Just a quick reminder that the lowest early-bird ticket prices for FinovateSpring 2010 (May 11 in San Francisco) will expire at the end of January (a mere 3 days from now). If you register this week, you'll save $300 on your ticket and lock in your spot to see debuts and demos of dozens of new financial and banking technological innovations.

Tickets are selling strongly with attendees from great organizations like Visa, Wells Fargo, USAA, AARP, Filene, Google, Capitol One, Experian and many others registering in the last few hours alone.

FinovateSpring 2010, in case you're not familiar with it, is one of our twice-yearly showcases of the best new ideas in banking and financial technology. The show is built around a unique blend of fast-paced demos of actual technology (no slides!) and high-quality networking with an audience of senior FI executives, fintech entrepreneurs, VCs, press, industry analysts and bloggers. It's an awesome environment to find your next competitive edge.

Don't miss out on the best prices on tickets to this great show. Register now!

P.S. Online Banking Report subscribers are entitled to an extra discount to our Finovate conferences. Email me to get it.

Online mortgage startup Home-Account has licensed the refinance.com domain name and today launched a new, free service for people seeking to refinance their homes (press release).

The domain name was formerly that of Homebridge Mortgage Bankers Corporation, which had acquired the name for more than $700,000 in 2005. But in the 2008 mortgage meltdown, Homebridge went out of business and the valuable domain name went unused throughout 2009.

Home-Account is a 2009 Finovate alum (video here and here) specializing in helping consumers navigate the confusing mortgage marketplace. The startup uses an online system to assess a home loan applicant's suitability before they apply. It then provides advice and assistance in finding the best mortgage. The company contracts with mortgage lenders to provide firm price quotes at the end of the process. Lenders pay Home-Account a fixed fee for each mortgage.

The startup has enlisted noted mortgage finance expert Jack Guttenberg, also known as the Mortgage Professor (link) to endorse the service.

How it works:

1. To begin the process, simply enter a Zip code.

2. Complete a three-part online application detailing personal financial info (including social security number), info on existing mortgages, and a short "mortgage personality" quiz to help match buyer needs with mortgage options (e.g., fixed vs. variable rate).

3. Confirm identity using info from credit files.

4. Home-Account then pulls a credit report using a soft pull that does not show as an inquiry on the borrower's credit file.

5. The site provides a loan-eligibility score, a few quick tips on improving credit qualifications, and firm loan offers including rates and all fees from qualified lenders. The borrower reviews the various offers side-by-side, a feature that should provoke healthy competition among the lenders.

6. If the borrower decides to move forward, they click on their desired loan to lock in the offered rate.

7. The selected lender then closes the loan directly with the borrower.

At launch, several lenders are offering loans through the system including: GoodMortgage.com, RoundPoint Mortgage Company, Eagle National Bank and First Choice Funding.

Analysis: The mortgage shopping and refinance process is still a mystery to a large percentage of consumers. It is difficult to compare prices while shopping, and the myriad of fees tacked on during the process can leave a bad taste with the borrower. Consumers rarely know if they truly received a fair deal when all is said and done. The Home-Account/Refinance.com solution promises to add more transparency during the entire mortgage process. That's welcome news to scandal-weary American consumers.

However, convincing skeptical consumers to trust its mortgage-recommendation engine will be a major challenge for Home-Account. Third-party endorsements, and possible integration with financial institutions or personal finance tool providers, will be vitally important.

Refinance.com #1 - The site grades loan eligibility ...

Refinance.com #2 - ... and suggest ways to improve it.

We're incredibly pleased to announce our Finovate events for 2010 today. Over the last few years, our Finovate conferences have grown tremendously and become must-attend showcases of the best new innovations in financial and banking technology.

In 2010, we will again be organizing two great Finovate conferences. The first, FinovateSpring, will take place in San Francisco on Tuesday May 11 and the second, FinovateFall, will take place in New York City on Tuesday October 5.

Both events will showcase dozens of fintech innovations from established leading companies and hot young startups via our special demo-only (no slides allowed) format. Every company selected to demo at the events gets 7 minutes on stage to show their latest and greatest to the entire audience plus a plug-and-play demo booth during the intimate networking sessions to connect one-on-one with the attendees. The powerful blend of a ton of high-quality demos and top-notch networking in a single day that has won rave reviews year after year from both participating companies and attendees is back!

In 2009, the high-quality audiences of financial execs, press, bloggers, analysts, VCs and entrepreneurs at both conferences grew 20% and in 2010 we expect the events to be even bigger and better.

If you're interested in doing a demo at one of the 2010 events, please email me today at eric@netbanker.com for more details. The application window for the spring event is now open and will close at the end of February (there are advantages to applying early).

P.S. Tickets for both events are on sale now at www.finovate.com. Register today to lock in your spot and the super early bird price!

I'm excited to announce that the videos of all the demos from our Finovate 2009 conference this fall are now available free online.

It was an amazing conference with a ton of great innovations showcased on stage. We hope you enjoy watching the demos in video format as much as the 450 attendees enjoyed watching them live on the day of the event.

As usual, we've provided all the videos in both Windows Media and QuickTime formats. We've also added a higher-res download version so you can watch them in bigger-screen glory. To download the bigger-screen version simply right-click on the link that says QuickTime HD (hint: it's located under the video player) and choose "save as".

A huge thanks for all the demoing companies (listed below alphabetically) for participating at Finovate 2009. 

P.S. If you're interested in demoing at a future Finovate event, please reach out to me for more details.

Here's a transcript of my Twitter updates at Finovate 2009 on 29 Sep 2009 (in reverse chronological order):

After a jam-packed day in NYC yesterday, the audience voted five companies Finovate2009 Best of Show.  

All Finovate attendees, except for the presenting companies themselves, rated each demo on a scale of one to six. At the end of the final demo session, the ballots were tallied and the presenters ranked based on their average score. A majority of attendees completed a ballot, so it's a good indicator of the group consensus.

It was a tight race, but here's how the choices played out (in alphabetic order).

        BancVue's Kasasa national checking/savings account brand
        for community banks and credit unions  

Credit.com's report card with letter grades to help users
make sense of the underlying data

Digital Insight (Intuit) integration of tax preparation
with online banking

Silver Tail Systems real-time security monitoring
to shut down fraud attempts immediately

Yodlee's new FinApp store modeled after Apple's
iPhone App Store 

Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who participated.  

Note: Videos of each demo will be posted to the Finovate website within a few weeks.

At 8:30 (Eastern) today, Finovate2009 kicks off with a lineup of 32 new innovations from leading financial services and tech companies.

We'll cover the breaking announcements on Twitter today, at Twitter.com/netbanker. You can follow the entire conversation on our Finovate Live page or on Twitter using the hashtag #finovate.

For complete descriptions of the companies, see our previous coverage.

This Tuesday, more than 425 people will gather in the heart of Manhattan to watch the future of financial and banking technology unfold at Finovate 2009. They're coming to see the best new innovations in the space from 32 handpicked startups and established companies via Finovate's fast-paced, demo-only (no slides allowed!) format. It's going to be a great show! 

• Mint
  
• TILE Financial
  
• XChange
  

These three join the 29 awesome companies we'd already announced (list below):

These companies will showcase their talents before an audience of senior financial/banking/credit union executives, influential press, industry analysts, venture capitalists, bloggers, tech companies and entrepreneurs.

A few of the organizations attending include: Bank of America, Citibank, WSJ, Microsoft, ING Direct, HSBC, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dow Jones, the Financial Times, E*Trade Financial, SunTrust, ANZ, Capitol One, NY Times, Financial Insights, Discover, Sybase, Cardinal Venture Capital, Intuit, Consumer Reports, DataMonitor, Canaan Partners, The Economist, BusinessWeek, CBS Moneywatch, Bankrate.com, Korn/Ferry, U.S. Bank and Aite Group.

We'd love to have you join us on Tuesday and watch the future of finance/banking unfold onstage. There are some tickets left but since the event starts at 8:30 sharp on Tuesday morning, I'd hurry up and register now if you want to attend! 

P.S. Online Banking Report subscribers save even more on tickets to all our events PLUS they obviously get 12 months of great research.

Thanks to a fascinating lineup of presenters (logos below, list here), and what looks like a rosier technology outlook for next year, we are thrilled that as of this morning, Finovate ticket sales have surpassed last year's!

With five business days remaining before the 29 Sep event, it's certain we'll have a record audience of more than 400 at Finovate 2009 (partial list below, note 1). There are still a few tickets remaining, so we encourage you to register ASAP.

Here's a partial list of attending companies:

Really, we weren't looking for ways to plug our Finovate conference. Usually we just come right out and tell you to register now since it's only 10 days away. But imagine our delight when we opened up the latest issue of Fast Company (Oct 2009) and Dan Macsai's article included six Finovate companies in his list of eight startups "brimming with hope for the financial industry" (see screenshot below; note 1).

In Dan's words, these companies are noteworthy as:

Web-based financial startups creating services that embrace transparency (even in their largely fee-based pricing) and improve the customer experience.

Congratulations to the eight winners (in order of their appearance in the article): 

• Tempo Payments: Decoupled debit (FinovateStartup 2009 alum, video)
• BancVue: Community bank rewards checking and Kasasa national brand (upcoming Finovate 2009 presenter; FinovateStartup 2008 alum and Best of Show winner, video)
• MarketRiders: Impartial mutual fund advice for $9.95/mo
• Mpower Ventures: Providing financial services to the world's unbanked.
• SecondMarket: Helps companies auction securities and other illiquid assets (FinovateStartup 2009 alum, video)
• BrightScope: Independent advice for 401k plan participants (upcoming Finovate 2009 presenter)
• Jwaala: Personal financial management and online banking tools for small and mid-size financial institutions (Finovate 2007 charter presenter, video; FinovateStartup 2008 alum and Best of Show winner video; 2009 Finovate Startup alum, video)
• The Receivables Exchange: Real-time auctions for accounts receivables (FinovateStartup 2009 alum, video)

Fast Company's NextFinance column (Oct 2009, pp. 76-78, ad page omitted)

Note:
1. We'll take a .750 batting average any time. But, we'll also try to recruit MarketRiders and Mpower to future Finovate events.

I've participated in dozens of online banking and technology conferences over the years, first as a banker, then as an analyst, and now as the host. Each time, I try to walk away with not only specific action items, but also overall themes that will drive product development over the next few years.

With 32 new products and services being unveiled next month at our Finovate Conference (see note 1) and with planning season just around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to review the themes taking shape this fall:

• Control: More and more tools are being invented to help consumers and small businesses take better control of their finances, both on the credit and deposit side. The tools vary from very focused tools to manage health care expenses or 401(k) allocations, to broad tools that manage the big picture. This trend is expected to continue well into the next decade.
• Mobility: Most simple financial management tasks, such as checking balances, authorizing purchases, and so on will move to mobile devices, another huge trend that will play out over the next 20 years.
• Peer-to-peer: You can't really cut out the middleman entirely in financial services; a trusted third-party is needed to authenticate both parties. However, the third-party may not always be a traditional financial institution.
• Safety & security: This one never goes out of style. But more so than usual, consumers are seeking safe havens for their savings and investments. And they expect more from their financial service providers. It will be a long time before risk-taking reaches levels seen much of the past 10 years.
• Segmentation (online): For the most part, online banking has been a one-size-fits-all service, since it came on the scene in the mid- to late-1990s. That's not good enough going forward. There will be online, and mobile, services tailored for distinct segments. Initial efforts rolling out this year target youth markets, small- and micro-businesses, and savvy investors among others. 

Guide to FINOVATE Companies
The following 30 companies (plus two more in stealth mode) will show their latest and greatest innovations in 7-minute demos at Finovate on 29 Sep in NYC. Here's how our presenting companies describe themselves.

Backbase
Backbase enables organizations to leverage their understanding of valuable customer data into highly personalized eBusiness Portals and Applications. Branding, content, applications, and tools can be targeted  to customers using profile-based personalization. Guidance and expertise can be proactively offered based upon specific customer needs. Customers can even be empowered to tailor their own user experience based upon their individual preferences. 

BancVue/First ROI
These successful sister companies provide innovative checking accounts backed by dynamic marketing, data-driven consulting and powerful software to community banks and credit unions. BancVue and FIRST ROI aim to change the world of banking by launching a whole new product-delivery model for consumer deposit accounts and community financial institutions.

Billeo
Billeo gives consumers a fast, easy and intelligent way to exercise choice and control over their online purchases and payments. Billeo functions as the catalyst to make online purchases and bill paying as easy and financially rewarding as possible. Billeo was founded by experts from the EBPP, card issuer, banking, ecommerce and technology industries.

BillShrink
BillShrink is an unbiased, free online service that saves people money by continuously updating personalized recommendations on everyday bills. BillShrink monitors millions of wireless plans, credit cards and gas prices across the country to provide an apples-to-apples comparison of the best options available on the market.

Bling Nation
Bling Nation brings mobile payments to consumers and merchant points of sale, offering lower costs, increased efficiency and improved security compared to credit cards, debit cards, checks and cash. The Bling Nation service also enables financial institutions and merchants to offer consumers robust rewards programs and real-time redemptions, promoting loyalty and convenience and supporting "shop local" initiatives.

BrightScope
BrightScope is an independent data analytics firm that quantitatively rates 401k plans and gives employers, employees, and brokers tools to enhance plan performance and maximize retirement outlook. The BrightScope Rating™ developed in partnership with leading independent 401k fiduciaries, reviews more than 200 unique data inputs per plan and calculates a single numerical score which defines 401k plan quality at the company level.

Canopy Financial
Canopy Financial provides innovative technology solutions that power the Consumer-Directed Healthcare (CDH) programs of some of the world's largest healthcare and financial institutions. Ranked #12 on the 2009 Inc. 500 list, Canopy empowers millions of consumers to take greater control of their healthcare dollars, enables price transparency for routine medical services, and increases the speed in which healthcare providers are paid.  

CashEdge
CashEdge is the leader in Intelligent Money Movement™ services that enable financial institutions to engage customers in new ways. CashEdge's Intelligent Money Movement services provide a single point of access, through an online banking or mobile application, for multiple easy-to-use consumer and small business transfer routes.

Credit.com
Serving as an educator, advocate and facilitator, Credit.com empowers consumers with easy-to-understand information about money, credit, loans and more. Credit.com is partnered with trusted financial experts and select companies in order to offer online consumers insightful tips, helpful tools and excellent deals.

Fidelity National Information Services
Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., a member of the S&P 500 Index, is a leading provider of core processing for financial institutions; card issuer and transaction processing services; and outsourcing services to financial institutions and retailers. FIS has processing and technology relationships with 40 of the top 50 global banks, including nine of the top 10.

Firethorn (Qualcomm)
Firethorn, a Qualcomm company, is the crucial link in the emerging mobile commerce ecosystem. As a pioneer in mobile banking, Firethorn is transforming the traditional wallet into a streamlined, efficient and protected mobile revenue channel that will bridge relationships among financial institutions, retailers, wireless carriers and consumers.

Fiserv
Fiserv, Inc. is the leading global provider of information management and electronic commerce systems for the financial services industry, driving innovation that transforms experiences for financial institutions and their customers.

Home-Account
Home-Account is a web-based mortgage finding service helping America's 75 million homeowners take control of their largest asset-- their home via their 'home-account'. The service grades and analyzes homeowners and their mortgages, presents scenarios to improve their financial situation and then pinpoints the best realistic mortgage options in the market.

Infosys
Infosys defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered.

Intuit
Intuit Inc. is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses; financial institutions, including banks and credit unions; consumers and accounting professionals. Their financial institutions division, anchored by Digital Insight, provides on-demand banking services to help banks and credit unions serve businesses and consumers with innovative solutions.

iPay Technologies
iPay Technologies is the leading independent provider of Internet bill payment services. Founded in 2001, iPay develops and fully supports consumer and small business online bill pay solutions for more than 2,800 financial institutions nationwide and in Puerto Rico. iPay offers a 99.93% payment success rate with more than 1,200,000 bill pay customers, and over 4,000,000 payments processed each month.

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

MShift
MShift, Inc. provides Mobile Banking solutions that offer the widest array of features, including Bill Payment, Presentment, Transfers, Account Summaries, History, ATM locators, and much more. MShift also provides the only available Facebook Banking application - online banking directly tied into the Facebook environment. MShift's Facebook banking application won the Online Banking Report's "Best of the Web" award for 2007.

On Deck Capital
On Deck Capital offers fair and fast financing to small businesses that do not meet traditional bank lending criteria. The company's proprietary underwriting and loan processing platform looks deeper into the health of small businesses, focusing on the overall business performance, rather than the owner's personal credit history.

Outright.com
Outright.com is incredibly simple, online bookkeeping specifically created for the 20 million Americans who work for themselves. Outright offers a streamlined, online solution, with the bookkeeping needs of the small business owners first. Outright's goal is to keep financial records as simple as possible, helping small businesses accurately track all of their income and expenses to estimate and prepare their taxes. And yes, it works on a Mac too.

PayByMobile
PayByMobile is a virtual wallet that will let anyone text to pay when shopping online. Shoppers load money on their wallet at the same shops where they top up to buy airtime and then simply text to pay when shopping at their favorite online store. PayByMobile uses familiar prepaid mobile usability to deliver a simple yet secure online payment alternative for everyone who has a mobile phone.

People Capital
People Capital underwrites students without credit history by projecting individual income levels and ability to pay. Their Human Capital Score™ incorporates merit data such as GPA, standardized test scores, college and major to provide a true and unbiased, data-driven measure of economic value of an education. Their peer-to-peer lending platform allows students to finance their college educations through improved access to private student loans.

S1 Enterprise
More than 100 banks and three million consumer, small business, and corporate users worldwide rely on S1 Enterprise solutions to access and manage their financial information. A division of S1 Corporation, S1 Enterprise is a leading provider of integrated banking solutions that deliver financial service providers a holistic view of their customers whether online, in the branch or in the call center.

Silver Tail Systems
Silver Tail Systems provides next generation fraud prevention to protect against business logic abuse - a rising threat on application logic costing financial institutions hundreds of millions of dollars and significant loss of trust. Silver Tail products use real-time behavior analysis to detect and alert on known threats and new behaviors, then enables the business to disrupt these attacks in real-time.

SimpliFi
SimpliFi is a free online financial planning and advice service that lets anyone plan for their financial future. The company was founded in 2004 as a tenant company in Wake Forest University's Babcock Demon Incubator. SimpliFi is headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, and has been providing white label financial planning services to credit unions since 2005.

Skill-Life
Skill-Life, Inc. began as CentsCity, LLC in January 2007 with the goal of building financially healthy youth and communities. Their initial vision of employing online gaming to teach financial skills has evolved into a more interactive, game-based, and comprehensive resource for awarding incentives and building life skills.

SmartyPig
SmartyPig allows customers to open goal-based savings accounts and to invite their friends and family to contribute to their goals. The system is based on proprietary, patent-pending technology and the latest in security standards. SmartyPig's U.S. banking partner is West Bank, a subsidiary of West Bancorporation, Inc. The company's Australian banking partner is Australian New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ).

Strands
moneyStrands is an innovative, easy-to-use online personal financial service that goes beyond providing financial analysis tools, with personalized money-saving advice and recommendations, and lets people anonymously compare themselves with people with similar backgrounds and financial goals. The interface is widget-based and highly customizable by the end user. moneyStrands is accessible via a full-capability mobile web version and a native iPhone application.

Yodlee
Leading financial institutions trust Yodlee to power critical online financial applications. Yodlee's personal financial management, payments, and customer acquisition solutions unify all personal financial account information to deliver a simple, centralized and secure source for consumers to manage all of their financial tasks anytime, anywhere. Yodlee makes financial institutions' websites essential to their customers and generates new revenue opportunities.

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

Note: You still have until the end of the week to register for the conference and save $100. Current Online Banking Report subscribers can save even more. Email info@netbanker.com for more info.

Today, we're revealing another handful of the leading fintech companies that will demo their latest and greatest innovations at Finovate 2009 on September 29 in the heart of NYC. The quality and diversity of the ideas that will be demoed on stage is very high this year and we're incredibly excited to showcase all the chosen companies to you.

The additional companies are:

• BlingNation
  
• Credit.com
  
• Simplifi
• SmartyPig

These four companies join 26 we've already announced (list below) as well as two great startups still in "stealth" mode that will debut at the event.

These companies will be showcased to an audience of senior financial/banking/credit union executives, influential press, industry analysts, venture capitalists, bloggers, tech companies and entrepreneurs.

A few of the organizations already committed to attend include: Bank of America, Citibank, WSJ, Microsoft, HSBC, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dow Jones, the Financial Times, E*Trade Financial, SunTrust, ANZ, Capitol One, Financial Insights, Discover, Sybase, Cardinal Venture Capital, Intuit, Consumer Reports, DataMonitor, Canaan Partners, The Economist, BusinessWeek, and Aite Group.

We'd love to have you join us at the fall event and watch the future of finance/banking unfold onstage. If you register before the end of August you'll save $100 via the early-bird ticket discount.

P.S. Online Banking Report subscribers save even more on tickets to all our events PLUS they obviously get 12 months of great research.

September 29th, 2009 is going to be a memorable day in the history of financial technology. Why? Because on that Tuesday, dozens of leading fintech companies will take the stage in NYC at Finovate 2009 to debut and demo their latest and greatest product innovations. The quality of the ideas that will be demoed on stage is very high this year and we're incredibly excited to showcase them to you.

The demoing companies selected (that we can reveal so far) are:

As soon as we wrapped up our second successful FinovateStartup09 in April (Have you checked out the videos from it yet? They're awesome and free to watch.), we ramped up the search for demoing fintech companies for our flagship Finovate 2009 conference (9/29 in Manhattan).

As part of that process, over the last two months, we've looked at hundreds of diverse financial technology companies (some brand new, some very well-established) to find the most innovative, biggest and best new ideas. Those companies were invited to apply for a

From here, we'll spend weeks reviewing the applications we've already received, accepting last-minute ones (until 7/15), and agonizing over which great companies to showcase on stage. But, regardless of the final roster of demoing companies, it's clear that fintech innovation just keeps accelerating. It's very exciting to watch and to get to share with you at Finovate 2009 this fall (and via NetBanker and via OBR).

We'd love to have you join us at the fall event and watch the future of finance/banking unfold onstage. If you register today you'll save $300 via the super early bird tickets. Please note that those prices expire at the end of June.

Over the last several years, we've been happy to have the fall Finovate conference grow and improve with each iteration. And we're pleased to have just successfully wrapped up the second go at our spring startup-only, spin-off version of the conference in San Francisco a few weeks ago (FinovateStartup).

Yet what Jim and I enjoy the most about organizing the Finovate conferences is the increased insight we've gained into the ongoing innovation in financial and banking technology. Every day, we're contacted by new entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from around the world working hard and smart with amazing vision and passion to improve every aspect of financial technology. And those conversations make us incredibly excited and optimistic about the future -- even in the face of the current economic environment.

So, today, I'm pleased to publish my first post to announce the opening of the company-application window for our upcoming demoing startups fall conference, Finovate 2009, in Manhattan on Sept. 29, because it means we're about to see the next wave of start-up innovators and then will get to share them with you at Finovate this fall.

Please note that the early-bird deadline for applications is June 15th and the final deadline is July 15th. The demoing companies for Finovate 2009 will be announced at the end of July.

P.S. In truth, I'd love to hear from any of you NetBanker readers, Online Banking Report subscribers, or Finovate attendees. Drop me a line and let me know what's on your mind.

We had a blast last week talking to startups and others at our FinovateStartup Conference. Anyone who was there, or followed the blog and/or Twitter coverage (see note 1) would have to agree there were dozens of new and interesting ideas presented.

But the bigger question is, what's next? Will anyone ever use these new technologies, let alone actually pay for them?

Personally, I believe several of the presenting companies are likely to disrupt the status quo. And at least a dozen more have very strong prospects of becoming standalone, profitable businesses.

The rest will need to be deft at creating partnerships with existing brands in order to survive. But overall, the FinovateStartup Class of 2009 was very promising indeed.

But don't take my word for it. Here are links to the articles from other bloggers and press:

Banktastic: Brad Garland and the Banktastic team have compiled the largest library of FinovateStartup content with 54 posts and videos covering the event and companies (link).

BusinessWeek (MBAblogs): Larry Chiang interviews FinovateStartup participants to create this article, What I learned at Finovate that I Could Not Learn at B-School

Celent blog: Celent's Jacob Jegher provides a summary of the major themes and concludes there was not enough emphasis on security by the companies (link)

CNET (Webware) posted a series of three articles:

• Josh Lowensohn looks at the use of PIN codes to safeguard banking and commerce (link).
• In another article, Josh looks at the important issue of trust and online personal financial management (link).
• Finally, Rafe Needleman looks at Prosper's re-launch announced at the conference (link).

Fincision: Wow. Mike Linskey gets double-gold-star, not only does he live-blog every demo, he manages to upload a picture of most. Amazing stamina! (link)

Iconoculture: Hans Eisenbeis explores the startups at Finovate in depth in a three-part series (part #1, part #2, part #3).

Investment News:  Davis D. Janowski writes about the launch of SimpliFi and Mint's new financial fitness wizard (link).

Javelin Strategy blog: Javelin's Mark Schwanhausser is looking for the perfect PFM and is left wanting (link)

Lazy Man and Money: Not at all living up to his pen name, Lazy Man manages to capture the whole show in a series of five blog entries (post #1, post #2, post #3, post #4, post #5)

MobileSlate: Blogger Eric Chan wished for more mobile companies, and concluded, "(Mobile) was definitely on the minds of all the people that I spoke to." (link)

Payments Views: Glenbrook's Allen Weinberg managed to live-blog the entire day with a paragraph on every demo. Winner of the ironman trophy (link).

PC World: Yardena Arar looked at ten startups: Syphr, LowerMyAssessement, Lending Club, Mint, ZimpleMoney, DebtGoal, Credit Karma, Mint, Syhpr, and SimpliFi (link)

Prosper Lending Review: Jessica Ward posted a dozen pre- and post-conference reviews of participating startups (link).

San Francisco Chronicle: Tom Agate primarily discusses Prosper's reopening at the show (link)

The Bankwatch: Colin Henderson writes about the demos from Lending Club, Tempo Payments and Wesabe (link)

Wall Street Journal (Wallet): Mary Pilon handicaps the field in her Wallet blog (link).

Wall Street Journal (VentureWire):  Tomio Geron writes about bringing fun into personal finance tasks and looks at the new offerings from iThryv, Mint and Cooler Inc. (link)

And for those elsewhere in the world:

• Finanzas 2.0 (Spanish) (link)
• Jean Michel Billaut: (French) (post #1, post #2)

Note:
1. See our Twitter updates consolidated into one post here. For everyone's tagged tweets, reference these search results.

Here's the transcript from my live Twittering during Finovate Startup 2009 last Tuesday (in reverse chronological order).

• It's over. Best of Show winners: BillShrink, Prosper, Silver Tail Systems, SimpliFi. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone. 8:01 PM Apr 28th from web

• 36 demos in the bag...finished 7 minutes ahead of schedule! Now to happy hour and more networking..stay tuned for Best of Show at 5:30PM 4:40 PM Apr 28th from web

• Credit Karma is launching white-label solution for financial institutions 4:38 PM Apr 28th from web

• Credit Karma launching Debt Manager. Includes product placement opportunities for lenders 4:36 PM Apr 28th from web

• Credit Karma demoing free credit score trending over time and showing consumers how to save money 4:34 PM Apr 28th from web

• Prosper is also announcing secondary trading market for Prosper-originated loans, pending final SEC approval 4:31 PM Apr 28th from web

• Prosper is opening platform to other financial institutions; first is CPS, large auto lender, who resells on Prosper 4:28 PM Apr 28th from web

• Prosper relaunching today! Nationwide for borrowers but initially just California for lenders due to regulatory issues 4:25 PM Apr 28th from web

• Rudder uses widgets to track and manage, including cool "What's Left" (after all bills paid) and Spend Meter 4:22 PM Apr 28th from web

• Rudder showing its PFM...estimates setup process of 5 to 10 minutes using account aggregation 4:17 PM Apr 28th from web

• DebtGoal.com provides hints on how to negotiate rate reductions with lenders 4:14 PM Apr 28th from web

• DebtGoal.com itemizes the amount of interest to be saved over life of debt by increasing payment amount 4:13 PM Apr 28th from web

• DebtGoal from GoalSpring launching My DebtPlan to help consumers manage and administer their debt 4:10 PM Apr 28th from web

• SmartHippo monetizing through referral fees 4:07 PM Apr 28th from web

• SmartHippo launching SmartHippo answers today! Somewhat like Yahoo answers; lenders can respond, 4:05 PM Apr 28th from web

• SmartHippo showing community-based financial shopping portal 4:02 PM Apr 28th from web
  
• SimpliFi Is different than budget-focused PFMs; SimpliFi focuses on planning; less than 5% of users have financial plans 4:00 PM Apr 28th from web

• Silver Tail Systems also includes a mitigation function that handles the fraud in real time. 3:52 PM Apr 28th from web

• Silver Tail System can even thwart man-in-middle (man-in-browser) attacks by monitoring clickstream 3:51 PM Apr 28th from web

• Silver Tail Systems demoing fraud detection, monitors threats against website; key is monitoring ALL activity 3:48 PM Apr 28th from web

• Green Sherpa is launching public beta today! 3:45 PM Apr 28th from web

• Green Sherpa showing its PFM with 3-step process: 1. Load data 2. Make plan 3.Discuss plan with someone 3:42 PM Apr 28th from web

• HomeATM showing P2P money transfer, both send and receive; also have mobile app where hardware plugs into earphone jack 3:38 PM Apr 28th from web

• HomeATM demoing patented secure PIN encryption through browser using small hardware device 3:32 PM Apr 28th from web

• Final 9 by crowd vote: HomeATM, Green Sherpa, Silver Tail Systems, Simplifi, SmartHippo, DebtGoal, Rudder, Prosper, Credit Karma 3:29 PM Apr 28th from web

• Jwaala showing Michigan First CU transaction widget in iGoogle so consumers can track banking transactions on iGoogle. 3:27 PM Apr 28th from web

• Jwaala integrated credit score history in Michigan First CU online banking; may be a first in the marketplace! #Finovatestartup093:07 PM Apr 28th from web

• Jwaala demoing Michigan First Credit Union implementation of BOB platform; showing smart search with natural language 3:05 PM Apr 28th from web

• Jwaala showing Better Online Banking (BOB) platform which integrates online banking and personal finance 3:02 PM Apr 28th from web

• ZimpleMoney showing how the platform can track all the details of a contract including documents and payments 2:58 PM Apr 28th from web

• ZimpleMoney showing financial transaction platform...loans, leases, rent and so on; landlords using, car dealers etc 2:55 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mobank allows purchase with just Mobank PIN, payment details masked, like Apple App Store; powerful concept for mcommerce 2:52 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mobank demoing purchase of airline ticket using its platform; fantastic graphics using iphone app 2:50 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mobank just launched in UK, will be launching in the USA in a few months 2:47 PM Apr 28th from web

• LowerMyAssessment in 10 states now, more coming 2:46 PM Apr 28th from web

• LowerMyAssessment shows that consumer can find hundreds in savings in a few minutes; has free value monitoring service 2:44 PM Apr 28th from web

• LowerMyAssessment.com launching company today! New tool to help users determine the value of their homes and appeal value 2:41 PM Apr 28th from web

• Aradiom doing mobile demo using iphone; showing mobile token with automatic pre-population from online banking system 2:39 PM Apr 28th from web

• Acculynk provides banks with branding message as consumers make payment via card and PIN. 2:32 PM Apr 28th from web

• Acculynk is making purchase from ShoppersChoice.com; email typo discovered by audience, give that man a prize! Success! 2:30 PM Apr 28th from web

• Acculynk is showing online PIN-based purchase at the online point of sale; demoing purchase live on stage right now 2:26 PM Apr 28th from web

• SecondMarket now lets service providers market within its platform 2:24 PM Apr 28th from web

• SecondMarket online marketplace for trading a wide variety of illiquid asset; launching service provider market today 2:23 PM Apr 28th from web

• Pertuity Direct launching $2500 dollar promotion giveaway to borrower 2:20 PM Apr 28th from web

• Pertuity Direct: Average FICO score of borrowers is 743 since January 2009 launch...prime-to-super-prime segment 2:19 PM Apr 28th from web

• Pertuity Direct has a new way to finance consumer loans, using mutual fund model to gather assets; demoing online app 2:16 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mint is moving to making tracking finance "game like", modeled after computer games, eg Wii Fit, etc. 2:12 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mint fitness 1.Know your money 2.Spend less than you earn 3.Use debt wisely 4.Invest what you save 5. Be prepared 2:10 PM Apr 28th from web

• Mint is launching Financial Fitness today...goal is to get 100% on five principals of personal finance. 2:07 PM Apr 28th from web

• IOUSOS debuted today powered by Globefunder; a semi-automated system for health care providers to make settlement offers 11:07 AM Apr 28th from web

• Home Account launching today a co-branded option today to put mortgage center on other sites 11:03 AM Apr 28th from web

• Home Account partnering with Yodlee; have signed 15 lenders so far for mortgage lead generation 11:02 AM Apr 28th from web

• Home Account showing "mortgage fitness" module to grade user's appeal to mortgage lenders, then present options 11:00 AM Apr 28th from web

• Home Account is showing how it can save average customer $174/mo...and provide best mortgage for life 10:57 AM Apr 28th from web

• Moneta offers revenue sharing with bank distribution partners; could be revenue gain for some 10:56 AM Apr 28th from web

• Moneta demoing the purchase of an airline ticket live on stage from Delta Airlines using Moneta pay option...worked! 10:52 AM Apr 28th from web

• Moneta showing alternative payment system, have signed top-10 bank, will begin rolling out to its customers this summer 10:50 AM Apr 28th from web

• Cooler has contextual ad network that provides links to companies and products to reduce and neutralize carbon use. 10:47 AM Apr 28th from web

• Cooler is first way to see ENTIRE carbon footprint from all you do and buy...has 10-month timeline, can compare to peers 10:45 AM Apr 28th from web

• Cooler showing how users can calculate carbon footprints from their financial data, already online,showing link to Wesabe 10:44 AM Apr 28th from web

• Can People Capital's Human Capital Score disrupt student lending? Will be interesting to follow. 10:40 AM Apr 28th from web

• People Capital shows better way to evaluate students than FICO.uses where going to school,SAT,GPA,etc Human Capital Score 10:39 AM Apr 28th from web

• PeopleCapital is focusing on peer-to-peer lending in student loans; platform is 80% complete 10:37 AM Apr 28th from web

• Micronotes system provides revenue potential to banks while providing unique discounts for customers, if they opt in 10:33 AM Apr 28th from web

• Micronotes connects consumer products to online bills; provides realtime discounts on bills paid if they accept mkt offer 10:31 AM Apr 28th from web

• BillShrink doing partnership with CBS co-brand...closing "shrinkage is good" 10:26 AM Apr 28th from web

• BillShrink's gas savings module shows map of where low-cost gas stations are located; wireless module shows coverage map 10:24 AM Apr 28th from web

• BillShrink showing personal and detailed analysis of 3 verticals: credit cards, wireless carriers and gas stations 10:23 AM Apr 28th from web

• Kapitall showing how to trade using drag and drop from the desktop; company in private beta...public beta this summer 10:18 AM Apr 28th from web

• Kapitall debuting new interface...very different from typical financial services..designers from Apple/gaming industry 10:14 AM Apr 28th from web

• KnowBeforeYouApply launching mortgage offers today; lead gen platform with real-time rates based on your credit score 10:11 AM Apr 28th from web

• KnowBeforeYouApply from Centrro provides credit grade then shows individual offers 10:10 AM Apr 28th from web

• Wesabe is announcing first client for its white-label program Delta Community Credit Union, Georgia's largest CU 9:43 AM Apr 28th from web

• Wesabe demoing new user interface..very modern look; launching new native iPhone app today; can signup for acct on app 9:41 AM Apr 28th from web

• Wesabe launched 2.5 years ago, can Twitter transactions into your PFM account 9:39 AM Apr 28th from web

• Tempo Payments adding rewards to the card, can be cash back or other options; 80 to 90% of apps approved real-time 9:35 AM Apr 28th from web

• Tempo Payments showing new decoupled debit card, first step, download your image to put on the card..full card face..nice 9:32 AM Apr 28th from web

• Lending Club is adding more tools to help investors see how they are doing in ROI..can compare to the entire community 9:30 AM Apr 28th from web

• Lending Club says that its been able to get 75% of its late loans to current 9:28 AM Apr 28th from web

• Lending Club's secondary market has had US$2 million in trading volume, average time to trade is just 2 days 9:27 AM Apr 28th from web

• Lending Club launched self-directed IRA option several weeks ago for investors.. 9:26 AM Apr 28th from web

• iThryv built incentive module into the platform so FI clients can add rewards; includes content management 9:22 AM Apr 28th from web

• iThryv "online banking for kids and young adults" includes financial literacy...partnering with iPay for bill pay 9:20 AM Apr 28th from web

• MoneyStrands running a clever contest from the stage...search their website and Twitter the answer to win $100 9:14 AM Apr 28th from web

• MoneyStrands has v2 iphone app expected to be in App Store in a week or two 9:13 AM Apr 28th from web

• MoneyStrands includes PDF report option to print/save reports....widgets can be added to page to track feeds/news 9:12 AM Apr 28th from web

• Strands PFM shows what's just happened with your finances across the top...handy way to drill into what's important now 9:08 AM Apr 28th from web

• ReceivablesExchange showing first online marketplace for buying/selling accounts receivables..avg invoice size = $50k 8:59 AM Apr 28th from web

• CircleUp's SmartPay system has messaging center to track/communicate with the group..can be used on Facebook, AOL, widget 8:54 AM Apr 28th from web

• CircleUp is demoing a system to collect money from groups...such as a kid's soccer team collecting for pizza party.Useful 8:50 AM Apr 28th from web

• kaChing will be offering mirrored investing that will allow you to automatically trade like who you are following 8:47 AM Apr 28th from web

• kaChing has over 300,000 registered investors.only 25,000 with positive returns in 2008..grades investors by investor IQ 8:44 AM Apr 28th from web

• At Expensify you can just email your receipt to receipts@expensify.com to add to your account...like Tripit.com 8:38 AM Apr 28th from web

• Finovatestartup09 has begun....first demo is from Expensify.8:34 AM Apr 28th from web

After a wonderful day in San Francisco featuring awesome demos from 56 startups, four emerged as FinovateStartup Best of Show winners. 

All attendees, except for the startups themselves, received a ballot which allows them to rate each demo on a scale of one to six. At the end of the final demo session, the ballots are tallied and the presenters ranked based on their average score. A majority of attendees completed a ballot, so it's a good indicator of the group consensus.

It was a tight race, but the peoples' choice today are as follows (in alphabetic order). Congratulations!

               BillShrink                                                            Prosper

Silver Tail Systems                                                    SimpliFi

There's good news in peer-to-peer lending today as Prosper reopened for business. The announcement was timed around its appearance at FinovateStartup today.

The company is adding a loan-resale component called Open Market (see diagram below). Open Market loans are initiated by other financial institutions, then resold on the Prosper platform. Open Market loans must have been originated by Prosper-vetted financial institutions, and be current and have had at least three on-time payments.

We'll look deeper at the new Prosper in coming weeks; for more coverage now, check out articles today at The Wall Street Journal, CNET and the San Francisco Chronicle. 

How Open Market lending works

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.

Every demo at our FinovateStartup and Finovate conference is videotaped and eventually uploaded to the conference website to be viewed later. Typically, the edited videos are available about a month after the conference.

But this year, we will webcast the conference in its entirety live. If you can't make it to San Francisco next week because of time or budget issues, the webcast is a lower-cost option that provides real-time access to the new demos. 

The webcast will include more than 5 hours of live demos beginning Tuesday morning April 28 at 8:30 AM Pacific and ending before 5 PM. See our previous post for a list of the 57 demoing companies. The exact schedule will be sent to you along with instructions for logging in. To help follow the action, webcast registrants will also receive the 70-page PDF file that profiles all 57 participating startups.

Register online here. Cost is US$495 per computer connecting to the webcast. Note: Online Banking Report subscribers and alumni of past Finovate and FinovateStartup conferences receive a substantial discount on the registration fee (email info@netbanker.com or call 206.517.5021 to obtain your customer discount code).

Press, analysts, and banking industry bloggers may request complimentary webcast access by emailing jim@netbanker.com.   

While there is still plenty of bad economic news, positive reports are starting to trickle in. Hopefully by this time next year, the Great Recession will be in the rear-view mirror.

Our bit of optimistic news is the outstanding turnout for our second annual FinovateStartup conference taking place April 28. Thanks to the creativity, energy, and sheer willpower of fintech entrepreneurs worldwide (note 1), we have 57 startups participating this year compared to 39 in 2008. And we've just surpassed last year's event registration total ensuring that the auditorium will be buzzing with an audience ready to feed on all those new ideas.

And more important than raw attendance numbers, is the fact that subjects being tackled this year are much bigger and potentially more disruptive than last. It's almost mind-boggling when I look at the list of demos we'll see in a single day (note 2): 

• A bank optimized entirely around the mobile channel
• A new approach to decoupled debit
• Several approaches to dramatically lowering transaction costs at
  the online point of sale by bypassing Visa and MasterCard
• A mutual fund created to invest in unsecured personal loans
  originated online in a social environment
• New peer-to-peer services supporting borrowing and payments
• The integration of financial management tools with payments accounts
• Platforms that allow financial institutions to customize their own
  financial offerings around market segments and/or personal finance needs
• New, transparent marketplaces for buying and selling debt instruments in
  large quantities ($ billions potentially)

We truly appreciate the show of support in a trying year and even now are plotting ways to get even more startups on stage next year. For a complete list of startup demos, see our Quick Guide.

If you haven't registered yet, this is the last week to do so and save $100 over the last-minute price.  

Notes:
1. See our previous post, "Why Financial Technology Remains Important"
2. It's a single-track event, so you'll be able to see all 36 demos. The secret, each lasts no more than seven minutes.

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

We are pleased to announce four more companies to the Finovate Startup conference lineup. The total number of demoing companies now stands at 52, 13 more than last year (see logos below; company descriptions here). Startups have just a few more days to apply (see note 1), so we'll be announcing the final lineup shortly.

Here are the latest additions:

• BudgetPulse, an online personal financial management service
• Mozo, a financial services comparison engine out of Australia
• SeerGate, a startup working on popularizing online debit payments
• Tempo Payments, looking to make decoupled debit a household word
  

About FinovateStartup2009
The second annual FinovateStartup conference will be held April 28 in San Francisco. At the event, select startups in financial services technology have six minutes to demo their latest and greatest to execs and investors in banking and financial technology. The one-day event is organized by the publisher of Netbanker and Online Banking Report.

Early-bird deadline: You have until Tuesday, March 31, to reserve a seat at the early-bird price (here).

Notes:
1. Financial services technology companies should contact Eric Mattson before March 31 to participate in FinovateStartup (eric@netbanker.com, main office: 206.517.5021).

The Garland Group's banking community arm, Banktastic, has provided thorough coverage of Finovate and FinovateStartup events (note 1). This year they are way out in front, posting video interviews with Finovate Startup 2009 participants in advance of the upcoming April 28 conference (see note 1).

So far Banktastic has posted a half-dozen 9- to 10-minute video interviews here (note 2) with more to come. Here are the interviews in reverse chronological order: 

• Ncore Systems CEO Nicholas See
• ZimpleMoney ZEO Steven Rabago
• BillShrink CEO Peter Pham
• iThryv CEO Scott Klososky
• DebtGoal (GoalSpring) founder Steve Richmond
• CalendarBudget co-founder Eric Poulin

Screenshot of Banktastic interview with ZimpleMoney founder Steven Rabago (link, 25 March 2009)

Notes:
1. Thanks to the Banktastic team: Brad Garland, Lisa Randolph and Mark McSpadden.
2. You can still save $100 by registering for FinovateStartup (here) by the end of March. 
3. Banktastic's interviews are done via webcam, with the image of both participants superimposed over screenshots/demos from the company's websites (see above). Interviewer Brad Garland controls the website views. 

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. 

The financial services startup community will be out in force April 28 at our second annual Finovate Startup conference.

The nine new companies below, along with the 39 participants announced two weeks ago, plus several we can't yet name, bring the total to 50 startups. That's eleven more than last year! We can now say that we'll have the largest group of financial services startups ever assembled in one place.

Don't miss your opportunity to talk to the companies that will help change the financial services landscape in the coming years. Join the many bank, credit union, and technology execs in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 28, for a thought-provoking and exciting day (see note 1).

The early-bird deadline ends Friday, so register now for just $795. Current Online Banking Report subscribers can save even more. Look on the back page of the most recent issue, or email info@netbanker.com for your customer discount code. 

Here are the latest additions to the conference (note 2):

• AlphaClone           
• CircleUp
• HomeATM
• LendingKarma
• OurCashFlow
• Pennyminder
• People Capital
• ThreatMetrix
• WeSeed

Notes:
1.  And if you can come early, don't forget BarCampBankSF2, happening Saturday and Sunday, April 25/26 (previous post). 

2. Are you a startup interested in participating? Contact Eric Mattson.

3. Members of the media, including financial industry bloggers, should request a press pass here .

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

One month ago we announced the 2009 version of our Finovate Startup Conference. Since then, we've been busy talking to FinTech startups from around the world. We are glad (and a bit relieved) to announce that we already have 35 committed to demo at the event. There is still an enormous amount of activity and energy in the banking and financial technology sector (note 1).

We are several months out from the deadline, so we expect in excess of 50 startups, along with several hundred bankers, investors and other industry execs to convene April 28 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center (note 2).

While last year's FinovateStartup was dominated by social-media plays (see logos below), this year we have more diversity, with companies from the following categories:

• Alt payments
• Financial shopping/comparison tools
• Investment management/tools
• Mobile banking & payments
• iPhone/Android applications, personal financial management/tools
• Peer-to-peer lending
• Personal credit management tools
• Other technologies

Participating companies will be named beginning Feb. 1, but you can save by reserving a ticket now.

Super-early-bird prices that are easy on the budget
We've tried to make the conference as affordable as possible recognizing that travel and conference budgets are under constraints. You still have nine days left to snag super-early-bird tickets for $695. Current Online Banking Report subscribers, including anyone in the same company as an existing subscriber, can grab tickets for even less, just $445 each until Jan. 31 (note 3).

Attendees may register here. More information on the event is here.

FinTech companies interested in participating/demoing should email Eric Mattson .

FinovateStartup 2008 presenters (videos of all 2008 demos are here)

Notes:
1. See our post, "Why financial technology still matters," here.
2. The venue is about two miles south of the San Francisco financial district.
3. If you don't know if your company subscribes to Online Banking Report, email info@netbanker.com to find out. If qualified, we'll email your subscriber discount code to you.

We know 2009 promises to be a challenge, but if history is any judge, more lasting innovations will be put in place next year than any year this century. Necessity truly is the mother of invention, especially for startups. 

Next year, we will again showcase the best and brightest ideas at our Finovate conferences:

Finovate Startup:
San Francisco - 28 April 2009
The conference features the launch of new companies in financial tech, as well as young companies launching major new products and features. Last year, we had 40 startups participate (see first screenshot below), and this year we expect even more (see demos from 2008).

Finovate 2009: 
New York City - 29 Sept. 2009
We head to NYC for the third year in a row to showcase the best of 2009 in the online and mobile space. Company size is irrelevant; it's all about what's new and what's hot (see demos from 2008, 2007).

Attend a Finovate conference in 2009
About 700 of the most innovative execs in banking, finance and technology attended a Finovate event in 2008. The events are fast-paced, just a single day, and allow you to network with the presenting execs along with the decision makers in the audience. Both attendees and presenters love the format.

If you want to join the excitement, you can sign up up now at deeply discounted prices. Tickets are transferable, and refundable, so the risk is low. If you want to bring your entire team, email Eric Mattson, eric@netbanker.com, for a team price.  

Present in 2009: FinTech startups
If you have a young company involved in the online or mobile finance area, there is no reason not to be at FinovateStartup. This year, we are opening the floor to any qualifying startup. So, for the price of a single ticket, you are ensured a table at the event to show off your company and a chance to demo on stage (see previous FinovateStartup demos). 

The earlier you apply, the more benefits you receive. Please check out the Presenters page or email to eric@netbanker.com.

Present in 2009: other FinTech companies
At Finovate2009 in NYC, we'll put the best two dozen ideas on stage regardless of the size or location of the company. Last year, we had popular demos from large companies including Intuit and CheckFree/Fiserv as well as startups, Mint, Credit Karma, NeoSaej and others (see previous demos from Oct. 2008 and Oct. 2007).

If you have a dynamite new product and are interested in launching it at Finovate NYC, please email eric@netbanker.com or check out the presenters page.

Press
Last year, more than 50 financial, technology and personal finance press and analysts attended the Finovate conferences. If you'd like a press pass for either event, please email me at jim@netbanker.com.

Presenters at FinovateStartup 2008

Presenters at Finovate 2008

As conference host, I haven't quite recovered from the whirlwind of activity yesterday. I'll post a final conference wrapup tomorrow, but I wanted to get in a quick update with the Finovate 2008 Best of Show winners. 

We had planned to award it to the top three, but there were four companies in a virtual tie at the top (note 1), so we named four winners this year.

In alphabetic order, the winners:

• CheckFree which demonstrated its new online banking platform packed with new features
• Credit Karma which showed several new features including a tool allowing "what-if" calculations with your credit file
• Mint which announced its move out of beta and demo'd several new investment management functions
• Neosaej which showed its unique MoneyAisle real-time, reverse-deposit auction service

Congratulations to these four companies and to everyone else who made the day so interesting.

About the voting
All attendees not affiliated with the presenters rated each demo on a scale of one to six. The ballots were turned in at the end of the final demo session. Approximately 70% of eligible voters turned in complete ballots.

Note:
The companies didn't finish with the same average scores, but rounding to the nearest tenth created a four-way tie.

Drum roll, please. Our final presenter today is Peter Pham, CEO of BillShrink.

Menlo Park, CA-based BillShrink launched its new service in July.

The service is designed to help consumers find the best deal in various categories. Today they showed the credit card selector. The service provides detailed breakdowns of fees and rewards to allow consumers to compare across more than 200 cards in the market.

Launching today is MyAccounts which allows users to track their accounts more easily.

BillShrink also tracks wireless carriers and allows users to find the best mobile phone deals.  

BillShrink announced an $8 million dollar funding today.

Next up is Digital Insight, now part of Intuit. Karen Van Kirk, director of small business solutions, will conduct the demo.

Calabasas, CA-based Digital Insight will be demonstrating its Small Business Finance Works online banking platform.

FinanceWorks has all the same functionality of Quicken Online. The small business version has been designed to be simple and easy to use for the small business manager. The accounts receivable function includes integrated email capabilities to send personalized payment reminders on the fly.

The service includes integrated remote deposit-capture capabilities.

The last of our mobile demos is from Carlo Cardilli, SVP business development & sales, at mFoundry. 

mFoundry is a mobile banking provider founded in 2004. The San Francisco-based company has worked with Citibank among others.

What's New
mFoundry just launched the second native banking app, available through the Apple App Store. The demo showed a fictitious bank, but the bank that launched the app with mFoundry is IBC.

The iPhone app has full online banking and payments capabilities. It also has an ATM/branch finder that uses the location-based or GPS capabilities in the iPhone.

The second-to-last presenter today is Thrive from Loudwater Labs. CEO Avi Karnani will be conducting the demo.

New York City-based Thrive is the latest entry in the online personal finance market.

What's New
Thrive is making its official debut today at Finovate. They use a red light/green light system so it's easy to see what needs attention quickly.

Thrive calculates a financial health score from the user's data. Then Thrive shows users specifically how they can improve their score. The recommendations show financial institution products that can be used to achieve cost savings (i.e., product placements such as Mint).

On average they are recommending $1500 worth of savings for users.

Thrive has a wizard to help you see how much house you can afford.

Thrive today is announcing a partnership with Credit.com to allow users to track their credit score over time and improve it.

Mint CEO & Founder Aaron Patzer will be presenting next. 

Online personal finance provider Mint launched a year ago and won a Best of Show award at our first Finovate conference in 2007.

What's new
Mint moves out of beta today, with 500,000 users. Their sign-up rate has more than doubled in the past 3 weeks.

Today they launched new investment tracking functionality that allows Mint users to track their accounts at more than 1000 investment companies, mutual funds, and retirement services.

A unique aspect of its investment tracking is the ability to see the value of the account vs. the cost basis.

Mint has an IRA Rollover Advisor where they are partnering with Fidelity, Scottrade, E*Trade, and Schwab.

Results: 10% of users have changed investment behavior and 50% of users have changed their spending behavior by using Mint.

Next we have Awele Ndili, CEO of mShift.

Founded in 1999, mShift is one of the oldest mobile banking providers and now supports 120 clients.

Today, mShift is showing its new mobile business banking solution with full payment capabilities.

Active Messaging System was also demo'd. It's a new multi-channel alert system that enables alerts to text, voice, email or fax.

At the halfway point of the afternoon session, Peter Hazlehurst, SVP of products at Yodlee, will demonstrate.

Yodlee introduced its personal finance platform eight years ago.

Yodlee has 15 million registered users across all of its clients.

Today they are showing Pay Today, an expedited payment system that works in partnership with Western Union. They will be working with 5 of the 7 largest credit card issuers by year-end. Payment capabilities now tie together personal finance with payments, so users can take action to avoid fees or improve their returns.

All the capabilities are available through their software developers kit.

Next up is MoneyAisle from NeoSaej. Mukesh Chatter, president & CEO, will demonstrate.

The Burlington, MA-based company launched its auction-based deposit service this summer.

MoneyAisle demonstrated a reverse auction for a CD with a winning bid of 4% APY by Commerce State Bank. The company emphasized that it's fully transparent with no ads, and the consumer can choose at the end whether they want to accept the bid and purchase the deposit.

CheckFree is up next. Steve Shaw, director of strategic marketing, will demonstrate this afternoon.

CheckFree, now a division of Fiserv, will be showing its Online Advantage online banking platform. CheckFree presented at the first Finovate a year ago.

What's new
Online Advantage will be introduced later this year. The platform includes integrated billing statement views and payments.

The service also allows for integrated remote-deposit capture, so customers can deposit paper checks using a scanner.

The next presenter is Kenneth Lin, CEO of Credit Karma and Nichole Mustard.

Credit Karma has developed an ad-supported, free credit-report service that launched earlier this year. The company first showed its service at our Finovate Startup conference in April.

What's new
Credit Karma showed credit score trends by Internet service provider, with Gmail users leading the pack.

Credit Karma today is introducing a credit card simulator, which lets you run what-ifs on what would happen to your score if certain things happened. For instance, it shows that if you applied for a new credit card, the example score would drop 15 points. If a late payment occurred, it would drop more than 50. 

The first demo of the afternoon is from George Favvas, co-founder and CEO of SmartHippo.

SmartHippo is a mortgage-loan marketplace that combines user-generated content with rate information scraped by SmartHippo bots, and received directly from lenders themselves. SmartHippo was a presenter in Finovate Startup last April.

SmartHippo is launching a new rate engine later this month that has more than 200 lenders. They are concentrating on mortgages today, but are looking at other verticals in the future.

The final demo of the morning is from Michael Solomon, founder of Loanio.

Loanio, which launched Oct. 1, is the third person-to-person loan marketplace to open in the United States. It provided a sneak peek of its platform at Finovate Startup in April '08.  

Loanio believes this is a great time to launch a P2P lending company. Both borrowers and investors are looking for alternatives.

Solomon walked the audience through the Loanio loan application process -- emphasizing the option to have a co-borrower, a first for a U.S. P2P lender -- and the optional Platinum loan listing, which includes a host of verifications to give lenders more assurance the borrower is being truthful on the application.

Our second-to-last demo of the morning is MyMoney from Fiserv's Galaxy unit. Brian Bellhorn, director of marketing, will conduct the demo.

MyMoney is an application that allows customers to view their bank account balance and transaction info within their Facebook account.

The MyMoney application was launched earlier this year and was initially available to Galaxy customers only. Now the service is available for any Fiserv customer. It's an extremely affordable option.

The MyMoney program includes an online enrollment option. It helps financial institutions find new customers on Facebook. It also encourages word of mouth, by making it easy for users to tell their friends about the program.

They closed the demo by saying that during their 7-minute demo, 1200 more people will have signed up for Facebook. Clever.

The next demo is Rate Surfer, a new credit card management program from My Best Interest. CEO Mitch Calderwood and Jackie Myers, director of communications, will make the presentation.

Rate Surfer is an easy-to-use software program designed to help users manage their credit cards and save money. The company says you can be up-and-running in just five minutes.

Rate Surfer uses account-aggregation technology to download balance and credit-limit information on each of the user's credit cards. Their balance-transfer page makes it easy to see where to transfer balances, and most importantly, the transfer can actually be made through Rate Surfer.

The software includes a suite of alerts via email and SMS. It aggregates the card info and can send an alert, for example, when aggregate balances exceed a certain point.

Next, we have Inner8 on stage with a demo from CEO Doug Doyle and Director of Product Sam Kasle.

Inner8 will be demo'ing an innovative approach for investing.

Inner8 is one of the youngest companies on stage, having launched the private beta just a few weeks ago. They call themselves the "match.com" of investing. They can match people to people, people to specific stocks, or even market conditions to specific stocks.

Next up is another alum of Finovate Startup, Matt Iverson, CEO of Boulevard R.

Boulevard R helps consumers with longer-term financial planning issues such as retirement planning.

Boulevard R helps users create a financial plan online using a 3-step process. The site allows users to work with a certified financial planner. They also have an integration with Advanta credit cards.

Users can go back and use the dashboard to see the plan they've produced and alter any of the inputs. They also have a "what if" key to run different planning scenarios.

Next up is Mitchell Savage, EVP of Vidoop. Vidoop also appeared on stage at our Finovate Startup conference in April as Confident Technologies.

Vidoop provides solutions for login authentication and password management.

Vidoop showed an out-of-band authentication solution where during login the server calls the customer via telephone, and the user must either press # or, if preferred, enter a 4-digit PIN code to be authenticated via phone.

They also showed their visual approach, a "secret hidden in plain view," in production at Charles Schwab.

Banks can use the system free-of-charge if they allow some of the visual images to contain product placements. On the demo, a Smart Car was shown as one of the visual image choices.

At the halfway point of the morning demo session, we have David Kansas, president of FiLife. FiLife makes its first Finovate appearance today.

FiLife is a joint venture between IAC and Dow Jones, now owned by News Corp. The company launched the personal finance website last year with a blog, and added personal financial management features in June 2008.

FiLife is making the first public presentation of its capabilities today at Finovate. The website allows users either to find other "smart users," or to read advice and ask questions from "friendly gurus."

What's new
FiLife is introducing a series of product pickers, starting with credit cards. A unique visual display shows the different product choices. They also have attribute sliders, similar to Kayak, to narrow down the choices.

Kansas also demonstrated the "stacker" approach to helping users figure out how they stack up with their peers.

Next up is Sybase 365, with a demo from Cameron Franks, director of mCommerce America and Carroll Cucarola, technical account manager.

In its first appearance at Finovate, Sybase will show innovations from their mobile suite for banking and payments.

Sybase showed the broad capabilities of its mobile suite including the intelligent SMS capability that uses natural language syntax so users can determine the command to text a request to the bank, e.g., "what's my balance" or "balance."

The fourth presenter this morning is Jordy Berson, group product manager at Check Point Software Technologies.

Check Point is a new Finovate presenter and will demo its security solution for safer online banking.

Check Point is showing their ZoneAlarm ForceField, which, when installed on users' machines, warns them if they go to a phishing site; even more important, it keeps malicious programs from being accidentally downloaded during Web surfing. It uses a virtual sandbox to protect Web sessions even if users' machines already contain malicious software.

The next presenter is Gabe Griego, VP marketing at Wesabe. 

Wesabe was the first online personal finance company to integrate social aspects into its service. The Silicon Valley company launched in late 2006 and appeared at Finovate Startup in April.

What's new
Wesabe has added new graphing capabilities to easier compare your personal data with the community. You can also compare spending at individual merchants based on how the user has rated the merchant: fan vs. user vs. captive.

Next up, one of the newest companies at Finovate, WeSeed. The demo will be shown by Jennifer Openshaw, president/co-founder and Steve Simoncic, creative director. 

WeSeed is an investment site targeted for beginning or novice investors. Its motto is "investing for the rest of us." They are signing up beta testers now.

Finovate 2008 kicks off with a demo of Intuit's Quicken Online. The presenter is Todd Stanley VP/general manager of Quicken Online and Barron Ernst, product manager.

Quicken Online, the online version of the popular desktop personal finance manager, was launched in January 2008. One notable difference between Intuit's strategy and other online PFMs, is that Quicken Online costs $3/mo. The vast majority of competitors are ad supported and free of charge.

What's new
Intuit is removing the fee from Quicken Online; it is now free of charge, which means, of the major online personal finance companies, only Mvelopes/Finicity charges a fee.

The new user interface will be available Oct. 30.

Introducing more mobile integration.

Much of this week's NetBanker coverage will focus on our annual financial innovations showcase in New York City, Finovate 2008. On Tuesday, we'll post updates on all 24 presenting companies (list here). Wednesday we'll announce the official Best of Show winners, as voted on by the nearly 400 attendees (see note).

We'd like to thank the presenters shown above and our four sponsors, Qualcomm's  Firethorn, Microsoft's MSN Money, RBC Venture Partners, and the law firm Chambliss, Bahner, & Stophel, who also sponsored Finovate Startup.  

But most of all, we applaud our  attendees for continuing their focus on new technology and creative thinking during trying economic times.

Note: There are still a handful of seats remaining, if you'd like to attend click here.

As noted here last week, Loanio launched its much anticipated peer-to-peer lending exchange Oct. 1.
And we are lucky that founder Michael Solomon has agreed to take the stage this Tuesday at Finovate to show everyone the results of his nearly two-year development effort.

The reason for the last-minute addition is that another P2P lender planning to launch at Finovate, Pertuity Direct, has delayed its grand opening to ensure that regulators are comfortable with its business. Given recent worldwide events, that's understandable. We look forward to seeing its demo at Finovate 2009.

There are still a few seats remaining at the nearly sold-out event (registration is here). The complete lineup is listed here.

Putting on a conference is nerve wracking in the best of times, but in this environment, it's doubly so. So we are especially pleased to announce that we are within a dozen or so seats of selling out the Crowne Plaza ballroom for Finovate 2008 next week. Register here if you'd like to join us. 

As we argued last week (here), current industry problems make placing the correct technology bets even more important. Granted, there may be less revenue during the next few years, but the show will go on. Fundamentally, there is still as much demand for financial services today as a year ago.

To meet that demand, financial institutions will increasingly look towards lower-cost, non-branch alternatives. And 24 of the best will be demo'ing Oct. 14 at Finovate (see here for list):

With all the bad financial news circling the globe, you may not have been thinking about innovations in financial technology. While that's understandable, this is not the time to ignore the fundamental changes occurring in the consumer marketplace (see below).

Yes, we are biased towards new technology, but with registrations to our upcoming Finovate Conference running 75% ahead of last year, there seems to be plenty of people who agree. By the way, this is the last day to save $100 on your ticket (register here) and ensure your ring-side seat on Oct. 14 to see these 24 inventive financial companies showcase their latest improvements.

But let's address the elephant in the room. Is this the time to be concerned about new bank tech products, or is it time to just hold on and ride out the storm? While good arguments can be made on either side of that issue, here are two interesting examples that made bold bets on online technology in the middle of Internet gloom and doom: 

ING Direct, launched during the depths of the dot-com bust (Sep 2000), is on track to become a top-10 U.S. bank by the end of the decade (note 1)

PayPal, also launched right before the low point (Nov. 1999), now has more customers that any other financial-services provider in the world other than the payments gateways themselves (Visa, MasterCard)

Who will be the ING Directs and PayPals coming out of the current crisis? Your guess is as good as mine, but my vote goes to the companies that do the best marrying online services with mobile delivery.

Why financial technology remains important
There's no doubt that budgets will contract in 2009 and beyond. But new technology usually holds the promise of cutting costs or at least making it easier to serve more customers without adding resources. Here are the trends you cannot afford to ignore in your 2009/2010 plans:   

1. Always-connected mobile consumer: Consumer services continue to move online as ubiquitous broadband and cellphone connectivity keeps most banking households connected 24/7 at home, work, and now with mobile, everywhere. Apple's iPhone, and the next generation of competitive devices, are changing the game in mobile. There are already more than twice as many mobile phones in the world as there are credit cards (note 2). And location-based technology allows users to interact with merchants and payment providers in new and potentially more secure ways.

Implication: Mobile services today are about where the Internet was in 1996. And globally, mobile banking and payments will be even more important than online banking and payments. 

2. Over-extended consumers seek guidance: Just as millions of amateur stock traders learned a harsh lesson about risk vs. return in 1999/2000, tens of millions of consumers will are learning the downside of extensive debt and leverage in 2008+.

Implication: This is a great time to get consumers hooked on tools that help them manage their spending, savings, and debt. And virtually all the activity will take place online with mobile support.

3. Branch exodus intensifies: The U.S. over-investment in branches will come to a screeching halt in 2009. With several of the big branch builders, especially WaMu, being acquired, there will be less of a competitive imperative, not to mention less capital, to build fancy new branches on every street corner. Some of the savings will be funneled into alternative delivery. Even the fanciest website can be built today with the fraction of the cost of a single urban branch.

Implication: Increasingly, financial institutions large and small will compete online.

4. Online research is the norm: According to a 2007 study published in November by the National Association of Realtors, 84% of households used the Internet in their search for a house. And in a dramatic change compared to ten years ago, online sources were nearly as important as humans in locating the house that was ultimately purchased (29% found it online first vs. 34% who said their agent told them about it). Similar numbers are reported for autos and other big tickets items.

Implication: A good web presence is crucial to landing new customers.

Note:
1. Industry consolidation is helping them move up the ranks, they jumped two spots in the past week alone.

2. Source, Communities Dominate Brands blog, 8 Jan 2007 (with updates)

With three weeks remaining before Finovate NYC, the final company in the demo lineup is stepping out of stealth mode and announcing its participation in our second annual new-products conference. See the full list here.

Thrive will be launching its entry in the online personal finance marketplace, JustThrive.com, at Finovate on Oct. 14. The company hopes to differentiate itself with more advanced financial planning tools while still remaining free. Founder and CEO is Avi Karnani; Marc Matsumoto is CMO.  

Currently, the service is in closed beta testing, but Thrive recently updated its homepage with a timely message playing off last week's financial debacle (screenshot below). 

We had a chance to meet with the NYC-based founders earlier this year and were impressed how they'd studied the current players and were aiming to leapfrog the competition. However, there's been significant innovation in the space this year, and they enter a crowded field (more on that tomorrow).

At this point, I can't say anything more specific about Thrive's plans, but after it becomes publicly available we'll be back with a full analysis. 

Finovate takes place four weeks from today (Oct. 14), and we've already surpassed last year's attendee total. Luckily, we booked a bigger space, so there will be more bankers and tech execs to network with and everyone in the audience will have a seat at a table to park that laptop, Blackberry, iPhone, or whatever.

But the space isn't unlimited and if we continue the sign-up pace of the past few weeks we'll sell out well before Oct. 14. So, don't wait too long, register here (see note 1).  

When we announced the Finovate lineup, there were three companies that chose to remain secret. Two of those are now being named (note 2):

• Rate Surfer which participated in the TechCrunch50 DemoPit last week (post here)
• MyMoney from Fiserv's Galaxy unit, a Facebook application that allows users to check their bank balance and transactions from within their Facebook account (post here)

Note:
1. Clients with annual subscriptions to our All-Access Online Banking Report are eligible for a conference discount; email info@netbanker.com for your client discount code.

2. The 24th company is in stealth mode and will be revealed on or very near the conference on Oct. 14.

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.

The evaluation process for presenters at our second annual Finovate Conference is just about complete. Twenty-four leaders in banking and technology will gather in New York City on Oct. 14 to demo their latest new products and technologies.

Although we are not quite prepared to announce the final lineup, you can get a sense of the agenda from the innovators who presented at our past two Finovate conferences here and here.

If you are planning on attending the event this fall, you can save $200 by registering before the end of July at the discounted price of $895. Tickets are transferable, so even if you haven't decided who'll attend, you can still lock in savings now. The registration page is here.

Presenters at FinovateStartup (April 2008)

Full-length videos from the 40 presenters
(see note 1) at FinovateStartup are now available  at our conference website (see VaultStreet example below). They are free of charge.

The no-Powerpoint, five-minute demos are hosted on our servers, so you should be able to access them from work. Both QuickTime and Windows Media formats are available. Choose QuickTime if you'd like to watch it in a bigger screen. 

Finovate 2008
Our second annual Finovate Conference will be held in just three months: Oct. 14 in New York City. We are finalizing the presenter lineup now, and it's shaping up to be a winner with a great cross-section of newer companies mixed in with established names launching new products this fall. You can save $200 by registering before the end of July.

Note:
1. There are demos posted from 37 presenters. Two of the presenters, Guardian Analytics and Wonga, displayed confidential screenshots during their demo so they have elected not to show them online. And, unfortunately, Buxfer had a server problem during their demo, so we were not able to capture it on video.

Our second annual financial innovations conference, Finovate 2008: Experience the Future of Finance, will take place Oct. 14 in mid-town Manhattan. Like the sold-out event last year, 20 innovative financial tech companies will demonstrate their latest products and technologies. Each company exec has seven minutes in front of the audience, and is then available at a dedicated demo station for 90+ minutes of one-on-one discussions. 

While we won't be releasing presenter names for some time, you can get a taste of the content by reviewing our blog coverage (here) and videos from Finovate 2007 (here). Last year, the audience selected Mint, Mortgage Marvel from Mortgagebot, and Prosper as Best of Show. For the entire list of 2007 presenters, see our blog post here.

Nomination process for presenters
Presenter slots are by invitation only. But since we don't (yet) know every cool financial services company on the planet, we're also taking nominations (yes, you can nominate yourself). The two main selection criteria are simple. The product/service/technology must be:

• highly innovative
• related to financial services (either direct-to-consumer, or delivered through financial services companies)

If you are interested, tell us how you will impress an audience of banking execs, reporters from the major dailies, top industry analysts and bloggers, VCs and a variety of "new product folks" from major tech companies. Please contact my colleague and conference director Eric Mattson <mattson@netbanker.com> for more information on becoming a presenter. 

Attendees, save $350 by registering before May 31
The super-early-bird price ends in three days. So take a moment to lock in your $350 savings on Finovate admission (price = $745). We have a liberal cancellation policy (note 1) if your plans change, so register here before prices go up.

Press, analysts, and bloggers
Subject to space limitations in NYC, we are again inviting press and industry analysts and bloggers to attend at no cost. So get your press requests in early. Contact OBR/Netbanker editor Jim Bruene <jim@netbanker.com> to request a press pass. For bloggers, please detail your reach in the financial and/or tech industries.  

Note:

1. Cancellation policy: At any time prior to the day of the show, you may transfer your ticket to someone else or roll it over to a 2009 Finovate event. Alternatively, you may elect to receive a refund of the full amount through the end of July; 75% through Aug. 31; 50% through Sept. 30; and 25% up until two days before the event, in this case, by midnight PST Oct. 11.

It takes enormous concentration to listen, much less write about, 40 companies in a single day. So thanks  much to Erin, Scott, Ron, Brad, Matt, Jeff, Corey, Christophe and the others who tirelessly spent their day bringing the event to life through their blogs, videos, and photos (links below).

Blog coverage:

• For a rundown of each company and its demo, see:
  -- a thorough post in Payments News by Scott Loftesness of Glenbrook Partners
  -- Erin McCune's full coverage in her Forte blog
  -- Christophe Langlois' live blogs at NetBanker
• For critiques of each demo:
  -- Brad Garland and friends rate each presentation on a 1 to 5 scale on the Banktastics blog
  -- LazyMan demonstrates he's anything-but in his review of the 40 presentations at Lazy Man and His Money
• For an insightful critique of the value propositions (or lack thereof) presented by each category of presenter, see Ron Shevlin's Thursday must-read post in his Marketing Whims (and check out the comments as well)
• Jeff Stephens at Creative Brand Communications adds his thoughts on several of the themes at The Story blog
• Wing Yu at FinancialMedia.org posted his interview with Vestopia CEO Steve Markowitz
• RateLadder posts about Loanio

Video coverage:

We'll have exclusive full coverage of all 40 demos in their entirety at our Finovate Startup website within a few weeks. We also had two blogger/videographers active at the event:

• Banktastic has a 7-minute video with excerpts of interviews with Mint, SmartyPig and Credit Karma here; their conference photos are here
• Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking shot a number of videos that will be available shortly; his Flickr photostream is here (sample above)

Related press coverage of presenters:

• Daniel Wolfe at American Banker writes about two presenters today, Mint and Wesabe
• Kathering Boehret at the Wall Street Journal and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch cover Mint's new investment-tracking features

An important part of Finovate Conferences, at least for the winners, is the voting process for best demo. All non-presenting attendees receive a ballot which allows them to rate each demo on a scale of one to seven. At the end of the final demo sessions, the ballots are tallied and the presenters ranked 1 through 40 based on the average score. A majority of attendees complete a ballot so it's a good indicator of the group consensus.

There were dozens of awesome demos to choose from, but the peoples' choice yesterday are shown below (in alphabetic order). Congratulations!

 First ROI (BancVue)             Jwaala

Zecco                                                                        Zopa

Videos of all the demos will be available soon at the FinovateStartup website.

Thanks to Christophe Langlois for live blogging today. Unfortunately, we had our first serious NetBanker downtime at 2:30 PM today, so after gallantly posting on 32 presenters, he finished the coverage at his Visible Banking site. We'll post a few more concluding comments tomorrow including the Best of Show winners.

Last demo of the day. Investment information for individual investors with community aspects.

CEO Steve Markowitz takes the stage. Can use the service, in public beta, to track the activity and advice of vetted professional investors. Easy to use and navigate, attractive interface. Have had success in attracting a large following. Good demo.