LICUOS is one of the winners of the 2014 DEMOvation Challenge

LICUOS, the global B2B netting and payment platform, was announced a winner of the 2014 DEMOvation Challenge presented by Bank Innovation. The challenge was judged by five people who named seven companies winners of the challenge, and LICUOS was one of them:

• Laurence Berkowitz, Advisor (Israel), Bank Innovation
• Seth Kenvin, Advisor (San Francisco), Bank Innovation
• Sam Maule, Manager, Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group
• Philip Ryan, Editor, Bank Innovation
• Dominic Venturo, Chief Innovation Officer for Payments, US Bank

The judges were looking for startups launched within the last 24 months that possess unique intellectual property or business models, or are differentiated from other FinTech startups.

Bank Innovation 2014

Thanks to the award received, LICUOS will participate at Bank Innovation 2014 (Seattle, March 3-4), the annual event for executives and innovators to collaborate and share ideas to improve customer acquisition and retention through new products and strategies.

The DEMOvation Challenge is part of an overarching effort to make the Third Annual Bank Innovation event even more valuable than in previous years. LICUOS will present its technology to Banks, Credit Unions, Venture Capital Firms, Investment Banks, Start Ups and Technology Companies through a demo slot.

LICUOS also took part in 2013 in the FinovateSpring in San Francisco, Innotribe Startup Challenge in New York, the Thinking Digital Startup Competition in Newcastle, Next Bank – Innotribe Startup Disrupt contest in Madrid and SIBOS in Dubai introducing its innovative and technology for cash and working capital management.

Our technology

LICUOS´ core patent pending technology enables companies, regardless of their size or industry, to compensate, pay and finance their commercial debts, allowing them to reduce their funding needs and their client´s credit risk exposure. Our algorithms search and provide the optimized netting, payment and funding proposals for companies in an efficient, automated and cost-effective way.  Thus, businesses optimize their working capital and cash management activities and reduce their dependence on the banking system.

LICUOS will introduce the LICUOS Netting Hub and LICUOS SCF solutions. These solutions meet the needs of US Financial Institutions, Business Systems and B2B Payment Platforms:

• The Netting Hub, implemented as an API to the LICUOS Platform, allows our partners (Business Systems and B2B Payment Platforms) an easy integration, and a fast delivery of multilateral netting based services through their platform.
• The LICUOS SCF solution allows our Partner Banks to offer an innovative Supply Chain Finance solution to their customers (Businesses) that optimizes their working capital with a multi-tier approach, including suppliers at the Tier 2, Tier 3 level and beyond.

Thank you

We’d like to thank Bank Innovation, the judges and the Bank Innovation 2014 Partners for making the event possible.

For further information about Bank Innovation 2014, please visit: http://bankinnovation.info/.

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Building the future of financial services through collaboration and innovation

We like this editorial on IDEON Financial Solutions companies, including LICUOS, by Inigo San Martin, Director, IDEON Financial Solutions: http://internationalbanker.com/building-the-future-of-financial-services-through-collaboration-and-innovation/

A few years ago, we realized the majority of consumers in Spain were exposed to a risk they knew very little about and had no way of eliminating it. Interest rates on most loans, whether home mortgages or business lending facilities, are directly linked to Euribor. In other words, when Euribor goes up, consumers pay more for their loans and vice versa. Corporations have been managing this risk for many years, through the use of derivatives contracts entered into their banking counter-parties. However, these transactions were not accessible to consumers or small businesses. IDEON’s first solution, Rateguard, was developed to specifically address this problem. Rateguard allows banks to offer interest rate risk mitigation products to their retail and business customers in an economic way by covering the whole life cycle of these products from design to document management. This front to back and fully automated solution to create, distribute and manage financial risk hedging products, including the complete document cycle was installed in more than ten top tier financial institutions in Europe.

A truly customer centric deposit solution

Following the same idea of democratizing existing banking products to all segments CHOICE Savings & Investments was developed. This software allows banks to offer in an efficient manner the ability to deposit solutions where the customer can personalize the complete economics of their account in real time at the point of sale. Traditionally, personalization of this type has only been available to high net worth segments due to the many manual processes and restrictive costs that offering customization entails. Through the use of CHOICE software, personalization is possible for any segment in any type of deposit product, traditional or market linked.

Allowing customers to partake in the design of their savings accounts, greatly enhances their overall banking experiencing. For banks, in turn, offering personalization reduces the pressure to always offer the highest rate therefore positively impacting bank margins, avoiding rate shoppers and attracting long term relationships.

Making supply chain financial management more efficient

Another solution developed by IDEON team for financial institutions is LICUOS SCF, based on the LICUOS technology, which allows banks to offer a Supply Chain Finance solution with a multi-tier approach, including suppliers at the Tier 2, Tier 3 level and beyond. LICUOS SCF allows its partner banks to generate new business and commercial opportunities with existing and new customers whilst optimizing internal rating models for credit risk admission and monitoring. The economic sectors that are currently showing a greater interest in the LICUOS SCF solution are Automotive, Retail (both food and textile), Pharmaceutical, Energy, Tourism and Transportation.

LICUOS itself, a joint venture between IDEON and AVS, is an online B2B payment platform where businesses can compensate and pay their commercial debts. LICUOS´ patent-pending technology identifies and generates the most convenient and efficient A/R and A/P netting and payment proposals for businesses. As Lisa Pollack explained on the Financial Times Alphaville Operation sovereign debt net, multilateral netting would allow sovereign debt cancellation among countries: “The EU countries in the study can reduce their total debt by 64% through cross cancellation of interlinked debt, taking total debt from 40.47% of GDP to 14.58% […] France can virtually eliminate its debt – reducing it to just 0.06% of GDP.”

B2C versus B2B models

But not only does IDEON develop solutions for financial institutions. Various business lines have been developed to benefit consumers directly. Through its offices in Madrid, Spain and New York City, IDEON’s ultimate objective is to improve people’s and businesses financial life and this can be achieved through both B2C and B2B models.

One example of a B2C business created by Ideon’s team is Fintonic, an online/mobile personal financial management tool that already has 100,000 users in its first year of existence. Users are able to see in a single page all their financial positions (loans, credit cards, checking accounts…) regardless of the financial institutions where these are held. Additionally, users can set up budgets and alerts to make sure that they stay on track of their spending objectives.

Tradeslide, another B2C business by IDEON, caters to a very specific population – foreign exchange traders. This tool increases the overall transparency in the FX market by categorizing traders according to a set of proprietary algorithms.

One of the main problems in the post crisis era is the lack of financing from banks for small and medium size businesses (SMB). Many have been suffering from this situation for more than three years now. SUMMA Investment Solutions, another idea generated by the IDEON team, is a non-bank financing facility for SMB´s who have outstanding invoices. SUMMA has established a fund whose investment strategy consists of acquiring directly from SMB short-term commercial invoices.

Partnering for innovation

Innovation and collaboration are two of the pillars of IDEON´s core strategy. IDEON seeks to conduct innovative ideas through collaborative projects with financial institutions, businesses and financial technology entrepreneurs. These projects are implemented through both IDEON itself and its affiliated companies, examples of which we have seen in this article.

FinovateSpring 2013 demo video

We’re excited to announce that LICUOS’ demo from FinovateSpring 2013 is now live!

LICUOS was chosen as one of the 72 companies to showcase the newest and most innovative financial and banking technologies. We were given 7 minutes to give a live, real-time demo to represent our core technology.

Watch LICUOS’ CEO, Iker de los Rios, and Co-founder and Board Member, Lander Gonzalez, demonstrating the features and benefits of LICUOS´ services for businesses: Netting, Payments and Funding.

http://www.finovate.com/spring13vid/videos/LICUOS.mov

LICUOS, Finovate & Blogs.

LICUOS was selected to demo at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. FinovateSpring is a demo-based conference for innovative startups and established companies in the fields of banking and financial technology. This May’s presenters included some of the biggest names in financial-technology, including Fiserv, MoneyDesktop, FIS, and TSYS. Each company gets 7 minutes and there is no PowerPoint allowed. Eric Mattson, CEO of Finovate said “this was the biggest Finovate ever”.

LICUOS would like to thank The Finovate Group and its Partners for making the FinovateSpring event possible and the four contributors that covered all 72 demos. Thanks to Erin McCune, William Mills III, Phillip Ryan and David Penn.

You will find below and attached these contributions:

Finovate Blog: LICUOS Launches Secure, B2B Payables, Receivables Processing Solution by David Penn. http://finovate.com/2013/05/licuos-launches-secure-b2b-payables-receivables-processing-solution.html

LICUOS is demoing its core technology: a unique proprietary and patent-pending technology that enables an efficient and highly secure processing of accounts payable and receivable transactions, 24/7 and in real-time, to deliver the best financial optimization and user experience. Our algorithms automatically identify and generate the most convenient and efficient netting, payment and funding proposals. They manage all of the associated transactions that allow businesses to significantly reduce or eliminate their commercial debts. LICUOS gives businesses full control and visibility into the payment process and allows them to easily communicate and negotiate with their business partners.

Bank Innovation: Finovate Day 2 Morning Recap and Ratings by Philip Ryan. http://bankinnovation.net/2013/05/finovate-day-2-morning-recap/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=646536&utm_campaign=0

LICUOS is an open payment platform for businesses to reduce debt rather than just pay them. The company hails from Spain where they know a thing or two about corporate debt. Invoices are aggregated into the site and algorithms determine the optimal way to pay. The platform also allows payments netting services and 200 European companies have requested funding its lending platform. It’s not just about reducing fees and improving cashflow — the company is a wide-open payments platform.

• Cool Factor: 4/5
• I Want It: 3/5
• Revenue Potential: 3/5

Payments Views: Live Blogging Finovate Spring 2013 San Francisco by Erin McCune. http://paymentsviews.com/2013/05/14/live-blogging-finovate-spring-2013-san-francisco/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=646536&utm_campaign=0

• First payment platform to help businesses reduce debt, from Spain, where business debt is a huge issue
• Businesses from all industries, of all sizes
• Netting is core feature – enabling
• Payments – both traditional supplier payments, from buyer to its vendors, on Licuos open payment platform
• Funding – means of obtaining financing from non-banking third parties
• Dashboard shows over all position, drill down to individual invoices – integrated with ERP/Accounting or invoicing system
• Algorithmic suggestions of the best means to make payments
• Using netting to pay off accounts receivable to pay off accounts payable (what is owed to you to pay what you owe). Enables customers to manage cash flow more effectively
• Can fund payment via wire, or credit card, or gain supplier financing via a third party – corporate investors and family offices investing in fund

William Mills Agency Live Blog: FinovateSpring 2013 San Francisco by William Mills III. http://www.williammills.com/blog/live-blog-finovatespring-2013-day-two/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=646536&utm_campaign=0

From Spain, the global B2B payment platform. At first glance it looks like PayPal for businesses-to-businesss transactions. From their web site: LICUOS is the global B2B payment platform where businesses can compensate and pay their debts.

Web-based. Showing validated invoices in the system. “Open payment platform” I think it works and the demo looks good but who is the driver of using this system? The CFO of a SMB? How do they make money? I’m guessing subscriptions or white label from FI’s or other parters. “more than a payments platform”

This seems like something that Intuit or other company should resell as an option for QuickBooks.