So how was Money2020’s Finovate-like LaunchPad360 event-within-the-event that presented startups in six-minute sessions?

It was hosted, very gracefully and charmingly considering the multiple technical glitches, by Matt Harris, managing director of Bain Capital Ventures. Nine companies presented Tuesday; six more presented Wednesday.

A roundup:

SimplyTapp led off with its hosted-secure-element mobile payment solution. The company stores payment credentials entered by users in the cloud and interacts with the point of sale via NFC. The solution enables card-present transactions in any digital environment, according to the company. The offering is essentially a white-labelled NFC wallet accessible via API.

Loop came next with a startling new Square-like device that communicates with a magstripe reader without making contact. (Note to self: Raise money for a hoax Finovate presentation, then flee to Mexico.) Loop is supposed to work at 90% of POSes and a video of the technology in action was impressive. A dongle, called the Loop fob, provides a spot for scanning a card, then beams the information to a magstripe reader. The fob sells for $34 and the project is now live on Kickstarter. Deals and offers are also part of the platform, but what about the data?

Subledger was slammed with technical difficulties during the demo portion of its presentation, but the accounting solution, accessible via API, allows accounting capabilities to built into apps. The example shown was a system that logged micropayments for a media company that charged $0.02 per page read. Subledger logged the information and tracked cash balances in real time. Accounts are kept over time in an “audit-friendly trail.”

Capillary Technologies is an established player in the customer relationship management space. Working with 10,000 stores, including those of major brands such as Puma and Marks & Spencer, Capillary appears to be doing just fine. Users check into the app using Facebook and when they show up at the point of sale, the merchant has his payment and loyalty data onscreen. This helped lift merchant revenue some 4% in one case, the company said.

FastPay provides loans to small digital businesses. There are many of these around — you’d think every small business in the country would be drowning in cash, but apparently not. Only 15% of SMBs are approved for loans by banks, but 65% by small lenders, which usually have proprietary risk models as their secret sauce, according to FastPay. “Lending businesses are data businesses,” FastPay said. FastPay’s take is a bit different than some lenders and centers around outstanding invoices. Big players like Proctor & Gamble take 75 days to pay bills, but SMBs need the money now. FastPay floats them that money until it comes in for real. FastPay has done 7,500 transactions, loaned $200,000, and suffered a fail rate of just 9 basis points.

Wisely, formerly known as Glyph, is a startup that has pivoted. Glyph focused on maximizing rewards from cards. Wisely bills itself as a “search engine for the real world,” not a very informative phrase, but meaning the service is something like Yelp based not on user reviews, but on payment data. How many people went to such and such a restaurant, and how much did they spend? Merchants presumably provide the data.

Larky helps users get discounts with its rewards database of 2,000 organizations, such as AAA. Join an organization, load that into Larky, and get proximity alerts when you’re near a reward you qualify for. There are several plays like this out in the space, but the organization angle is odd and interesting. The founders also launched TechStreet, which they sold to Thomson Reuters.

Lenddo (not to be confused with small business lender Lendio) provides loans based on reputation, which is determined via social media and endorsements from friends. Lenddo is also a Finovate veteran, so the company has this format down to a science. “Measure character on a social scale,” the company says. Is that what Facebook does? Hey, 137 friends can’t be wrong. People used as character references for loans often ask for loans in turn — an interesting viral loan strategy.

Omne is a smartphone and hardware-based mobile payments product. A Square-like card reader takes magstripe info from a user’s card and transfers it to a smartphone app. This info is then loaded, via the same reader, onto an Omne (meaning “everything”) card that can store multiple cards’ information. This card works as usual in a magstripe reader. The prototype was shown on video working in the wild. It doesn’t seem like that much of an advantage over simply using the original cards themselves. The Omne app shows location-based rewards and allows P2P transfers.

Session Winner: Loop