The latest crop of Innotribe startups don’t talk about disrupting banks. They want to be built into banks’ software.
Kevin Johnson, Innotribe Startup Challenge manager, said yesterday that while FinTech 1.0 was about disruption, FinTech 2.0 is about the C-word: collaboration.
The fourth and final leg of Innotribe’s 2015 Startup Challenge took place in New York on Thursday. The event was part of Next Bank USA, a two-day FinTech conference. Eight early stage companies and four growth-stage companies competed for spots in the final competition, which will take place at Sibos in Singapore in October. Innotribe is a SWIFT brand focused on innovation in financial services.
True to Johnson’s word, nearly all the Innotribe companies expressed a desire to work with banks.
Here are the early stage companies that presented yesterday:
- CAAAPITAL is a marketplace for midsize companies to secure funding in a manner reminiscent of Kickstarter.
- CrowdTransfer is a peer-to-peer foreign service. A user wishing to exchange euros for pesos is matched with someone who has pesos to sell.
- Hyper is a Ripple competitor, employing blockchain technology to help banks reconcile multiple ledgers.
- LendingStar offers peer-to-peer lending for a particularly difficult class to serve: on-demand workers. The company is focusing first on programmers in Southeast Asia.
- SizeUp offers business intelligence to banks with small business customers. The data helps banks and small businesses understand their markets and competition.
- Token is a payment system for banks that would function like PayPal or Dwolla, but with greater emphasis on security. Users could “Pay with Token” on a bill or shopping cart.
- UCX is an exchange to trade cloud computing power. The company created its own unit to measure computing power, the WAC.
- WoraPay is an open network to power mobile payments. It seems to be deployed to work in the background of an FI or retailer’s offering.
And here are the growth stage companies that presented:
- Yantra Financial had the strongest presentation of the day, showing off an extremely robust risk-scoring solution. CEO Suresh Ramamurthi showed the care that went into pleasing regulators with the solution. After all, if regulators don;t like what you’re doing at the bank, you could be fined — or worse. “The thought of going to jail will keep you up at night,” Ramamurthi said.
- Pendo Systems demoed Extropik, a software layer that can pull from multiple bank systems and make intelligent connections to help provide the coveted 360-degree customer view.
- Payfirma is a payment processing gateway that allows merchants to accept multiple forms of payment across different channels, from in-store to online to mobile to social media.
- Shift is a variation on the all-in-one card concept that looks to differentiate by incorporating cryptocurrency in addition to loyalty cards and debit and credit cards. It did look like an easy way to spend bitcoins just about anywhere that takes card payments.
Attendees voted and the top three early stage companies, and top two growth-stage companies, were declared winners. These companies were Hyper, SizeUp, Token, Payfirma and Pendo. All five will compete again in Singapore in the fall against winners from previous startup challenges, which took place earlier this year.