SAN FRANCISCO — The biggest players in financial servicestechnology right now might be Google and Facebook. That's what itfelt like at times at the FinovateSpring 2011 showcase last week atthe San Francisco Design Center Concourse.

Rather than the typical trade show format, about 65 presentersgot seven minutes each to showcase their products to an audience ofseveral hundred. Many of those products focused on deliveringenhancements to the banking experience through social mediachannels, primarily Facebook, and geo-location capabilities, ofteninvolving smartphones and Google applications working together.

Numerous iterations of electronic couponing, targeted merchantoffers and person-to-person payment options were presented, alongwith a smattering of security updates, including a $99 biometriceye scanner.

There was also Code Green, which presented its new Ratecastproduct, which allows a credit union to change a lending or depositrate in one location and push that change through multiplemember-facing channels.

JasonGreen, founder of the Gaithersburg, Md., company whoseBranchMap branch locator solution already is on the market, saidbeta deployments of Ratecast are under way, including at the $2billion Virginia Credit Union in Richmond, Va.

During his demonstration, Green updated an auto rate through awebsite and Facebook page and said it could be used with lobbydisplays, Flash and mobile apps using programming libraries andJavascript.

Another vendor, Dwolla, the Des Moines, Iowa, startup that haspartnered with TheMembers Group and Veridian Credit Union to push out its25-cent-per transaction person-to-person solution, presented alocation-based service that uses smartphone location technology togenerate specific targeted offers and services.

The new FiSync service also includes a dashboard aggregator thatextracts actionable data from the transactions generated by membersusing the seamless access to their accounts between individuals,regardless of their banking or credit union account location, andalso with merchants who join the Dwolla network.

Dwolla founder Ben Milne said about 400 businesses already havethe service in Des Moines. “We're placing plastic-basedtransactions with cash-based transactions, and we're driving downthe average age of the members with this new payments environment,”he said.

Raising eyebrows was Intellaegis, an El Dorado Hills, Calif.,company whose masterQueue solution is a Web-based managementcollection workflow that incorporates public records, smartphones,Google maps and other tools to basically function as an electronicskip tracer.

“It might sound kind of 'big brother,' but I can tell you thatfrom a collection standpoint, it's definitely worth looking into, Ithought,” said Howie Wu, vice president of virtual banking at $9.6 billionBECU in Seattle. “Taking all that public data and putting it in oneplace addresses one of the real challenges in collections thesedays. And while it sounds a little intimidating, pay your bills andyou don't have to worry about it, I guess.”

Credit unions had a small but definite presence at the show,with several vendors such as Fiserv, Jack Henry and Intuitpresenting along with the startup innovators. About 30 creditunions also sent staffers.

“I don't think we were necessarily looking for any one thinghere, but we really want to stay aware of what's going on in thefinancial technology space, and there's a big push for us to bemore innovative,” said Kyle Welsh, vice president of technologyservices at BECU.

“We've always been innovative in the past but we're going to getin front of all the mobile and social things going on and be alittle less fearful about what things may and may not work as anindustry,” he said.

Actionable solutions were something thatexecutives from the $1.5 billion Baxter Credit Union in suburbanChicago were looking out for during their stay.

“We're always looking at what interesting new service might beout there to help us better serve our members, especially when itcomes to the technology we don't yet have that we need to servethat next generation,” said Carey Price, vice president of salesand services at the Vernon Hills, Ill., CU

Her colleague, Online Services Director Scott Schmidt, added,“It's always good to see what's coming down the pike. PFM [personalfinancial management] is an area I think is really hot right now.We don't have a lot of resources, just like a lot of credit unionsright now, so we need to see how we can provide and support theseoptions for our members.”

Other attendees said that credit unions need to move beyondtheir comfort zone and adopt innovative new products to stayrelevant to members, and they need to cooperate along the way.

“We need to keep looking for ways to take creative, new ideasthat are emerging in other industries around us and make themcredit-union related,” said Kim Vu, vice president of communityrelations at the $1.5 billion Technology CU in San Jose, Calif.“Especially when it comes to connecting lifestyles and financialservices. We need to move beyond our comfort zone, beyond our fourwalls.”

She pointed to person-to-person payments as an example, aservice that she said her credit union is considering how best todeploy. That's also a topic under consideration at the $2.9 billionMountain America Credit Union in Salt Lake City, where a decisionis brewing whether to deploy a branded service from a small vendoror use the highly recognized PayPal service, said Todd Lindemann,assistant vice president of electronic and card services.

“Listening to our members, they're telling us that basicallythey want us to be technologically equivalent to the large banks,and how do you do that? That's the million-dollar question,”Lindemann said. “Working together as an industry, credit unionshave the numbers and ability to take advantage of all these newdevelopments.”

Lindemann and Vu were at the Finovate show as part of a workinggroup led by Denise Gabel, chief innovation officer of the FileneInstitute, one of Finovate's partners in the spring show.

“You see a lot of collaboration and co-development going on hereand you have to think about how you can bring these kinds of newinnovations to your credit union, not the other way around. It'snot just about how they can bring these things to you,” Gabel said.“It's flipping around the way we normally think about thesethings.”

More traditional offerings served up through the latest indelivery channels also were presented. For instance, Jack Henry& Associates debuted its Margin Maximizer Interactive solutionfrom its ProfitStars division at the show.

The company called it a cloud-based version of its MarginMaximizer Suite loan and deposit pricing solution now in place atabout 350 financial institutions. While still offering control andconsistency in the pricing processes–aimed at maximizing netinterest income and identifying growth opportunities–the new hostedversion reduces IT demands while using Microsoft Silverlight andAzure technologies to “deliver a rich and dynamic Internet userexperience” to the back office staff charged with using it.