepaid debit)
• OurCashFlow.com (PFM)
• Transparent Financial Services (card processing)

Youth/student

• iThryv* (platform, PFM)
• People Capital* (P2P lending)

*Guaranteed to demo live from stage on April 28; nine others will be selected by the audience to demo live in the last session of the day (see note 1).

Notes:
1. Due to time constraints, only 36 companies will demo live on stage April 28, while all 57 companies will be showing their products on the demo floor and be recording demos for later viewing online. 
2. A number of the companies have mobile applications/versions which they may choose to demo at the event.

The deadline for startups wishing to participate in our second annual FinovateStartup conference was a few days ago. The final seven startups added to the lineup are:

• ChartMechanic: A startup working on better data-visualization tools
• GlobeFunder: A financial services company with solutions for P2P lending and healthcare
• LowerMyAssessment.com: A web-based tool designed to help consumers lower their property tax payments
• Micronotes: A interactive direct marketing specialist leveraging opportunities in bill payment
• MoBank: A UK-based startup about to launch a mobile shopping and banking service (previous post)
• SecondMarket: A marketplace for illiquid financial assets such as bankruptcy claims, restricted stock and so forth
• ValueCruncher: A New Zealand-based startup that allows users to compute and share public company valuations

That brings the total number of demo’ing startups to 57 (see below). It’s going to to be an inspiring and educational day. If you are involved in charting the course for your company’s Web-based, mobile, or alt-delivery strategies, you should be there. Pick up your tickets here.

With our FinovateStartup conference just a month away (April 28), I wanted to alert readers to the upcoming early-bird deadline. This Tuesday, March 31, is the last day to save $100 by purchasing tickets for the early-bird price of $895 each. Registration is here.

You've seen the amazing lineup of 52 participating startups (latest four here plus previous 48 here), but I also wanted to point out there is an equally impressive lineup of attendees already registered for the event (see selected logos below).

Whether you work for a tech company, bank, credit union or other financial services company, there is no better way to be exposed to so many new ideas in just a single day. It can be extremely thought-provoking to view the market through the lens of focused, energetic and creative startup. It's an entire day thinking outside the box. 

Some of the ideas you'll experience April 28:

• Opportunities with decoupled debit
• Social savings, lending and investing
• Helping consumers find the best financial solution to fit their needs
• How to leverage the community to help solve financial problems 
• The grand reopening of person-to-person lending
• New mutual funds targeting retail investors
• The best ideas for online personal financial management
• New ways to help users find and track investments
• Using PIN-debit online
• How to help consumers manage their total debt
• Small business solutions for managing expense reports online
• iPhone applications that help you engage customers
• An online solution for accounts-receivable financing
• Using the credit report/score as a jumping off point to targeted offers
• New ways to increase actual and perceived security
• Mortgage optimization engine

Sample of registered attendees for FinovateStartup 2009

Participating startups at FinovateStartup 2009

To give you an idea of the types of innovations being funded in financial services these days, here's a capsule description of the first 48 companies demoing at FinovateStartup April 28 in San Francisco (note 1).

Attention attendees: You have just one day left to register (here) at the discounted price of $795. 

Finovate Startup 2009 Participants

Acculynk
Acculynk is a payments solutions provider with a suite of software-only services that secure online transactions by utilizing a graphical, scrambling PIN-pad for the secure entry of sensitive cardholder information.

AlphaClone
AlphaClone is a web-based investment research service that lets users explore the investing ideas of top hedge fund and institutional money managers.

Aradiom
Aradiom is a mobile solutions provider and designer of Java mobile applications and platform development technology including turn-key applications, embedded soft-token security solutions and BlackBerry® enterprise applications.

BillShrink
BillShrink is a personalized savings advisor that helps consumers make smart, money-saving decisions by providing continuously updated, personalized, usage-based recommendations on everyday services like credit cards and cell phone plans

BudgetTracker
BudgetTracker is a personal finance manager that allows users to manage their finances and keep track of their budget, bills, and transactions online without having to install software.

CalendarBudget
CalendarBudget is a free online personal budgeting tool that helps users organize and track their finances, plan future spending and save money.

Centrro
Centrro is a financial search engine that allows consumers to anonymously shop for personal financial products that best fit their specific credit profile.

CircleUp
CircleUp provides group communications services, which enable actionable and efficient interactions across diverse social, email, mobile, messaging and private web networks.

Cooler Inc.
Cooler Inc. enables users to know, decrease, and offset the global warming impact of their everyday purchases and activities by using the country's only peer-reviewed carbon calculator to calculate impact and then providing reductions targets and strategies, and offering recommendations on high quality carbon offsets.

CreditArray
CreditArray is a vault of proprietary information to allow consumers to better apply for and manage their credit portfolios.

Credit Karma
Credit Karma provides consumers free access to their credit score and offers credit simulators, advice, and credit score comparison tools in order to allow them to more actively manage their credit and financial health.

GoalSpring
GoalSpring's product, DebtGoal, makes paying down debt as easy and efficient as possible by taking into account all of a customer's debt and helping them organize, optimize and pay it down.

Expensify
Expensify simplifies keeping track of business expenses by combining an electronic payment card and a web-based expense manager to automate expense report preparation, approval, and reimbursement.

Green Sherpa
Green Sherpa offers personal cash flow management software that lets users conveniently download, manage and update all their financial accounts via a single online resource.

Home-Account
Home-Account is in stealth mode at this time. 

HomeATM
HomeATM provides a secure PIN debit and PIN credit card transactions method via the Internet that utilizes the HomeATM swipe pad technology to allow users to conduct secure PIN-based transactions from home, ensuring virtually zero fraud and lower merchant processing fee costs.

iBearSoft
iBearSoft is the creator of iBearMoney, a personal finance application for the iPhone that allows users to input and categorize their transactions, run financial reports, analyze payments, and keep track of expenses.

iThryv
iThryv is a financial literacy platform that combines a content delivery system and an incentive system in order to create an immersive learning environment which provides a powerful tool when used in partnership with online banking and core providers.

Jwaala
Jwaala provides software for banks and credit unions that improves their online banking services. Their MoneyTracker application offers a personal financial management solution that can be added to any bank or credit union's existing online banking solution.

kaChing
kaChing is a social investment community that applies an open source and social-networking strategy to offer every investor the opportunity to find outstanding investors, emulate their portfolios, and access the returns, insights, transparency and talent previously only available to wealthy individuals.

Kapitall
Kapitall is a rich web application that aims to make investing easy for everyone. Inspired by game design, Kapitall combines an graphical user interface with tools that make it easier than ever to research companies, build portfolios, share ideas and get smarter about the market.

Lending Club
Lending Club is an online social lending network where people can borrow and invest money at attractive rates.

LendingKarma
LendingKarma is a person-to-person lending site that makes it easy for parties that know each other to create loans and provides borrowers and lenders with tools to help service the loan and see it through to repayment.

Looniesdesk.com
Looniesdesk.com enables people to manage their finances online using an open source financial platform that allows developers to build sophisticated applications which will help users enhance their experience and increase the efficiency of the service.

Mint
Mint is an online personal finance service that securely downloads users' financial transactions, allows them to categorize their transactions, provides a unified view of all account activity and relevant account alerts, and offers personalized suggestions for significant savings opportunities.

Moneta
Moneta provides a secure, quick and easy form of online payment that directly debits users' checking or money market account allowing users to only enter a secure username and password when making online purchases.

NCore
NCore provides enterprise class delivery channel solutions to financial institutions within the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions fusing applications, innovative security and middleware technology into a single integrated platform.

OurCashFlow
OurCashFlow offers personal finance management tools for financial institutions that can turn their website into a place where customers can create a budget, save money and achieve their savings goals.

Pennyminder
Pennyminder helps individuals and small groups manage their shared and personal finances by tracking deposits and withdrawals allowing them to see what's happening with their money

People Capital
People Capital is a peer-to-peer private student loan service that utilizes a unique scoring system to predict a student's potential and provide a true, unbiased measure of the economic value of an education that empowers students to make better educational decisions and offers multiple advantages for both borrowers and lenders.

Pertuity Direct
Pertuity Direct offers social lending for personal loans by bringing together the advantages of capital markets, social networks and traditional banking.

Portfolio Monkey
Portfolio Monkey provides free online portfolio management tools to help average investors optimize their portfolios and find customized investment ideas so they can create more efficient portfolios with higher expected return and less risk.

Prosper
Prosper is a person-to-person lending marketplace where people list and bid on loans using Prosper's online auction platform.

The Receivables Exchange
The Receivables Exchange is a real-time online market for trading accounts receivable that gives businesses access to working capital at a competitive cost by connecting a global network of accredited investors to the nation's small and mid-sized businesses.

Rudder
Rudder is a free personal finance software designed to minimize the effort required in managing money by helping users to manage their budget, track their bills and analyze their expected income and projected expenses.

Silver Tail Systems
Silver Tail Systems provides fraud prevention to defend users' websites against business logic abuse through the use of behavior detection, efficient investigation and real-time mitigation to track suspicious behavior and divert the bad actors, leaving legitimate users unaffected.

SimpliFi
SimpliFi provides independent financial advice online. Users can complete a profile and receive a personal financial plan with specific actionable steps.

SmartHippo
SmartHippo uses the power of the community to find users the best rates on financial products and services.

SmartyPig
SmartyPig is a social saving service that helps users save for a specific goal by allowing them to invite others to contribute to their account, providing incentive boosts from top retailers, and offering a competitive interest rate.

Strands
moneyStrands is a money management service that helps users get information on anything from practical savings tips to getting help tracking expenses down

Syphr
Syphr is a technology and marketing credit union service organization that created RateMatch, a service that matches participating credit unions with the thousands of credit report purchasers per month.

ThreatMetrix
ThreatMetrix helps companies control online fraud and abuse in real time by profiling the device used in an online transaction so companies can determine whether the users are fraudsters or customers.

Transparent Financial Services
Transparent Financial Services is online comparison-shopping service for small businesses that uses technology to help users compare and purchase financial services like payroll processing, credit card processing and business loans.

Victrio
Victrio offers a credit risk management system that uses voiceprint recognition technology to fight credit card fraud and identity theft.

Wesabe
Wesabe is an online personal finance management tool that provides members with information about where they spend and links them with a community dedicated to helping each other make smart financial decisions.

WeSeed
WeSeed seeks to demystify the stock market by helping real people share what they know and make smart investing decisions based on the collective wisdom of the community.   

ZimpleMoney
ZimpleMoney is a web-based financial services platform enabling people and organizations to manage and administer financial agreements including loans, leases, rentals, tithing, trusts and settlements.

Note
1. Several other participants are remaining anonymous for the time being. 

Willingly attending an agenda-less (note 1) meeting of credit union enthusiasts, consultants, bloggers, fintech startups, and even the occasional banker, can be difficult to explain to your boss, let alone your spouse.

But if you want to improve your bank-geek cred -- and really who doesn't -- the 2009 BarCampBank season begins in 10 days with two events in Europe. Then it's back to the western United States with the second annual San Francisco BCB the last weekend of April (not coincidentally scheduled two days before our FinovateStartup so you can make both), and finally a new Vegas version the following weekend.

May 2 BarCampBankVegas (organized by Robbie Wright and timed around the NACUSO convention)

Notes:
1. It's not truly agenda-less; rather, there is no agenda ahead of time, it's created on the fly by attendees (see inset, photo credit Thomas Barker).

2. Re: BCB Madrid: Congratulations to our friend Jesus Perez Sanchez at Financial Red. It looks like he's helped pull off the biggest BCB yet, and with great participation from bankers. It's a trend I hope continues in the states.

FinovateStartup09, our annual springtime technology event in the San Francisco Bay area, is just three months away. Today, we announced the first wave of young companies committed to participate on April 28.

More companies are in the pipeline, and when all is said and done we expect more than 50 startups to be on hand to demonstrate the latest in online and mobile financial services and technology.

The Finovate format combines fast-paced demos (no PowerPoint!) with extensive networking where you can meet the start-up founders along with influential industry executives, press corps, and analysts. To get a taste for the event, take a look at videos of past demos.

Because we hadn't named any companies until today, we've extended the Super Early Bird registration deadline until this Friday, Feb. 6 (register here). See you in San Francisco.

Finovate Startup 2009 lineup (as of 2 Feb. 2009):

• Acculynk
• Aradiom
• BillShrink
• BudgetTracker
• CalendarBudget
• Centrro
• Cooler Inc.
• CreditArray
• Credit Karma
• GoalSpring
• Expensify
• Green Sherpa
• Home-Account
• iBearSoft
• iThryv
• Jwaala
• kaChing
• Kapitall
• Lending Club
• Looniesdesk.com
• Mint
• Moneta
• NCore
• Pertuity Direct
• Portfolio Monkey
• Prosper
• Receivables Exchange
• Rudder
• Silver Tail Systems
• SimpliFi
• SmartHippo
• SmartyPig
• Strands
• Syphr
• Transparent Financial Services
• Victrio
• Wesabe
• ZimpleMoney

After looking at more than 100 companies, we've selected 24 finalists to present at our second annual Finovate Conference Oct. 14 in New York City (registration here). Three will emerge as Finovate Best of Show companies joining  last year's winners: Mint,Mortgage Marvel from Mortgagebot, and Prosper (note 1).  

In a single action-packed day, we'll see several financial startups launch, a few major product overhauls revealed, and a pile of new features shown to the public for the first time. It could be the single biggest "news day" in the history of online finance. Besides the amazing presenter lineup, the audience will contain many well-known industry analysts, members of the press, and banking and technology execs. Here are the subjects that will be covered:

• Person-to-person lending
• Lead generation in financial services
• Personal financial management and online banking
• Mobile banking and payments
• Payments/billing
• Investing and retirement planning online
• Security technologies
• Social media and Web 2.0

Finovate 2008 Lineup (alphabetic order, note 2)
Below is a list of all 24 companies. In all, seven of the companies presented at our sold-out Finovate 2007; three are graduates from Finovate Startup last April; and 14 are new to Finovate. But all 24 will be demonstrating substantial new products and/or features. 

• BillShrink <billshrink.com>
• Boulevard R <boulevardR.com>
• CheckFree <checkfree.com>
• Check Point Software<checkpoint.com>
• Credit Karma <creditkarma.com>
• Digital Insight (Intuit) <digitalinsight.com>
• FiLife (Dow Jones/IAC) <filife.com>
• mFoundry <mfoundry.com>
• Mint <mint.com>
• MoneyAisle (NeoSaej) <moneyaisle.com>
• mShift <mshift.com>
• Inner8 <inner8.com>
• Lending Club <lendingclub.com>
• Pertuity Direct <pertuitydirect.com>
• Quicken Online (Intuit) <quicken.com>
• SmartHippo <smarthippo.com>
• Sybase 365 <sybase.com/365>
• Vidoop <vidoop.com>
• Wesabe <wesabe.com>
• WeSeed <weseed.com>
• Yodlee <yodlee.com>

• Galaxy (Fiserv) <galaxyplus.com>
• Rate Surfer (My Best Interest) <ratesurfer.com>
• Thrive <justthrive.com>

About Finovate 2008

• Date: Oct. 14, 2008
• Place: New York, NY (Crowne Plaza Times Square)
• Cost: $995 through Sep. 30
• Agenda: 12 demos in the morning (7 minutes each, NO POWERPOINT),
  12 in the afternoon; each session followed by two hours of networking to meet with presenters for one-on-one discussions
• Producer: Online Financial Innovations, publisher of Online Banking Report and Netbanker
• Website: finovate.com
• For videos of the sold-out Finovate 2007, click here

Press: Members of the media should contact Jim Bruene, jim@netbanker.com to secure a press pass.

Note:
1. Winners are selected by audience vote.
2. The list does not include two stealth startups and one company to be named later.

If you've been reading NetBanker for the past few months, you've heard about our upcoming conference, FinovateStartup: Demo'ing the Future of Finance.

Reminder: It's Tuesday, April 29, at the UCSF Mission Bay campus just south of downtown San Francisco (previous coverage here). It's an offshoot of our first Finovate conference (videos here) held last fall in New York City (note 1).

Forty startups will demo their latest and greatest (note 2) on the big screen. There will be several industry debuts, a handful of a new product launches, and hundreds of new twists unveiled that day. 

While coverage by more than two dozen press, analysts, and bloggers at the event should provide a good overview of what's going on, there is nothing like being there (note 3). Imagine talking to 10, 20, or 30 founders and senior execs in a single day. It will make your head spin, but by the time you get back to the office, you will have been exposed to a year's worth of new ideas. The value = priceless. 

Notes:
1. We return to New York on Oct 14 for the second annual Finovate conference. It's the Tuesday after Columbus Day, so if you want to make a long weekend out of it, you might want to book hotel space now. It's a lot more than San Francisco (see #3), but it will only get worse. And you can lock in super-early-bird prices by registering for the conference today. Because it's NYC, seating is limited, so don't put it off too long. We sold out in about six weeks last year.

2. Unfortunately, Lending Club will not be able to present at FinovateStartup due to the quiet period as they register to sell securities (see coverage here). We have several companies looking to take their place, so we still expect to have 40 demos.

3. It must be a relatively slow week in downtown San Francisco, as hotel rooms are as cheap as we've seen them in years. We have 5 rooms at the Parc55, averaging about $130 per night plus tax. The average daytime high is 65 that time of year, so come out for the weekend and enjoy the Bay Area in spring.

It will be interesting to look back at this post five years from now and see how many of the 40 startups presenting at our first annual FinovateStartup conference are thriving, holding on, or have moved on.

I know one thing for sure, there will be five years' worth of innovative ideas served up on April 29. I am really looking forward to it. If you can make time in your busy spring schedule, I hope you'll consider attending. You can still save a hundred bucks by registering here by Monday, March 31.

The press release follows.

------------------------------------------------------

Online Banking Report Announces Final Demo Lineup for
FinovateStartup Conference

28 March 2008

Seattle, WA: Times may be tight in the credit markets, but the financial services technology area is still hopping with startups. Forty of the most promising will gather in San Francisco April 29 to prove to an auditorium filled with bankers, VCs, tech gurus, and the press what makes each the next big thing in finance.

No slides. No speeches. No wasted time. Finovate serves up 100% demos with plenty of networking time to speak with start-up founders and execs.

The main threads will be online personal finance (5 startups), online savings/checking (3 startups), social finance/investing (7 startups), lending/credit (5 startups including 3 person-to-person lenders), comparison shopping for financial services (3 startups), security (6 startups), and mobile banking/payments (4 startups).

Several stealth companies plan to launch at the conference, and a number of startups will be introducing significant product improvements or new services. We expect to see plenty of Web 2.0, including social-media-inspired investing, widgets and Facebook apps, and next-generation financial search. It will be an amazing day.

Here’s the complete lineup by company type:

• Checking/savings: Andera, First ROI, SmartyPig
• Financial shopping/comparison: Credit Karma, FindABetterBank, SmartHippo, SimpleTuition
• Investing/asset management: Boulevard R., Cake Financial,
  CAPS (Motley Fool), SocialPicks, TradeKing, Vestopia, Zecco
• Lending/credit: Lending Club, Loanio, Prosper, Wonga
• Mobile banking/payments: Aradiom, ClairMail, Diversinet, Tyfone
• Personal financial management: Buxfer, Expensr, Jwaala, Mint, Wesabe
• Security: Authentium, Guard ID, Guardian Analytics, TrustedID, VaultStreet, Vidoop
• Other: IP Commerce, Unified Money, WorkLight and four stealth startups 

About FinovateStartup Conference

• Date: April 29, 2008
• Place: San Francisco, CA (UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center)
• Cost: $995
• Agenda: 20 demos in the morning, 20 in the afternoon; each session followed by two hours of networking to meet with the presenters in one-on-one discussions
• Website: finovatestartup.com
• For more information on last fall’s sold-out NYC event, see netbanker.com/finovate

Note: Members of the media should contact Jim Bruene, jim@netbanker.com to secure a press pass.

About Online Banking Report
Founded in 1995 by former banker Jim Bruene, Online Banking Report provides in-depth analysis, relevant data, and informed recommendations to financial services executives in 50 countries. Online Banking Report is published by Online Financial Innovations, a Seattle-based research company. For more information and free sample reports, visit onlinefinancialinnovations.com, email info@netbanker.com or call (206) 517-5021. You may also find OFI's blog on the latest in online finance & banking at netbanker.com.

If you've wondered why the NetBanker blogging machine has slowed down, it's not because we've wilted in the summertime heat. No, it's because we've been putting together a scorching hot conference, our first ever! I can't begin to tell you how much fun we've had negotiating for a NYC venue, finding a top-notch A/V crew, and building a website on short notice!

But it will all pay off on Oct. 2 when twenty of the most innovative companies in the financial, banking and lending industries gather in New York City to offer a glimpse of the future of online and mobile banking at FINOVATE 2007: DEMOing the Future of Financial Services.

Following the popular format pioneered by DEMO, FINOVATE 2007 will provide companies with a mere seven minutes to “wow!” an audience of 200 leading executives, investors, analysts, members of the press and bloggers with actual demonstrations of their latest & greatest products and services (no powerpoint allowed!). The demos will be followed by intimate networking sessions where attendees will be granted unprecedented access to these innovative companies and their executives.

The presenter list includes (in alphabetical order): Andera, Billeo Inc, CheckFree, ClairMail, Firethorn, Geezeo, Digital Insight (an Intuit company), Identity Theft 911, iPay Technologies, Jwaala, Lending Club, Metavante, mFoundry, Mint, Monitise, MortgageBot, MShift, Online Resources, Prosper Marketplace, and Yodlee.

General admission tickets for the event are extremely limited (there are less than 100 left!). And with only 47 shopping days left, get yours today and qualify for the early-bird rate of under $500. To register, visit our registration page at finovate.com or call us at +1 (206) 517-5021. Don’t miss out on your chance to see what’s next in P2P lending, online account opening, bill payments, mobile banking, social personal finance and more!

(Member of the press or industry blogger? Email us at finovate@netbanker.com to request a press pass.)

Tomorrow, the most unusual conference in the banking industry, BarCamp Bank kicks off at 9 AM in Seattle's Pioneer Square historical district. It costs approximately 1/50th of a normal conference ($35) and has no set speakers, agenda, or sales pitches. It's just an excuse for a bunch of creative types to get together and talk about the future of money and banking. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Thanks again to Jessie Robbins for organizing the event. If you can make it to Seattle tomorrow or Sunday, you can still sign up here.  

The first thing we'll do tomorrow is brainstorm topics for group discussion. Here's my short(ish) list: 

• Outside the box: If you were to design a financial institution from scratch, disregarding all current regulatory constraints, what would it look like?  
• Alt delivery: Is online account access already old-fashioned? Do customers really want to log in to their bank multiple times each week or is there an easier and less intrusive way to keep consumers abreast of their financial lives?
• Social networks: Will social networks such as Facebook spawn their own virtual credit unions to serve the financial needs of members? Or will existing financial instructions step in to serve the need?
• Mobile finance: Mobile banking and payments are on their second trip up the hype curve. Is it real this time? If so, will mobile services be extensions of existing solutions, replacements for them, or an entirely new type of service?  
• Security: Financial security and privacy concerns remain top-of-mind with consumers. What role should financial institutions take in education, prevention, and resolution?
• Opensource marketing: With 15,000 financial institutions in the United States alone and most of them setting up shop online, it's absurd to think that your customers aren't looking around for the best prices. Why not follow the Progressive Auto Insurance model and actually enable price searches from your site?

I'll do my best to let you know what we come up with.  

Being somewhat older than the 20-something coders the frequent the Silicon Valley/Toronto/Paris/Austin BarCamp scene (Wikipedia definition, website), I'm not quite sure what to expect when the banking version, BarCamp Bank, comes to Seattle next weekend (July 21/22).

But simply knowing that the Trabian gurus, Brent Dixon and Trey Reeme, will be in attendance assures that it will be eye-opening and fun. There's also the king of banking social media, Ed Terpening of Wells Fargo as well as William Azaroff, Pierre Burns, and Monica Mashal from pioneering Vancity and Ben Morales the creative thinker behind many cool initiatives at Washington State Employees Credit Union. And so far, just one representative from the hot personal finance space, Marc Hedlund from Wesabe (here's the full registration list so far).

The idea is to gather a bunch of innovative thinkers in one spot, drink coffee, eat pizza and try to change the world, one payment at a time. All in one weekend.

It's beautiful in Seattle this time of year, if you can make it, drop your $35 into this form ASAP and I'll see you next week. Otherwise, we'll be writing about it of course.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in today to the American Bankers Association webinar on website design. And for those of you on the call, please let me know what you thought of the presentations either by private email, or via the comments below. It's the first time I've been involved in a 2-hour Webinar, and I'm curious about the experience from the listener's perspective.

The ABA's Doug Johnson pulled together the following panel and served as master of ceremonies: 

This session was a Web-based version of the session we gave in Palm Springs earlier this year (coverage here). My 20-minute presentation included examples from some favorite financial websites. Here are the links:

Overall Bank/Web 2.0 Design
1. Buxfer buxfer.com: Web 2.0 design/functionality (A-)
2. Wesabe wesabe.com: Quicken meets Zagat (A-)
3. Billq mybillq.com: Award-winning bill payment tracker (A)
4. Prosper prosper.com: Before and After shots of its recent web redesign, nice job reducing clutter, (A-)

Homepage Focus
5. Wachovia wachovia.com: Not-so-great design, and way too cluttered (C+)
6. Google google.com: Legendary focus on what matters (A++)
7. Bank of America bankofamerica.com: Good design, but still too much clutter (A-)
8. ING Direct ingdirect.com: Great design, no clutter (A)

Sales
9. Attention: U.K. montage: smile.co.uk, egg.co.uk, alliance-leicester.co.uk
10. Interest: E*Trade Bank etradebank.com: Great at selling key products (A)
11. Desire: High-yield savings montage: emigrantdirect.com (A), hsbcdirect.com (A), mybankingdirect.com (A)
12. Desire: Progressive Insurance progressive.com: Great comparisons to competition using scrolling summary of other users' search results (A-)
13. Action: NextCard: No longer online (A+)

Customer Interaction/Satisfaction
14. Wells Fargo blogs blog.wellsfargo.com: Look especially at the StudentLoanDown (A), which demonstrates how to communicate with a Web-savvy niche audience
15. UW Credit Union RSS feeds uwcu.org/rss: One of the first, if not THE first, U.S. financial institution to offer RSS feeds of its Web-based. The CU has also added RSS auto-discover technology as seen in the address box (screenshot below)

Here's the latest calendar of events of interest to the online banking community. I'll be speaking and/or attending the highlighted events. Drop me an email if you want to try to get together at any of them.

I attended the public portion of the 2-day Mobile Payment Forum Spring Member Meeting in San Diego yesterday <mobilepaymentforum.org>. The group was formed by MasterCard, Visa, American Express and JCB more than five years ago to help develop standards and promote best practices in mobile payments.

The current board of directors:

• Simon Pugh, VP Standards & Infrastructure, MasterCard 
• Stephanie Ericksen, VP Product Technology & Integration, Visa
• Martin Harrison, Head of Sales and Strategy, First Data
• Christopher J. Bierbaum, Product Development, Emerging Products Group, Sprint
• Bob Adamany, VeriSign
• Oliver Kelly, Vodafone

It was a pay-to-present day, with each sponsor allotted time based on the size of their financial contribution. Six gold sponsors spoke for 30 minutes, a silver sponsor was allotted 15 minutes, and the only platinum one was handed the podium for a full hour. Consultant Richard Crone of Crone Consulting gave the keynote and handled the introductions and wrap-up.  

Platinum Sponsor:
ClairMail: Joseph Salesky, CEO

Gold Sponsors:
Firethorn Mobile: Tripp Rackley, CEO
PayCash Mobile (Cyphermint): CEO, Joseph Barboza
eBizMobility: CEO, Jeremy Kagan
Erico: VP Marketing, Larry Loper
mFoundry: VP Product, John Pizzi

Silver Sponsor:
Sapphire Mobile Systems: Rick Rasansky, CEO

For the most part, the speakers did a commendable job keeping things informative and not heading straight to sales-pitch mode (see note 1). The highlight was Firethorn CEO Tripp Rackley and ClairMail CEO making impassioned pitches on opposite sides of the SMS banking (ClairMail) vs. downloaded app (Firethorn) continuum (note 2). And as usual, Richard Crone of Crone Consulting set the stage with an entertaining and fact-filled keynote (note 3). 

Despite being a payments forum, most of the talk centered around online banking (Firethorn, ClairMail, mFoundry, Sapphire), mobile advertising (Erico), and ecommerce (eBizMobility). Only PayCash Mobile and keynoter Richard Crone spent more than a few minutes on payments. 

The main reason: Mobile banking is on the verge of breaking out, and banks are reaching for their checkbooks. With far more infrastructure hurdles, cellphone-based payments will lag mobile banking adoption by five years (see forecast in our most-recent Online Banking Report, 138/139).

I'll post a few more items from the conference during the next few days.

Note:

1. Hint for conference attendees: Always look for private-company CEO presentations. Private-company CEOs usually do a great job speaking about the broader issues, understanding that their industry knowledge is a far better sales pitch for their organization than a dozen "About us" slides. Marketing VPs on the other hand, seem enamored with how many times they can work their company and client names into the presentation deck. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of many public-company CEOs who are so ham-strung by disclosure regulations, they can hardly say anything that's not already widely known.  

2. For more on the mobile banking debate, see our latest Online Banking Report, "Mobile Banking & Payments" (OBR 138/139 here).

3. Disclosure: Mr. Crone has been an occasional contributor to our sister publication Online Banking Report. His first article appeared in our 1996 issue.

As mentioned yesterday (post here), I participated on a panel entitled, Extreme Online Makeovers, at the American Bankers Association National Community Bank Convention in Palm Springs. 

Presenters included:

• Clay Morgan, creative services manager, Digital Insight
• David Rubini, product usability director, Digital Insight
• Richard Carlisle, CIO, Valley National Bank of New Mexico
• The discussion was expertly moderated by the ABA's own Doug Johnson, senior policy analyst, American Bankers Association

I promised attendees a list of the links used in my portion of the presentation. Here they are in order, along with my highly subjective letter grade of their homepage design:

1. Upcoming.org upcoming.org: Web 2.0 design/functionality (A-)
2. Wesabe wesabe.com: Quicken meets Zagat (A-)
3. Billq mybillq.com: Award-winning bill payment tracker (A)
4. Google google.com: Focus on what matters (A++)
5. Bank of America bankofamerica.com: Good design, but too much clutter (A-)
6. Wachovia wachovia.com: Not-so-great design, and even more clutter (C+)
7. ING Direct ingdirect.com: Great design, no clutter (A)
8. U.K. montage: smile.co.uk, egg.co.uk, alliance-leicester.co.uk
9. Prosper prosper.com: Interesting new P2P lender with modern design (A-)
10. E*Trade Bank etradebank.com: Great at selling key products (A)
11. High-yield savings montage: emigrantdirect.com (A), hsbcdirect.com (A), mybankingdirect.com (A)
12. Progressive Insurance progressive.com: Great comparisons to competition using scrolling summary of other users' search results (A-)
13. NextCard: No longer online (A+)
14. PayPal paypal.com: Task management built into the design (A-)
15. Countrywide Financial countrywide.com: Integration with the phone channel (B)
16. Wells Fargo blogs blog.wellsfargo.com: Look especially at the StudentLoanDown (A), which demonstrates how to communicate with a Web-savvy niche audience

Person-to-person lender, Prosper, announced its first annual user meeting next February in San Francisco. Registration is a refundable $25 and includes an all-day session with dinner on Monday, Feb. 12, and a half-day on Tuesday, Feb. 13.

The agenda has not been published. Online signup is here.

The October newsletter (see End Notes for screenshot) also announced the arrival of the group ratings, an important milestone for the nine-month-old service. Group ratings promise to help lenders locate borrowers with better-than-expected likelihood of repayment. If it works, Prosper could become a major force in consumer lending. If it doesn't, the company will have to find another way to beat the loan default odds. 

For more information:

• For prior coverage of Prosper and its U.K. rival Zopa, look here.
• For detailed analysis of the market, see Online Banking Report #127 published in March

End Notes (click on the link below to see Prosper's Oct. newsletters)

Banner advertising at About.com's banking blog <bank.about.com>

Landing page for direct navigation to <bankofamerica.com/nofeemortgage>

Landing page from bank's Google ad on "bank of america mortgage no fee"

There's much to choose from this fall, click on the link below to see the complete calendar of events of interest to online banking and financial services marketing professionals.

Update: The 2-for-1 offer is no longer available through this link. However, you can still save $350 ($700 for two) before Sept. 5 — enough for a snazzy new monitor for your desktop anyway. But first, check your inbox for an Aug. 2 or 3 email from BAI with the 2-for-1 offer. You should still be able to claim it with your promo code.

If your team is headed to Las Vegas in November to take in BAI's <bai.org> bank-tech extravaganza, you better jump on this offer before Sept. 5: two admissions for the price of one (main conference only). That will save you nearly $1,700, enough to put that new plasma display in the conference room. If you are going by yourself, you'll still save $350 with this offer.

Here's the link:  http://www.bai.org/retaildelivery/

--JB

The latest conferences for online bankers and financial marketers.

Upcoming conferences of note include:

1. BAI's Retail Delivery, Nov. 14-16 in Las Vegas; the grandaddy of banking tech conferences featuring a massive exhibit hall and thousands of attendees from around the world.
2. American Banker's Technology Forum, Oct. 11-13 in Silicon Valley; much smaller than Retail Delivery, but highly focused on online banking and payments issues.
3. BAI also offers its Combating Check & Payments Fraud Conference, Sept. 25-27 in Baltimore, MD. The first day also includes the CheckImage Forum in conjunction with ECCHO.

Click on the following link for the complete calendar through year-end:

There's still time to take in a conference before the summer hiatus. Click on the link below to see the calendar for May and June.

Conferences and events of interest to electronic payments executives.

Continue reading "Upcoming Electronic Payment-Related Conferences" »