Alumni News– September 10, 2014

• American Banker: TSYS and Visa have announced their tokenization technology will support Apple Pay http://bit.ly/WIBIwx

• Credit Sesame and Prosper partner.

• Cachet Financial receives order from top tier credit union in the U.S. for mobile money management platform, Select Mobile Money.

• AcceptEmail selects Worldpay to power its international e-billing solutions.

• Trustly releases open source alternative messaging technology for FIs, BankAPI.

• Loop co-founder and CTO George Wallner weighs in on Apple Pay in Time.com Money column.

• Visa teams up with the National Football League to promote Visa Checkout. See Visa at FinDEVr this fall.

• Braintree to support Apple Pay. Come see Braintree at FinDEVr this September 30 through October 1 in San Francisco.

• Business Insider profiles Christian Lanng, Co-Founder and CEO of TradeShift.

• Dwolla CEO and Founder Ben Milne talks about the role of Apple as a new entrant in the mobile payments industry.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– July 29, 2014

• Concur partners with Uber to allow Concur users to link their accounts and automatically send Uber receipts to their expense reports.

• The Financial Brand looks at opportunity for banks and credit unions in the Loop Visa partnership. 

• Open Bank Project making its API available during hackathon in September.

• TechCrunch explores Pellucid Analytics’ take on PowerPoint pitch books.

• Seed Me! Thinknum raises $1 million in seed funding round.

• Feature on robo-advisors highlights seven alums: Betterment, Financial Guard, FutureAdvisor, Jemstep, Personal Capital, SigFig, and Wealthfront.

• Macwelt reviews banking app Numbrs.

• Bank Systems & Technology points to Moven as a nontraditional financial service provider “gunning” for banks.

• Xero partners with MarketInvoice to bring faster funding to UK businesses.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

LoopPay Earns Investment from Visa

You know you’re a Finovate fan when you skip over the report that Visa and Apple are talking just to get to the news that Visa has made an investment in mobile wallet innovator, LoopPay.

In a statement, LoopPay CEO, Will Graylin said he was “thrilled to have Visa as a partner and investor.” Visa SVP of innovation and strategic partnerships Jim McCarthy praised the company’s technology, particularly the fact that merchants can accept payment via LoopPay using their existing point-of-sale infrastructure.

The investment from Visa is part of the larger funding round LoopPay announced a few weeks ago. Amounts have not been disclosed.

LoopPay’s innovation is its expertise in Magnetic Secure Transmission™ (MST) technology. The technology uses an app, a secure chip, and an embedded magnetic loop to collect, store, and transmit mag stripe data from our added cards to the POS terminal when making a payment.  The loop is built into accessories such as the fob and, most recently, the LoopPay ChargeCase.

LoopPay made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose, winning Best of Show honors. The company was founded in 2013, and is based in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Alumni News– July 24, 2014

• TipRanks announces $3 million investment.

• C. Hoare & Co. choose TSYS’s Prime 4 card management solution.

• Pymnts interviews Vib Prasad, Group Head of MasterCard’s MasterPass about digital wallets.

• CSI globalVCard launches B2B payment system called globalVCard travel, designed to alleviate many of the corporate travel industry’s biggest pain points

• FreeAgent integrates with PayPal Here to make it easier for UK small businesses to get paid faster.

• Xero confirms it’s planning on filing for a U.S. initial public offering in 2015.

• Actiance expands on its support of Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online, to help manage risks of Office 365 Lync Online.

• LoopPay earns investment from Visa.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– July 14, 2014

• FinDEVr is Building Momentum – Will you be a part of it?

• Webster Bank to deploy online banking platform from ACI Worldwide.

• MasterCard’s e-commerce enabler MasterPass launches in Poland.

• Nerdwallet takes a close look at LoopPay.

• CNBC interviews Nutmeg CEO Nick Hungerford.

• Wall Street Journal features Klarna and its plans for expansion.

• WSJ features BehavioSec. Get a closer look at BehavioSec at the very first FinDEVr.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– July 10, 2014

• Optimal Payments announces partnership with Oink.

• Braintree releases v.zero SDK, featuring support for Pay with PayPal.

• Bank Innovation highlights leaders at Ripple, LoopPay, Finect, and Fiserv in its list of 30 key innovators in fintech.

• Segmint named a Preferred Vendor of MAGNET Global Network.

• Holvi preps to launch into Irish marketplace.

• doxo named one of Washington State’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2014 by Seattle Business magazine.

• Think Advisor features the different approaches of 3 robo-advisors: Betterment, Personal Capital, and Wealthfront.

• Cachet Financial Solutions prices Initial Public Offering.

• DoubleBeam’s GoPago POS system is enabling Slyde, a mobile commerce beacon-enabled shopping app.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

LoopPay Receives Undisclosed Amount of Funding from Synchrony Financial

Late last month, mobile payments platform company LoopPay released its ChargeCase, a battery case for iPhone 5 and 5s.

Now, two weeks later, the Massachusetts-based company has announced it received an undisclosed amount of funding from Synchrony Financial. This adds to the $10 million in Series A funding LoopPay raised last November from Beta Fund.

Under this strategic investment, LoopPay will provide Synchrony Financial with special features and benefits to provide greater convenience and utility to its cardholders and retail partners.

LoopPay uses Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) to enable a contactless payment experience in which customers use LoopPay’s ChargeCase and Fob Button Pay devices to pay at a merchant’s existing credit card swipe reader.

To see LoopPay demonstrate its MST technology live, check out its FinovateSpring 2014 demo.

Alumni News– July 7, 2014

• American Banker features Tradeshift in a column on startups innovating in the small business bill pay space.

• Credit Union Broadcast interviews Greg Ewald, VP of Marketing for Loop.

• Zighra partners with Toyuma to launch a Kickstarter project to launch PassZweipe, a password manager app.

• Billhighway to provide automated donation processing for The Michigan Humane Society.

• Open Bank Project organizing Hack/Make The Bank hackathon in Berlin. Check out more builder tools at FinDEVr this Fall.

• Bill.com, ZenPayroll, and Expensify earn spots Sqrl blog’s list of 39 apps you didn’t know could grow your business.

• Narrative Science’s Kris Hammond is featured in Business Insider’s Technology section.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Alumni News– June 25, 2014

• Kreditech raises $40 million in series B round.

• Charge! LoopPay launches its iPhone ChargeCases.

• Fiserv announces new partnerships and renewals with four credit unions.

• Navy FCU chooses Select Mobile Money prepaid mobile app from Cachet Financial Solutions.

• P2Binvestor adds three Colorado companies to its portfolio in June.

• Ian McKenna examines how Yseop’s artificial intelligence can help financial advisors.

• Vaamo launches Goal-Based Savings Platform on Invite-Only Basis.

• Oink (formerly VirtualPiggy) and SafetyPay partner to enable Oink to accept local payments as they expand into Europe and Latin American markets.

• ReadyForZero launches API to enable partners to deploy its debt-management platform on their own sites.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Charge! LoopPay Launches its iPhone ChargeCases

Trying to solve the puzzle of point-of-sale mobile payments? Don’t worry, Loop is on the case.

Mobile wallet innovator, Loop announced today that its LoopPay ChargeCase, the company’s battery case for the iPhone 5 and 5s, is now available.

As part of a limited time promotion, customers who buy the $99 ChargeCase will get the Loop fob for free. The fob, which retails for $39, is useful for loading cards onto the Loop app. The fob can also be used as a standalone payment device, especially at hospitality locations like restaurants and bars.

What’s unique about Loop’s technology is the way the company uses short-term, short-range magnetic fields to communicate mag stripe data from the app to the POS terminal. And while the fob and ChargeCase represent the two main hardware approaches to storing the small wire that makes this magnetic field technology possible, the company is in talks with OEMs and hopes one day to have the hardware installed in phones during the manufacturing process.

Read more about Loop in our “Behind the Scenes” feature from the company’s Finovate debut this spring.

In the meanwhile, the LoopPay ChargeCase will put iPhone users that much closer to the sort of mobile wallet nirvana the industry has been promising for years. Like the fob, the charge case can work on its own, whether or not the Loop app – or the phone for that matter – is turned on. Unlike the fob, the ChargeCase of course serves another purpose, providing the iPhone with an additional 60% charge when needed.

Loop was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. Will Graylin is CEO. The company demoed its Loop app at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose. See a video of the company’s technology at work here.