Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, announces that Pushfor and Xtremepush won the public and judges’ vote, respectively, at its first ever Dublin Innovation Jam.
The Dublin Innovation Jam is the first of eight competitions to be held across the globe to find the most exciting fintech startups.
The Dublin Innovation Jam, which was hosted together with Bank of Ireland at its Startlab in the centre of the city, saw 13 fintech companies compete for the two prizes on offer. Each of the startups had 7 mins in which to present a live demo of their solution to impress the audience of more than 120 people. Nine of the startups were from Ireland and included Europe’s first money messaging app, Plynk, which last year raised a series A round of over EUR25m.
Pushfor, which won the public vote, is based in the UK and provides a platform across all devices which enables banks to push (rather than send) content so the original file remains secure at the source. All content usage and interaction is tracked in real-time helping banks both comply with regulation and to turn customer interactions into sales opportunities. Xtremepush, which also took part in the competition in 2017, provides an analytics and engagement platform that allows banks to deliver hyper-relevant messaging to customers at crucial times in their user journey.
The two winners will now travel to the Innovation Jam Final, which will be held at the Temenos Community Forum (TCF) on 22-24 May, also in Dublin. Pushfor and Xtremepush will be joined in the final by the winners of the other Innovation Jams which are taking place in Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, London, Geneva, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Miami. There, they will compete in front of a much larger audience of over 1,200 delegates. Last year’s winner was PayKey, the world’s first payment keyboard, while Blue Code, a mobile payments app and scheme, based in Switzerland, walked away with Judges’ Choice.
Commenting on winning the public vote, PushFor CEO Mike Williams, said: “We are delighted to win the Dublin Innovation Jam. We believe our solution solves big compliance issues for banks at the same time as helping them to drive higher engagement and sales through digital channels. With Pushfor, content is fully protected against any misuse and content sharing is highly controlled. The content stays completely under the control of the author, who can track every step of engagement, monitor user behavior and content usage and if necessary pull back the content at any time. It is the right solution for information sharing in the new GDPR world and we are looking forward to showing it to the wider Temenos community at TCF in May.”
Tommy Kearns, CEO of Xtremepush added: “It was great of Temenos to give us another opportunity to compete in the Innovation Jam competition and we are thrilled to win the Dublin jam, on our home soil. We address a very simple challenge for banks. Today, 90% of customers interactions are over digital channels yet only 10% of sales are over digital channels. We address this disconnect by providing a platform that engages consumers, providing a seamless experience across all channels that enables banks not just to convert interactions into sales but continuously improve that conversion rate. We’re looking forward to having a second shot at winning the global Innovation Jam winner prize at TCF.”
Ben Robinson, Chief Strategy Officer at Temenos, commented: “This is the third year that we have run the global Innovation Jam event and it gets bigger and better each time. This year, we’re running eight jams across the world, three more than in 2017. Based on the quality of the pitches in Dublin, I am certain we’ll uncover some amazing fintech solutions. I would like to give my special thanks to Bank of Ireland for their support with the event and for being such active members of the MarketPlace community.”