Jelmer de Jong

Last Tuesday I attended Finovate Europe. To be more precise, I was one of the presenters, since Backbase was selected to demo at the event. I won’t focus to much on the Backbase demo, but if you like to know: it went great! If you are interested, check out the blog post Finovate Europe: a recap in tweets. You can watch the recording of our presentation in my post: Backbase Bank 2.0 demo. In this post I will give my personal take aways of the 35 other demo’s and the trends you see in the financial market.

For those of you that don’t know Finovate: the Finovate conferences offer a platform for fintech companies to demo their latest innovations to the financial world. Attendees are a mix of bankers, other financial professionals, VC’s and bloggers/twitterazi. The companies have to apply for a demo slot and will be hand picked by the Finovate organization. All companies get 7 minutes on stage (your mic will really be shot down after 7 min. and a big gong will tell you you are over time) and slides are not allowed, only the real thing! Personally, I love this format, since it offers a real insight in the companies, their product and you are never bored. Finovate shows are organized in San Francisco, New York and last Finovate was the first in Europe, held in London, United Kingdom.

My main take aways from Finovate Europe:

1. User Experience

I was really impressed by how most of the demoing companies focused on delivering a superb User Experience. Something that in the past seems to be forgotten if developing financial or transactional software. User Experience is key and it is getting more and more a key differentiator for banks and other financial platforms to trigger and engage users. Most companies now seem to get this and it shows in the demo’s. My personal best on UX level where eToro, Fidor Bank and Meniga.

2. Yet Another PFM tool

Personal Finance Management (PFM) was hot a few years ago. The market now is getting more and more mature. Where first Mint.com and Wesaba where the cool new companies, now more and more banks are building and launching PFM add-ons themselves. However, there are still many companies presenting new PFM suites and semi-new PFM features. When following the Twitter stream on #finovate you could see that after the third PFM demo people where getting bored and had the ‘yet another’ feeling. Is PFM not innovative and cool anymore? Maybe. It’s getting definitely more mainstream.

3. Security

Security is key in the financial world. And it is something every bank and financial institutions worries about. Phishing, scamming, man in the middle and all other frauds and hacks. This Finovate had a few companies demoing with a wide range of security and fraud detection solutions. Business Forensics, a Dutch company, showed there high performance fraud detection software, SecureKey offers a USB + key validator to secure and identify every transaction. My personal favorite was the demo of Silver Tail. Their demo made it really clear how the modern attacks (for example a mobile man in the middle) are working and how their software detects and prevents this kind of fraud.

4. Mobile

Mobile, my favorite topic. Not that many new mobile inventions this Finovate, but the one that made the biggest impression was the demo of MPOWER, showing REV. For those of you that know Square, REV is like that. REV offers a coin shaped iPhone/iPad extension that turns every iPhone and iPad in a Point of Sale (POS) terminal. This way, small merchants can easily start accepting credit- and debit-cards. They are planning to launch REV in Q3 2011 and they will focus on Eastern Europe, India and some other big (mobile) growth markets. I really like the concepts of Square and REV and think that REV’s focus on developing and growth markets is really going to make a difference in the adoption and growth of the concept. Keep an eye on them!

5. Banks that get it

My fifth and last take a way: some banks really get it. It was really cool to see some new concepts and innovations presented by banks. Why? Most banks are conservative. They don’t want to invest to much on innovation, they don’t want to be the first and if they try something they do it small and don’t want to show it to the rest of the world. At this Finovate there where two really cool concepts presented by banks: Fidor Bank Ag, a German bank, showed a PFM tool that not only contains your current and savings account. They also made it possible to add your valuable possessions like gold and silver, other jewelry and even gaming currency to your personal dashboard. And especially the last: gaming currency, is a game changer. They accept that it is not only dollars or euro’s that make the world turn around. Facebook Credits, Zynga Money, iTunes giftcards, event frequent flyer miles are getting more and more used and treated as real money. And why not? It is! Fidor Bank Ag is one of the first banks that I see accepting this (instead of being afraid and trying to fight it) and they offer a platform for it. Really cool.

The second bank that, in my opinion, presented something really cool was the Privat Bank from Ukraine. They offer their Small and Medium Business clients a really great platform called Liqpay.com – with Liqpay small business can not only accept micro payments with their mobile phone (something that is already really cool) but companies can start selling their products online, on Facebook. With the tool from Privat Bank, smb’s get their own financial dashboard that not only gives them there default account overview. No, it is their place to do business. Integrated e-commerce using the fasted growing e-commerce platform, Facebook, and direct links to a more accounting like back-office system. This really helps small business to offer insight in their business, to really start using online banking instead of cash and offline transactions, and offers them a change to grow their business, online.

I really enjoyed attending and presenting Backbase Bank 2.0 Portal at Finovate. Let me know your feedback and personal favorites in the comments and I hope to see you all at Finovate Spring!