Over 600 underbanked missionaries, mercenaries, bankers, regulators, entrepreneurs, investors CEOs and middle-managers descended upon New Orleans last week.  Together, they represent the single most qualified and discriminating judge of what is hot and what is not in our sector.  After watching live demonstrations and Twitter-guided Q&A with the finalists in our Core Underbanked Innovation Challenge, our crowd voted in the cloud (literally, the voting was cast by SMS and compiled in real-time) for the most innovative product serving the underbanked in the US today.  And the winner is…. Sanjaya!  No, the winner is GoalMine, the San Francisco based micro-investment startup run by Rimmy Malhotra and backed by the Sosa’s mPower Labs.  See the official release, and American Banker slide-show and story (which neglected to quote my partner or me, GRMPH!).

The competition was fierce: fintech giant FIS, showed a real-time mobile phone remote deposit of a check into prepaid account – an incredible feat in automating check-cashing through your mobile phone and offering instant access to funds on a prepaid account.  Startup FlexWage demonstrated their payroll card which offers employees access to wages earned, but before payday, for a fixed cost of $5.  For small advance needs, it’s an incredible product.  PayNearMe, I thought, had the best presentation by far, and in 7 minutes acted out how four different underbanked customers could make cash payments for payments ranging from a Progreso Financiero loan to a Ria international remittance.  Four very different, genuinely innovative products and services for the benefit of America’s financially underserved.  Four technology-enabled products that serve an addressable market of tens of millions.  Four examples of how large and small companies are bringing the best and brightest people to improve the lives of the growing bottom of the American economic pyramid.  Four companies we were tremendously proud to show-case as the current cutting edge.

And, by the way, these four were selected from dozens of nominations to which the above applies as well.  Despite the Great Recession and despite regulatory uncertainty our sector is alive with ideas.  Very exciting.

Rimmy (second from right) and his partner, Yaron Ben-Zvi (second from left), accepted the giant prepaid card award of $10,000.  You’ll notice that it expires at the end of this month, so if you see them trying to swipe it through a PCI-compliant credit card swiper presumably somewhere in San Francisco, you may want to give them a hand.  Of applause, that is.