The Banktastics

Vidoop
Mark’s Review:
Vidoop is trying to break the mold of high security leading to poor usability. The offer secury login alternatives for banks and credit unions.
Several new login verification offering. A ‘verify by phone’ offering will call you and ask for a ‘pound’ or a pin when you are trying to login.
The ‘image sheild’ shows you images that guides you to a login code. This one can be provided for free to banks because the images you see will be ad sponsored.
Another offering involved SMS, but I’m so doped out by the image shield that I’m missing pieces. Your bank or credit union NEEDS to look into this.

Lisa’s Review:
This is pretty cool. Looking around, I see people nodding their heads. They’re seeing the value in this. Unique password authenitcation techniques. Different companies can pay to be put into the picture authorization - that was awesome. Ready for mobile - the demo was on a iPhone. Looks great even on the phone. I liked the verifying techniques they implemented. Super userful.

Boulevard R
Mark’s Review:
BoulevardR is medium to long term financial planning that tries to understand a members goals and current position and develops financial roadmaps based on those. Their latest offering is geared at small businesses and could be an interesting tool in that space.

Lisa’s Review:
“Unbiased Financial Advice.” Provides financial advice to consumers to help them protect their savings. A couple of fumbles at the beginning of this presentation (perhaps get a Mac?). The “helping you reach your goals” page is slick. Not super interesting to me as I’m not considering retirement anytime soon, but something I could recommend to some family members.

Inner8
Mark’s Review:
A 3 week old beta investing (stock) community that works to match people with stocks. They match, people to stocks, stocks to stocks, and more. It looks like a pretty robust offering for those in the space. That said 45 criteria, fuzzy logic, multiple matching, all seems very intimidating/overbearing.

Lisa’s Review:
The sliders are a big hit at Finovate this year. Inner8 matches you with other investors that like the same things that you do. Full profiles, communication among members - I like what they’re doing on the community-side of things. A little picky mention, but the site could use a little bit more color. Very clear to navigate, though. They say that “social investing” is what’s unique about them.

Rate Surfer
Mark’s Review:
A desktop application built to help you manage credit card accounts. and help save you money. It allows centralized management, shows you alternative offerings that could save you money, and will alert you on changes to things like your APR. Interface is nothing to write home about and this a pretty crowded space.

Lisa’s Review:
“Total Credit Card Management.” Manages all info right on your desktop. They claim by using their software, you can save a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars a year. The software looks a little squished. It’s not a very beautiful program, but I guess not everything has to have all the bells and whistles. I think the downside here is that it’s not an online tool.

Fiserv - MyMoney
Mark’s Review:
Geared toward the Gen Y user who spends over 25 minutes on Facebook everytime the login. MyMoney is a facebook app built to help connect members to banks and credit unions. The MyMoney application handles the online application process and includes hooks into online banking and provides a one click access from Facebook to his FI account summaries.

Lisa’s Review:
Gotta love when a company starts off on Facebook’s homepage! Starting off with Gen Y talk, my kind of company. MyMoney’s app is available on Facebook. You can enroll to different financial institutions online - very cool. Helps you shop around for better offers. The MyMoney app pulls information about your accounts (balances, transfers, transactions) without having you leave Facebook. Helpful for FIs to find new customers online. I like it. My only concern would be security.

Loanio
Mark’s Review:
Loanio is a peer lending platform that brings borrows and lenders in an auction style format. Uses co-borrowing (co-signer) to allow people with low or no credit to get involved in the peer to peer lending space. Also includes a (paid) platinum listing option that allows the borrower to have their information (income, etc) listed. While the process does seem very thorough and will allow people that can’t currently enter the space to participate, it adds back many of the hoops that P2P lending have been great at eliminating.

Lisa’s Review:
A peer lending platform. They bring up a good point - is this a bad time to launch a site like this? They can verify applicants’ taxes, check stubs, etc to help provide lenders the best information. Applicants can invite co-borrowers to help them get approved for a loan. Very cool.

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Intuit - Quicken Online
Mark’s Review:
Rearview mirror + Binnoculars for your financial life. They are really looking to target and help the 70% of American that are current living paycheck to paycheck.
Quicken Online is now a FREE offering. In addition to tracking, also includes a ’spending money outlook’ shows where you are, what you’ll probably be spending in the future, and when your next paycheck is coming. Also now includes a mobile component.
The sleeping giant of PFMs is awake and l think their latest offering is right on!

Lisa’s Review:
Quicken went free! Helping people manage their finances for the future - great ideas for a PFM. Available Oct. 30 on their website. I wonder how it compares to the other free online PFMs here today (Wesabe, Mint, etc). Mobile-ready with daily stats that texts you to tell you if you have enough money to pay upcoming bills. I’ll definitely be trying this out later.

WeSeed
Mark’s Review:
The stock market is intimidating. Uses fake money and fake stocks to ease and educated people into the market. Focuses on starting with what you know using what looks to be a clean robust search and moving towards fake trading that company. Great fake purchasing process including alert settings and then moves into your portfolio with social aspects.
A very clean and straightforward barrier buster to learning about and getting your feet wet in the market. Currently looking for beta testers

Lisa’s Review:
Not sure what WeSeed is - tried to understand from their website. People are intimidated by the stock market - WeSeed creates a way for everyday people to trade. Fake stock & fake money? Sounds a little like training wheels for the stock market - not a bad idea. The site looks really nice. Provides company descriptions and comments from users. Buying stocks is extremely easy. I like the “confirm your fake order.” They definitely made it playful. Connects you with others that are into buying the same stocks you bought. Breaks down the stock market into types of people (pet-lovers, parents, fashionistas…). Seriously, the site looks great.

Wesabe
Mark’s Review:
If you can be an ‘oldie but a goodie’ in the online PFM space, that’s what Wesabe is. They very really the first to put money and community together with customization and personalization.
They expand on that with a customized homepage with customized graphs. The current interface for adding and changing graphs looks pretty rough and cryptic (using urls) but they are moving to a ‘graph gallery’ making it easier to implement these in the future.

Lisa’s Review:
Ah, Wesabe. I signed up for wesabe a while back, but didn’t get very deep into it. I have preferred Mint to Wesabe, but let’s see what they’re doing. Customized community and personal data. Tags for your purchases - very nice. See what Wesabe members are spending and compare - all anonymous. Graph gallery to come in the next month, built by users. They’re wanting to provide data to help their members make better decisions. I like the site, but I still lean towards Min.

Check Point
Mark’s Review:
Cyber crime is a $1Billion a year problem. Checkpoint sits on top of the browser to help alert users of phishing attacks and compromised sites. Does use some enhanced algorithms over just phishing lists. Runs your browser in a sandbox environment. It’s an interesting offering, but I believe browsers are moving towards building this stuff right in.

Lisa’s Review:
Of all the little things to be bothered by, I don’t like the little chat bubbles at the bottom of this page. Check Point is a network security software. Their software pops up a big notification of a phishing site (example was a fake eBay). Pretty scary info about what’s downloaded in the background while you’re surfing the internet. I like the software, but not sure I’d choose this over some other anti-virus program.

Sybase 365
Mark’s Review:
A turnkey mobile banking platform for banks and credit unions. Handles carrier compliance issues so you don’t have to. Includes full front end integration to allow your customers to setup their accounts on the platform and get going with alerts. Uses natural language (instead of special keywords) allowing users to request information and perform activities in an easier way. In addition to SMS also has WAP support. (I don’t know what WAP is…but I’ll update when I find out.)

Lisa’s Review:
Love the accent. A mobile banking platform. The site looks really dull, though. No big wow factor at all. Intelligent SMS. Consumers are texting more than they’re calling these days - I can vouch for that. I really don’t see the differentiating factor with Sybase. Maybe I missed it. The presentation was a little lackluster. I may need to see how the value in networking time later.

FiLife
Mark’s Review:
Personal Finance website built to help people find the right financial products. Includes community reviews and ratings in addition to experts that write and give guidance.
The latest development is a ‘credit card picker’ (with more ‘pickers’ to come). Includes a ‘value to you’ computation along with some cool visualizations that help you choose the right card.
There’s a ton on this site beyond credit cards, so it’s worth checking out.
I think the pickers to come could be valuable, but given the current credit situation, seems like a tough one to start with.

Lisa’s Review:
The site is really busy. Product picker that sorts through products based on your expenses. I love the bubbles that show you individual credit card offers. It seems like a great website to help you find the best deals out there to help you manage your money better. Wow, I loved the stacker animation. Very cool things going on within this site. I like how it takes specific details about your personal financial situation and serves you tools to harness your money.

Check out the second 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the third 6 presenter reviews!
Check out the last 6 presenter reviews!

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Thanks for checking out this episode of BanktasticTV’s “The Burst.” Here are some important notes about this episode:

Brad at Texas Bankers Association
Brad’s back this week from spending some time with members of the Texas Bankers Association at their recent HR & Training Conference. We may not have any videos to show you from Brad’s trip, but we embedded some pics in the video. If you want to check out more, go here.

News: Ohio bank learns hard lesson about trademark law
I shared an article that I found on The Financial Brand Blog regarding a big lesson learned by a very old bank. Ohio Valley National Bank has been in business for 120 years, but another area bank changed its name to Ohio Valley Bank, which it immediately trademarked. After the 5-year contest period passed and the original Ohio Valley National Bank failed to make a move, they lost the right to use their name and have been forced to change it. This was a tough lesson learned by the original bank about trademark law. Don’t let this happen to you!

We Need Guest Bloggers for Finovate 2008
Mark and I are headed to NYC to cover Finovate 2008 on October 14, 2008. We’re looking to cover this event like we covered FinovateStartup 2008, which means we’ll need a couple of good guest bloggers! I’ll be in charge of making sure that the content is posted to the Banktastic Blog as soon as possible during the event, so we’ll need some people willing to share their honest opinions on the presenters while I’m doing the dirty work. If you’re going to attend Finovate 2008 and are interested in guest blogging for us, just shoot an email over to lisa@banktastic.com.

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See you next week!

-The Banktastics