Financial Services

Money 2020: The Future of Currency and Payments: Part 1 of 3

I attended the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas this November. It’s a gathering of over 7,500 financial and technology professionals from over 60 countries. Essentially we all talk about the innovation of money and payments, both of which are undergoing unprecedented disruption. It was the forum’s 4th year but my first and I found it exhilarating and thought provoking.

The conference format is multi-layered. Big room keynote presentations, breakout sessions that are panel discussion style, live demos and an exhibit hall with hundreds of booths. I also found it to be a bit of a homecoming event as I ran into at least a dozen people I previously worked with or worked for me at one time. Nice to see friendly faces again and catch up on what they’re doing.

The breakout sessions are set-up in tracks; regulatory, security, e-commerce, retail banking, etc. My role in the bank is very broad, so I elected to pick and choose across the tracks and ingest a bit from each. The conference doubled in attendee size from last year but it occupied the same space in the Aria Hotel. Needless to say things were very crowded. Some people got shut out of sessions because they arrived on time or a bit late, only to find them already full. Standing room only in many of the sessions I attended.

The content covered a wide range of topics so I don’t claim this post to be a summary of the conference itself. Instead it’s my perspective. What I observed through my lens of “convergence.” I gleaned four distinct themes of content and exploration.

Consumer Research: Who will influence change
Mobile Payments: Who will win?
Crypto Currency: The reinvention of money?
Fraud and Security: Will hacking impede progress?

Consumer Research

Lots of the latest consumer research was unveiled at Money and I carefully planned to attend as many of these sessions as possible. We know the world is big, but thanks to Social Media and the news cycle we tend to lose appreciation for that fact. Check out these insane numbers.

3.6 Billion unique active mobile phone users on Earth! People are saying they’d give up a lot of things in their life before they would give up their mobile device. You’ve see those studies. Indeed the mobile phone has been embedded in our lives and are neurally connected to our finger and hands. It’s happened in the blink of an eye. Steve Jobs released the first iPhone on June 29, 2007. Many think that the phone has materially impacted the way people pay for things, but the following chart reveals that the change began a decade and a half ago and the tectonic plates of payments has been steadily shifting ever since. The phone has not influenced nearly as many people to consider their payment options as debit and credit cards. Plastic still rules. Note: many of these slides were taken with my iPhone from audience seating. I apologize that some are of low fidelity or are not well framed.

As we can see, while checks and cash dominated the transactions of choice for U.S. consumers in 1996, it has been forever overshadowed by credit and debit. Cash is not going away any time soon and if the security of credit and debit cannot be substantially shored-up, the never-ending rounds of retailer database hackings could keep cash and checks on life support for some time to come.

One study asked consumers how they will pay for things in the future. Every one of the presented forms of payment rose except credit, debit and cash. All three showed a decline, with cash leading the way. Certainly it’s very hard to be confident about a survey looking six years out. In the technology innovation mind it’s an eternity. Many disruptive species will be born in that time. But the scale and footprint of payments is vast and when you add in the generational and geographical aspects one cannot be faulted to remain skeptical.

Notice in the chart above that the green line (future) and black line (today) are not that divergent. People say they are expecting to pay in newer ways in greater numbers than now, but those shares are still small. Is this due to the momentum and the buzz around P2P money movement tools as well as the growth of PayPal? Is this how people will prefer to pay in the future?

The chart below puts a future date on the survey questions of 2020. When you look at the numbers by instrument they are not widely different from the above study. What’s interesting is the orange square in the bottom left. An overwhelming number of consumers prefer to use a familiar network provider (Discover, Visa, Master Card, etc.) to provide them with payments choices. Not Square or PayPal, or whatever Silicon Valley garage door opens, but the old guards of payments. Certainly the disrupters definitely have a head start on what attracts consumers. One could say however that it’s the Network’s and Issuer’s battle to lose.

The Emergence of the Millenial

When you wander a conference and keep your ears open you take note of the words or phrases that are repeated in nearly every type of content session as well as what’s said over a libation or two. One of the words that stood out without a doubt at Money was, Millenials. This generation is defined by most as a combination of Generation Y (25-34) and Generation Z (18-24). Seems like a very wide range, but when coupled with exposure to technology and shifting attitudes towards work and education, one can see why they can be coupled.

All camps that I observed lauded the Millenial population as one that brands − old and new − must attract and retain to ensure growth and to maintain relevance (otherwise known as survival). It doesn’t necessarily require a complete reboot, but it does mean we should guard against doing old things new and focus instead on doing new things that accomplish longstanding needs. This will be hard for financial institutions, but the future is all about change in relevance.

Millennials

Our young friends are absolutely adorable. They are confident and have an “I can” attitude. They are book smart and savvy, which means they carry a significant share of the $1 Trillion student loan debt now piled up in the U.S. As such, many live with their parents because they can’t afford a mortgage. An alarming share are under-employed, experiencing a large and confusing cognitive gap between their image of a job while in school and the reality of what they are doing Monday through Friday. This somewhat explains, at least to me, their zealous interest in getting promoted. Dues (literally) have already been paid in the form of tuition and they are looking for a faster track to pay back.

Research I saw at Money outlined an interesting persona of Millennials . They ike to have fun first then hard work next. They are close to their parents, many who have doted on them as children. They buy prestige brands and will spend more to design or customize a product to reflect who they are. As social natives they have more intense relationships with brands and don’t think twice about calling them out for either handing things well or dropping the ball. Their use of Social Media gives them an outsized voice that smart brands are addressing.

What is most fascinating to me is how they leverage technology to positively impact their financial position. We know they are getting their driver’s license later than previous generations, relying on Uber and public transpiration to get to where they want/need to go. Owning a car, actually driving a car is not at all important. They do not define themselves by the cars they drive.

When it comes to consuming content they don’t have a monthly cable bill the size of a car payment. They’re not cord-cutters because they never plugged in the cord. Television ownership is also much lower among Millenials . TV is on a grid. You have to be in the same physical space as a television to watch it. How barbaric! Why do that when you can stream almost anything to the glass surface of your smartphone, tablet or laptop? Oh yes, they don’t own desktop computers either (how mainframe of us). Oftentimes they share Netflix passwords or Prime accounts so everyone can get on the same series. The CBS network recently announced “All Access,” a content streaming service. For $5.99 per month subscribers can watch full seasons of current primetime shows and leading daytime and late night CBS Programming. Others will likely follow.

Another bit of interesting research came from a study on values Millennials rated as important vs. Gen X’ers rating at a similar life stage. Millennials value enjoying life, having fun, authenticity and stable relationships much higher than their Gen X counterparts. They moved freedom, close friends and knowledge down in importance.

Y’s and Z’s were influenced by the internet in their formative years. Gen X is actually more closely aligned with the Boomers in that they were more or less adults before they were faced with the prospects of a digital world. One study drew closer connections between Millennials and Boomers than I would have even imagined. It seems the two categories to be reckoned with, especially among financial services are the Boomers of course (we have all the money) and the Millennials who will eventually have all the money. They will just interact with it in a much different way.

Understanding what your customers value, particularly a segment with this much power is critical to financial success. My next Money 2020 installment will cover Mobile payments and eWallets.

Read Part 2: Mobile Payments and Crypto Currencies

Read Part 3: Tech Crime Takes Off.

Image Credits:

Money 2020 magnifying glass: Money 2020

Crowd at Money 2020: Steve A Furman

Various Slides: Taken during live sessions by Steve A Furman

Image of Several Millennials: Mirus Reporter

Career Opportunity at Discover Bank

THIS ROLE WAS FILLED ON JUNE 13, 2014

I’ve recently changed roles at Discover and am working on building out my digital team. There’s already a solid group of professionals in place shaping a best-in-class banking platform, but we are rapidly growing and I need more help.

This is a Senior Manager role with three direct reports, reporting to the Director which would be yours truly. I have worked at Discover for almost 15 years. We have a terrific culture and are recognized as one of the best run financial services companies in the country. We have a great credit quality portfolio, are well capitalized with strong profit and stock performance (NYSE:DFS).

We are located in Riverwoods, Illinois, just north of O’Hare airport and have a Chicago city satellite office.

Job Description

This position leads a team responsible for developing and enhancing a best-in-class banking web interface for Discover Deposit products. This person will work closely with a peer to drive the current and future state of the user interface across all digital platforms. It is critical for this person to steer and coordinate cross-functional groups that include Product Teams, Marketing, Business Technology and multiple external agencies to create and deliver innovative, simple, highly functional and aesthetically pleasing interfaces based on user-centered design principles. This person should be keenly aware and passionate about emerging design and usability trends across web, mobile and tablet, as well as the evolving digital payments ecosystem.
The Digital Experience team’s primary role is to understand business requirements and goals, and then work with external agencies to develop wireframes and design comps that will deliver the business results with a superior customer experience.
The Senior Manager must be analytics focused and able to leverage web tracking to inform design and enhance functionality already in production. It is important to be able to weigh quantitative and qualitative data before design begins.
Time to market is critical. The candidate must be comfortable operating in an agile development environment and make strong judgment calls based on the information and alternative scenarios.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree required. Specialization in human-computer interaction, graphic design, product design or interaction design is a plus
7-10 years leadership experience in user-centered design, usability and development, preferably with a Fortune 500 company or leading digital firm
Seen as a thought-leader in creating best-in-class digital customer experiences for full site, mobile and tablet interfaces
Experience leading and/or observing user research and usability testing and translating insights into design decisions
Demonstrated ability to lead cross functional teams in the development of scenarios, workflows, site architectures, interactions notes, wireframes and designs
Experience in developing processes to manage complex activities
Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into meaningful interactive experiences
Ability to effectively prioritize project requests based on clear methodology
Strong analytic skills and experience with web site behavior tagging and tracking
Effective communicator and comfortable with presenting to senior managers
Lean Six Sigma would be a plus.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against applicants due to race, ethnicity, gender, veteran status, or on the basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

If you’re qualified and want to work for a highly respected company you can apply here.

The Wolf of Wall Street – Film Review

Once again we find Martin Scorsese taking serious inspiration from his lifelong muse, New York. So much has happened in this Metropolis and continues to happen, and the material just never seems to run out. He returns to the underworld but not gangsters. This time he delves beneath the underworld; Wall Street, Mean Streets, what’s the difference? Perhaps less violence on Wall Street or is it just another category of violence? I must admit when I saw the trailer for this film over the summer I was quite surprised to see that it was a Martin Scorsese picture. The film is large format all around. The running time is three hours and it’s laced with foul language, morbid use of drugs and alcohol, is degrading to women, and props money up on the highest pedestal at any cost to anyone.

It’s Goodfellas meets Glengarry Glen Ross, meets Wall Street. Process that for a minute.

I approached this film with mixed feelings, as it deals with financial crimes and unethical goings on by stockbrokers and so called investment managers. A lot of people lost their retirement believing the frauds over the last few years. So why make this film? Scorsese has said he made it out of “frustration and a kind of anger.” In a recent Los Angeles Times interview Scorsese states.

When I was growing up, I don’t remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit. In the past 35 years the value has become rich at all costs.

Jordan Belfort was hooked on becoming a Master of the Universe on his first day on Wall Street. He was seduced by a greed that would permeate every aspect of his personal and professional life. Based on a real character and the book by Belfort, screenwriter Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire) hits the accelerator in the first scene and never lets up.

Leo DiCaprio plays Belfort and let’s animal persona off the leash. All he wants is more, and not just of money. His performance makes us laugh, gasp, shake our head and even cheer. But we are never afraid. Nor do we feel sorry for him even though he loses much more than he ever gained.

Black Monday was Belfort’s first day as a bonafide stockbroker having passed his Series 7 exam. It was October 19, 1987 and the worldwide stock markets crashed along with the firm that gave him his first chance. This first lesson was not lost on Belfort.

He cobbled together a typical Scorsese band of characters who would eventually pledge their undying allegiance and yearn to unlock his secrets and live like Belfort. The group successfully traded Penny stocks from pink sheets to the middle class. He made money, but Belfort had higher aspirations. He created Stratton Oakmont, Inc. selected a lion as the firm’s symbol and wrote this mission statement; Stability, Integrity, Pride. They began targeting the top 1% of the population, sold them blue chips to get them comfortable, then make 50% commission on the crap. They made more money than they knew what to do with. It was brilliant, in a tragic sort of way.

From the screenplay The Wolf of Wall Street.

It’s one continuous party. The lines between the office and strip clubs or beach houses are blurred so badly no one knows if they are working or partying. Sex, drugs, drinking. Nothing was too much or off limits. Eventually Belfort meets Naomi (Margot Robbie) and his first marriage dissolves like a quaalude in bourbon. The wedding in Vegas cost Belfort $2 million and he didn’t bat an eye. From there things just get even more amped up as they take the women’s shoemaker, Steve Madden public in a very unorthodox and illegal manner.

Scorsese turns the camera directly on DiCaprio who addresses the audience first person. It’s fitting. We need someone to remind us we are not looking at a dream, but real life and the people who are acting it out know it’s wrong but can no longer tell right from wrong. Only rich from poor.

As the FBI closes in Belfort gets a bit more serious. He hatches a plan to move cash to a Swiss bank and turns his attention to blocking the investigation. No matter how much the heat gets turned up, nothing can stop Belfort and his lieutenant, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) from getting messed up. Donnie comes across a long lost bottle of Lemmon 714 quaalude pills give to him by a pharmacist client. The Lemmon 714 is the mother the Quaaludes. The scene that follows their taking of several of these potent pills is hysterical. I have not laughed that hard in the theatre since Three Weddings and a Funeral.

We need to be careful not to forget that activities of Stratton Oakmont are not victimless crimes. We don’t see the victims, and in fact almost never hear the voices on the other end of the telephones. But they are real and the damage done is serious and life-destroying in some instances. Belfort crashed so many things. A helicopter, expensive car, 170 foot yacht and countless lives. He never gets a scratch and always falls up, landing on his feet.

DiCaprio also played Gatsby in Baz Luhrman’s interpretation of Fitzgerald’s novel released earlier this year. Both Gatsby and Belfort came from humble, poor beginnings. Both had aspirations and through a quirk of fate were able to gainfully apply their individual gifts to achieve great wealth. Gatsby built his empire out of the love for Daisy. Belfort accumulated his fortune out of the love for greed. Gatsby had an unfulfilled heart and Nick Carraway as his compass of good. Belfort lacked a heart and had Donnie Azoff as his enabler. Someone always willing to open the next door to excess.

Americans spend less that 20 minutes per year really studying their finances. I’m not talking bills, but real finances. College funds, retirement, real estate. Don’t be taken in. Do more work on your own financial state. Scorsese reminds us that finance underpins so much of our daily life and it can vanish in an instant.

Photo Credits: Paramount Pictures

Download the The Wolf of Wall Street script legally here.

Think Finance with Google: Tortoise and Hare Mash-up

It’s been more than two years now since Lehman Brothers collapsed, signaling the public start of the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Two years in a downward spiral, followed by a bit of leveling off and now a narrow beacon of light piercing the blackness. Despite all those headwinds and pressure, most financial services firms have navigated through these treacherous waters and are now trying to grow in this new reality. Growth was far from our minds two years ago. It was all about battening down the hatches and retrenching. Oddly enough while all this turmoil was wreaking havoc, technology was blossoming, sprouting new connected devices and blurring the lines between web, media, entertainment, shopping and conversation. This amazing time of convergence might just turn out to be the protagonist in this economic story.

Google’s New York headquarters are located in the meatpacking district in a concrete bunker of a building on Ninth Avenue. I love the idea of that structure. I used to visit there in the late 1990’s when Barnes and Noble set-up their E-Commerce shop away from the more traditional bookstore confines across town. It’s a cavernous space with massive elevators large enough to lift delivery trucks. When you finally get past security, you feel you are in a place that could survive anything. A kind of a fallout shelter if you will. It was comforting. This was my first Google Finance event and I didn’t know what to expect. But it was Google, so I set my expectation high. At the end of the day they were exceeded. The agenda was extremely well structured for both content and emotion and, as it turns out worthy of an Aesop fable.

Google’s Principles for Innovation
Macroeconomic Landscape
Consumer Response to the Economic Crisis
Innovations from Google
Client Case Studies
Media Platform Convergence
Google TV and Android Demos

Dennis Woodside, VP for Google led off and immediately stepped on the gas. Things are moving faster than ever and the Internet is rapidly becoming the de facto communication channel. He laid out the evolution of the Internet as follows; read (early websites), buy (emergence of online commerce) and talk (social and mobile). He strongly echoed what others have been saying about mobile overtaking desktop, and soon. To illustrate the point of how quickly information is making its way to the net Mr.Woodside pointed out that there are 800 exabytes of information on the web today. Up until a couple of years ago, if you added up all of human information, radio and TV shows, books, music, newspapers, etc., it would only equal 40 exabytes. By 2020 Google predicts there will be 53 zettabytes of data online (1,000 exabytes = 1 zettabyte). In other words. Kind of a lot of stuff. He was all about speed and racing to get there first. Hare.

Up next were two impressive and informative speakers. Matthew Slaughter of the Tuck School of Business and John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer at Young and Rubicam. Mr. Slaughter was from the school of cold, hard facts and it was a bit painful. He said his inclination was that of the optimistic Tigger, but prepared us for more of an Eeyore perspective. Of course all of us in that room knew the facts. We’d been following them for two years from inside our own firms. Hearing them in this setting, among our competitive peers and coming from an “outsider,” made me gasp and say to myself, “Did all that really happen?” Essentially he told us that it could take until 2020 to recover the 8.5 million private-sector jobs we had just lost. He did remind us that it’s in times of crisis that we produce our best innovation.

All Right2 — Found in a store window in downtown Detroit (John Gerzema)

Mr. Gerzema, co-author of Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution is Changing the Way we Buy, Sell and Live also had lots of stats and charts. But he channeled his message through people who were already innovating and making a difference locally. Not corporate masters of the universe, but simple, everyday people. It was inspiring stuff, witnessed first hand while on an across the country road trip. He spoke about consumers who have been hit hard by the crisis and have less value than in the past, but because of technology acceleration they have more power. Consumers are moving from mindless to mindful consumption. Trust is the key driver now, “Trust is the new black,” perhaps the quote of the day. It’s moving beyond traditional marketing for firms and toward actions and gestures brands must take and make to prove to consumers we care about them. He laid out five concepts defining this shift.

The New American Frontier – Optimism, Resiliency, Opportunity
Don’t Fence Me In – Retooling, Education, Betterment
The Badge of Awesomeness – Nimbleness, Adaptability, Thrift
Block Party Capitalism – Character, Authenticity, Locality
An Army of Davids – Community, Cooperation, Amplification

Firms must deeply understand consumer context and show them we will navigate for them. He rattled off more than a dozen examples that are worth checking out. Here are a few; bluhomes.com, whipcar.com, neighborgoods.net and sunrunhome.com. I’ve only just cracked his book, but it seems to hold many more nuggets, including this tidy summary of where he thinks things are going.

SpendShift3 — My personal notes from Mr. Gerzma's presentation, Consumer Change and Evolution

In short, the message is, quality is in and quantity is out. It’s all about slow now. Slow VC and trust based transaction models. Brands should not force consumers to lock in their purchase decision up front. Offer trial, sample experiences, then work with them until they get comfortable. This is challenging stuff for big brands, especially for those of us in the financial space, because it’s not logistically easy to trial our products. Tortoise.

Back to Aesop. Everything is accelerating, but slow is the way to go. We live a world that’s rapidly converging, think the film Inception. Immediate access to reliable information means consumers can re-purpose the time it used to take to research choices and redirect it to actually understanding what the product or service really does for them, and how it might be to work with the provider. They turn to social networks to help inform their decision. Firms need to invest quickly in the world of convergence so they can be more transparent and open about selling their goods and services. Perhaps even create a newbreed of products andservices expressly designed for trial. “No obligation, no one will call, no salesman will visit your home.” I realized long ago that you won’t learn precise recipes on how to succeed inside your own firm with these event concepts. After all, that’s why you get a paycheck. The best you can hope for are some strong case studies and clever networking.

After a savory lunch they took pity and allowed us to break from the world of stats and enter the world of Gopi Kallayil, a Google Product Marketing Manager for Search Advertising. He had just returned from 36 hours of traveling undertaken for the sole purpose of meeting with the Dali Lama. Show off. Mr. Kallayil was centered and calm and made keyword search sound like a search for the meaning of life. It’s not a type in field on Google’s home page, it’s the “white box” where a billion people across the world arrive at each day and tell it their deepest secrets and desires. Mr. Kallayil pointed out that people tell the white box things they don’t communicate to even the closet people in their lives. Probably true. We got a glimpse behind the curtain of how Google analyzes search terms and how that informs new products and services. He talked about the nnewly launched Instant Search as well as what they are doing around piping in social media conversations. But It was Gopi, so search transcends finding out where to find a latte. Someone noticed what results Google was returning when a user typed in suicide. They made sure that the crisis hotline 800 number showed up high in the results. The next month, calls to this hotline rose 10%.

The highlight of the day for me was Mike Steib, Director of Emerging Platforms at Google. He was engaging, entertaining and really knew his stuff. It was all about mobile, convergence and once again, speed; Hare. Mr. Steib urged us to design our web experiences for a TV screen as well as a mobile screen. He gave us his prediction for what percentage of the U.S. population will have a smart phone by the end of 2011, 100%. I really enjoyed how he took cutting edge ideas developed at MIT and brought them down to practical applications like getting a haircut. Even though his delivery was accessible and delightful, the real message was get going and do it now. It’s a new reality and we will need to figure out how to be a tortoise and a hare.

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Dennis Woodside, Matthew Slaughter, John Gerzema, Mike Steib (Steve A Furman)

The Google TV demo at the end of the day fell a little short for me. They did not have the devices connected to the Internet and so I couldn’t go to my web site, discover.com, to see how it would look on the big, beautiful Google TV screen. A bit of a miss. And one more thing. How about an afternoon break guys! Those aside, I’ll be back, that is if they invite me.

Tortorise and Hare images from free clip art server

Finovate. Worth the Wait

I attended Finovate 2009 (Financial Innovation) in New York on Tuesday, September 29th. I love this format. Thirty-two companies show-up to present their next generation releases and try to convince banks and credit card issuers to buy their solutions and embed them into their online environments. Here’s the really cool part. Each firm gets only 7 minutes on stage and must demo their wares, no PowerPoint allowed.

FinnovateLogo

You don’t want to go first or last here, but in my opinion the pre-lunch slots were the best in terms of keeping the audience’s attention and avoiding the numbing blur of one demo after another. There were a lot of mobile solutions, particularly for payments, as well as personal financial management applications and a sprinkling of social/community. Needless to say I won’t be summarizing all of them, but I want to make mention of the ones I found most interesting based on the following criteria.

Utility
Uniqueness
Innovative
Good user experience
Helps financial firms solve problems
Presentation quality

BrightScope – They had a mission statement. “Help Americans Retire in Dignity.” Their research showed a large percentage of Americans rely heavily on their 401k to support them after they stop working. Their online application rates over 10,000 plans with a simple score and shows you where yours stacks up vs. others. If your plan isn’t there, you can request it be added and in most cases it’s up within two weeks. It has a neat projection tool that calculates shortfalls in money, or additional years you may need to work. They also have a solution for plan advisors as well. I mention them because retirement is being re-thought by almost everyone in the wake of the downturn. Also for their focus on trying to do one thing and doing it well. Visit them here.

BancVue/First ROI – I know, not a memorable name, but their product is called Kasasa (new day). It’s a turn key co-op solution that helps smaller banks come together and at least have some way of competing with the mega-banks. They focus on the younger market by offering a rewards checking program that pays them in iTunes cash. Spending is only part of the solution. The program encourages saving and giving to charity. The marketing is really crisp and encompassing. They seem to have thought of everything; advertising, customization, all the way down to email reminders. Great presentation and the only firm to bring a customer on stage for a testimonial. This one was my choice for best in show and I found out later, that it actually won it. Visit them here.

TILE Financial – Their observation is today’s wealth is sandwiched between the aging population and their financial advisor. When the inevitable time comes, that wealth, about $1 trillion according to TILE, transfers to survivors and the advisor and her firm loses it. Their solution, The Investing Learning Environment (TILE). It helps manage the shift in assets from one generation to the next while keeping the funds and investments at the firm. Three modules in the application, Spend, Grow and Give help young and old make decisions together as well as reinforce the practice of giving back to the less fortunate. They have an elegant user-interface and a strong feature set that seems usable for seniors, but cool enough for their children. The spend module captures where spending occurs and presents company stock price and carbon footprint adjacent to the transactions, expanding the potential horizons. I spoke with them afterwards because I was curious as to how they were selling the product. It needs to travel from advisor to client to their family in order for the relationship to take hold. They didn’t give me a satisfying answer apart from saying this would be most effective to newer wealth. Visit them here.

Yodlee – In the past Yodlee has always been strong in functionality, but not always the most easy to use UI. This time around they clearly focused on the user experience and presentation layer in their upcoming release. Their MoneyCenter product accounts for 90% of their use cases onto one widgetized screen, eliminating pop-ups, glides and page reloads. These widgets can be dragged around the screen to create a personalized environment. The window is framed off with the ability to house critical stats you always want front and center. And oh yes, it’s now blue. These changes are big moves. Viewing, tracking and paying are all here. They have an interesting feature that shows good and bad days to pay based on your cash flow. They announced a partnership with UltraSoft that will come to the rescue of soon to be abandoned MS Money users. Your data will be fully importable to Yodlee in the near future. Visit them here.

iPay Technologies – The women who presented really made their product come alive with the use of personas and storytelling. Tops here. They took us inside the world of a small business owner and their back office assistant as they demonstrated the product. Take away here is, the owners are too busy to bother with the office, and the office managers need help getting direction from the owner. Their solution gives business owners a customer database, online invoicing, online payments and choice of templates for easy personalization. Their get paid faster functionality allows business owners to email the invoice and their customers can click into the iPay site and pay right there. An email summary is produced at the end of each day so keeping track of your money is easy. Nice interface. Clean, feature-rich, but not confusing. Visit them here.

That’s my short, short list. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and got some great ideas to bring back to the office. Would consider returning next year.