LAS VEGAS – Startups are playing a larger role in the world of financial services, and that’s clear from the agenda at Money20/20, being held this week in Las Vegas.

This year, startups owned the stage at two sessions: Launchpad360, a Finovate-style demo session, and Launchpad180, a Shark Tank-like session for early-stage companies. A second Launchpad360 session is planned for Tuesday.

The conference also featured a Startup Alley at the back of the exhibition hall, with booths for dozens of new companies.

On a day that saw the long-awaited introduction of Chase Pay, a bank mobile wallet that uses MCX’s CurrentC payment platform, and the cancellation of a keynote presentation from Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Monday’s Launchpad360 session featured the following seven companies:

LendUp, a provider of subprime personal loans, introduced a credit card called the L-Card. FIS partnered with the San Francisco-based startup lender on the initiative. The L-Card mobile app “brings customers closer to the auth screen,” and offers extensive card controls, such as locking it during daylight hours, and prominently displays a customer’s credit score on the home screen.

Benefit demoed a rewards platform in a prepaid mobile wallet that can help support causes customers care about. Stored value cards can be dynamically loaded onto the wallet at the point of sale — the example shown was the clothing store Gap — and participating merchants such as Gap can partner with the platform to give rewards to the charity of the customer’s choice.

PeepTrade is launching a social trading network where users can see the trades of “gurus” and choose to follow them — or not. “Comment, compare, create, community,” said CEO Juan Jose Mendoza Rivera. New investors can learn, and seasoned investors can improve by studying others, he said. The platform looked polished, but the idea sounded awfully familiar.

Groundfloor is  a peer-to-peer real estate investing platform. Users can set automatic deductions from their checking accounts to invest money in a diversified portfolio of loans for purchases and renovations of single-family homes.

SparkGift is a way to give stocks and index funds as gifts. It’s currently a painful process, said SparkGift CEO Peggy Mangot. She then used SparkGift to give a present of $50 worth of Tesla stock to her son. The company is also launching SparkGift for business, for employers to use as bonuses and incentives.

Zebit is a free credit product for the underbanked that leverages paycheck advances and therefore requires employers to be on board. Merchants can sell on the Zebit platform for no-risk loans to customers they might not otherwise get, CEO Michael Thiemann said. This is a dramatic change from the cards Zebit offered a few years back that apparently charged 2,000% interest on short-term loans.

Slide is a mobile wallet for digital gifts. Unspent gift cards are a problem for everybody (except merchants.) Slide gives users control over and visibility into their card balances, to share with friends, and even share what they’re buying or gifting on social media.

Another eight companies will demo Tuesday at Launchpad360, and an overall winner will be chosen from both sessions. No one company wins at Launchpad360 — we all win.

The Launchpad180 session featured 15 startups presenting to a panel of venture capitalists, who (gently) questioned and critiqued them. The companies were:

Bravo, a mobile tipping app
Hyppe, which tracks spending patterns
Sweep, a PFM app for spending more intelligently
Monk, a social borrowing app to get loans from your community
PaySwag, which offers swag for subprime borrowers to pay back loans
Carpe, an E-Z Pass-like platform for paying at drivethrus
CloudWalk, a cloud-based payment platform
AirtimeUp, for sending mobile phone minutes as gifts
Lawnmower, which invests spare change into bitcoin
Fluent, a supply chain management system built on the blockchain
Token, a new kind of payments rail
PureWrist, a wearable payments bracelet with a charity component
Ping Mobile2Credit, an anti-fraud system for payment acquirers and merchants
LiveWire, a fast, inexpensive network of tax preparation professionals
Crnsy is a P2P currency exchange marketplace

Monk won the judges over, while Fluent took the prize for audience favorite. Each received a check for $25,000.

For more insights on the Fintech industry, join us at Bank Innovation Israel, November 10-11 in Tel Aviv. Visit bankinnovationisrael.com for more information.