Looking for the
The winning companies, which have just been announced by the accelerator, are mostly not out-and-out startups: seven out of 10 of them are already earning revenues and between them, the firms have raised €6m of finance. Nevertheless, these are all young businesses with no profile to speak of.
Nektarios Liolios, managing director of Startupbootcamp, says the accelerator has left no stone unturned in its search for the 10 finalists. It’s interviewed more than 400 fintech companies on four continents. “We’re confident that the 10 teams selected represent the very best that the financial services and technology industries have to offer,” Liolios insists.
One theme emerging in the list is that several of the start-ups are focusing on extending financial services to low-income or otherwise disadvantaged customers. However, the 10 are a diverse bunch, offering both business-to-business and business-to-consumer services.
“I consider these startups as the pilot boats for the financial industry,” says Harrie Vollard, innovation director at Rabobank, one of the competition’s sponsors. “They’re solving real problems or creating new opportunities for customers.”
In other words, watch this space. The 10 fintech stars of the future are:
Creditable (South Africa)
Creditable enables credit unions, lenders, businesses and individuals to give loans to their customers, employees, suppliers and family professionally in just five minutes. It aims to make credit more affordable, accessible, transparent and inclusive, and to re-imagine and re-engineer societal behaviour around credit. The team is led by Sechaba Ngwenya, a former banker turned developer and advocate for fair credit.
Epiphyte (United States)
Epiphyte is deploying enterprise software that allows the pre-installed systems of financial institutions to "talk" to crypto-financial networks, while operating within existing regulatory frameworks. Epiphyte provides banks and financial institutions with the expertise and tools to increase margins and provide new services, by taking advantage of of cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation.
FriendlyScore (Poland)
FriendlyScore creates credit scorecards based on big data from Facebook. Using the Facebook API, it aims to become the ‘Klout’ for creditworthiness. The team is made up of Maciej Dolinski and Krzysztof Sornat, who previously ran payday loan company Kasomat.pl. and Emilian Siemsia, a JAVA/PHP developer.
Insly (Estonia)
Insly is a beautifully designed cloud-based tool for insurance salespeople, enabling them to manage sales from start to finish. There is no upfront investment and the web-based service needs no installation. Insly is already used by more than 60 insurance market leaders across six different countries, handling millions of transactions.
InvoiceSharing (Netherlands)
InvoiceSharing is a financial services marketplace which enables 100 per cent free electronic invoicing. It delivers higher revenues, lower costs and better cash flow for its customers by combining user-friendly, innovative and smart financial services into one place where everybody can participate and benefit.
Liquity (United Kingdom)
Liquity is an online marketplace matching buyers and sellers of private company shares. It provides private company directors with a comprehensive suite of shareholder and equity management services and matches investors with private company shareholders who want to sell some or all of their equity. It facilitates complete deals, from introduction to transaction completion including escrow and custodial services.
M-Change (Kenya)
M-Changa’s proprietary technology enables anyone to quickly and inexpensively manage a remote fundraiser. Registration of a fundraiser via mobile phone or online takes only a few seconds. Immediately, users receive a personalised M-Changa account number and can start accepting mobile money and credit card donations.
milliPay Systems (Switzerland)
milliPay is a Swiss micropayment startup, that makes online payments as simple as browsing. It allows users to pay with a single click, across the web and on any device, whatever the amount. milliPay's innovative cryptographic protocol helps processing payment transactions extremely secure and efficient.
Tab (United States)
Founded in 2012, Tab integrates with existing bank systems to enable real-time social payment networking. Friends can connect payment cards together to share purchases on a single card. Tab stores payment card tokens on file, splitting the total when any merchant charges a tab-enabled card, and charging everyone their respective portions dynamically, automatically, and instantly. https://tabwith.me/
Up Investments (United Kingdom)
Up Investments enables people to find, manage and grow all of their P2P and equity crowdfunded investments, all through one free and simple platform. It’s the world's first crowdfunding supermarket where shoppers can browse, buy and manage investments from all the leading crowdfunding brands. https://investup.co/Beta-Landing
