A pretty big week in the Fintech world, the launch of latest iPhone (Will it or won’t it have NFC? Will it have a fingerprint scanner? Will it still be ridiculously expensive?) and it was Finovate in New York i.e. the biggest fintech conference in the world. That is where we will start.<\/p>\n
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For those unaware Finovate<\/strong> is a large conference dedicated to the new and innovative in the world of Fintech. The format is a brutal 7 minutes, no powerpoint i.e. only demo\/actual screenshots\/words. If you go over time you are cut off, stray too far from the path and you are gonged! Following from afar via Twitter (one day I will get to go \/ be able to justify the ridiculous ticket price) there were a few companies that people I trust on Twitter were very positive about.\u00a0mBank<\/strong>\u00a0an online bank that has been redesigned from the ground up with the help of\u00a0Accenture<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Meniga<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(seen before but still impressive).\u00a0TipRanks<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a way of rating financial analysts on the accuracy of data they publish.\u00a0Yodlee<\/strong>\u00a0for their excellent sounding family focused product,\u00a0Tandem<\/a><\/strong>, which allows differing access levels to be set to account information. Identity provider\u00a0Miicard<\/strong>\u00a0launched\u00a0digitally certified bank statements<\/a>\u00a0which is a big step on the digital identity ladder. The videos from all the demos should be available by the end of the month (I will link to them when I have them)<\/p>\n Bank Innovation dot net<\/strong>\u00a0posted a review of every presenting company<\/a>, a brief paragraph and 3 scores for each. FinTech tweeter extraordinaire\u00a0Bradley Leimer<\/strong>\u00a0wrote a great roundup of the event<\/a>. There is a short\u00a0write up from\u00a0Javelin Research<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n This week it is corporate banking megabash,\u00a0Sibos<\/strong><\/a>, which is being held in Dubai<\/strong> this year and is also the home of the excellent\u00a0Innotribe<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0strand. Follow the\u00a0#innotribe hashtag<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to keep tabs on what is going on but expect design, data, platforms, organisational culture etc to be the topics of choice. More on this next week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With much fanfare and it transpired very little secrecy the Cupertino giant<\/strong> officially announced the 5C and 5S variants of the iPhone<\/strong>. From a Fintech point of view every year it is about whether or not NFC will feature in the handsets<\/strong>. The answer was most definitely no. There were no specific payments announcements but there were several pointers to Apples future strategy. The well and truly leaked fingerprint sensor made it’s official appearance in the iPhone 5S. Building the sensor into devices at scale may be the boost biometrics has needed. It is only in the flagship model though so scale may be a way off yet. This\u00a0article by Peter Nixey<\/strong> lays out why it will be an important part of Apple’s ecosystem<\/a>. Following the announcement their were a lot of worried people tweeting about the NSA<\/strong> and also the risk of people lopping off fingers during iPhone muggings<\/strong>. Apple assured users the sensor only works with living tissue…no word on the NSA yet though.<\/p>\n More interesting was the quiet launch of iBeacons<\/strong>. A single line on one of the slides used to present, this little device brings new capability to Apple and merchants. These little devices can be installed in stores to give microlocation<\/strong> i.e. tell you exactly where a customers phone is. NFC require very close proximity to enable, less than 4cm, it seems something a bit more tap free is seen as the future by Apple. That will be an interesting change in behaviour for customers so used to a physical exchange to indicate money has changed hands. This\u00a0article on iBeacon by GigaOm<\/a>\u00a0gives a good overview as does\u00a0this one from Fast Company<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was not just Apple launching something with the word Beacon<\/strong> in it,\u00a0PayPal had a much more public and noisy launch<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0the day before the iPhone launch, which was a stunning coincidence. More microlocation<\/strong> goodness, USB interface for the PayPal variant though meaning it needs a constant power source which could make things a bit trickier for installation in a theft free location. I do wonder how will this microlocation \/ interaction free method of payment play out with people.<\/p>\n <\/p>\niPhone 5S & 5C launch<\/h3>\n
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