Hundreds of startups from over 60 countries worldwide applied for one of the ten places on the programme, which will be run from the London Escalator, an open innovation space designed to support entrepreneurial endeavor. Each of the teams will also receive $20,000 seed funding from programme partner Techstars.

The ten companies will be guided through the process of growing and developing their businesses and for the first time, they will also have access to a catalogue of Barclays APIs and data, beyond only the Barclays Pingit API, to help them build and refine their business models.

Derek White, Barclays chief design officer, says: “We recognise that to drive innovation within Barclays, we also need to look outside of the organisation and embrace the innovative start-up ecosystem. As the second cohort kicks off in London, I’m looking forward to working with these start-ups as we shape and co-create future financial technology. Many of the teams enrolling today are exploring technologies that could particularly help transform the ways banks operate so I’m keen to see how their ideas develop.”

The intensive programme will culminate in a public Demo Day in London in June. Applications for the New York-based version of the programme are also open now.

The Ten Companies:

• Basestone - Provides cloud-based collaboration on major construction projects, creating data streams from the field that impact loan and insurance pricing.
• Blocktrace - Provides an immutable ledger for diamond ownership & related transaction history verification for insurance companies, claimants & law enforcement.
• Godesic - Provides a project management platform for IT infrastructure change-over in the financial services industry.
• LiquidLandscape - Provides data visualization for creating linked, immersive data exploration environments used by traders.
• Origin - Provides a new marketplace for large corporations and institutional investors, using technology to facilitate direct debt and bond issuance.
• PQ Solutions - Provides cyber security that uses cutting edge encryption techniques designed to beat attacks by quantum computers.
• Ravelin - Provides data science and machine learning with a merchant’s fraud profile to deliver pin-point accurate online fraud detection.
• Safello - Provides a Europe-focused Bitcoin exchange with plans to expand into payments.
• Stockfuse - Provides a gaming platform that quantifies talent through simulation, currently used by banks to identify and find future trading employees.