As part of Sibos in Boston, Swift's annual conference, the Innotribe Startup Challenge Grand Finale will take place on 1 October. This year over 280 companies applied to the Startup Challenge, with 47 companies selected to enter the competition. During 3 regional showcases in London, Singapore and New York, these companies presented their business ideas to an audience of industry experts, global innovators, and investors, who selected the top 15 companies - 9 startups and 6 innovators - to advance to the Grand Finale at Sibos.
The nine early-stage startup finalists are:
- CurrencyTransfer, the world's first online marketplace matching businesses with the most competitive international payment quotes
- Ensygnia and its patented Onescan app and platform which create a trusted environment for users to share a verified identity as well as personal and financial details
- Epiphyte, and its first product cBridge, providing banks with the technology for real-time international transactions at reduced costs
- Lending Robot, automating loan selection and investment in Peer Lending by using machine-learning algorithms and real-time scoring to select and fund loans
- Lendstar, a financial network combining social interaction, high usability, mobility and soon real-time transactions via a mobile wallet and a prepaid credit card
- Sixscape and their Identity Registration Protocol Server combining user directory, automatic IPv6 address registration, and PKI
- Standard Treasury, building and maintaining API Banking platforms for some of the world's largest banks, enabling their customers to programmatically interface with their accounts
- Stockspot, Asia's first completely online investment adviser and fund manager using algorithms to match clients to a personalised portfolio of indexed stocks, bonds and commodities
- TransferGo and its platform enabling digital international money transfer without actually transferring the sender's money internationally
The six growth-stage innovator finalists are:
- Advanced Merchant Payments, enabling financial institutions to profitably offer unsecured loans to their small business customers utilising "alternative lending" technologies and methodologies
- Fastacash, providing a global platform to enable users to transfer value along with digital content through any social network and messaging platform, enabling secure and cost-effective transactions
- Juntos Finanzas creating automated engagement platforms that help banks and mobile money providers successfully and profitably serve newly banked customers in emerging markets
- Mambu which is a cloud banking platform that enables financial institutions to launch loan and deposit products into untapped markets without the costs of their legacy IT infrastructure
- MatchMove with its Wallet aimed at the 500+ million 'uncarded' smartphone users in emerging countries connecting daily to the internet but unable to make purchases
- Wallaby Financial and their app and intelligent card recommendation systems enabling a dynamic real-time bidding platform for banks to acquire transactional spend for consumers through micro targeting
Innotribe is committed to help SWIFT member institutions and the wider banking community, identify and address innovation trends and opportunities within the financial industry.
Fabian Vandenreydt, Head of Markets Management, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute at SWIFT, says: "Over the last few years, we have seen an emergence of new talent and innovation within the financial industry. Since it started in 2011, the Innotribe Startup Challenge has provided a huge opportunity to our community to understand and support this innovation. We also helped nurture the talent of numerous startups representing the most important up and coming products and services for the financial sector."
Attendance at the Innotribe Startup Grand Finale is open to all Sibos participants. Sponsored by HP, Invest NI, Level39, and SAP, the event will be followed by a reception during which we will announce the names of the 2014 winners: 1 early-stage startup and 1 growth-stage innovator that is most likely to impact the financial industry. A cash prize of USD 50,000 will also be awarded to the winning startup.
During the Sibos week, 17 sessions will be run in the Innotribe space, including the Grand Finale. These sessions will provide powerful insights on innovation to all Sibos delegates and introduce them to the emerging trends poised to transform the financial service industry. Our focus this year: cryptocurrencies, network effects, innovation capabilities, and the fintech ecosystem itself.