The final innotribe session is underway, playing to a really packed crowd.
It's no wonder as this is the startup challenge and innovator pitches, showcasing the work of the 15 most innovative software companies providing solutions to banks in 2012.
That's 15 companies selected from around 450 that applied, so these guys really are the crème de al crème of the companies that are moving and shaking our financial markets.
To get here they underwent a rigorous process of competition.
First they had to be approved as regional competitiors. Then they got to pitch in the regional innotribe meetings that took place in Europe, America or Asia and, from each of the three regional innotribe meetings during the year, one company was voted for by attendees as best startup and one company as top growth company (innovator).
That gave us six finalists.
The remaining companies were then opened to voting online amongst the SWIFT community and the top four votes were then added to the finalists who got to attend the innotribe.
So these guys have already cut the mustard, some would say.
As the companies present at SIBOS, we all get to vote which is the best and a $50,000 prize goes to the top start-up (note that the prize fund comes from sponsors SWIFT, Sberbank, Cisco and Invest Northern Ireland).
This year’s finalists are:
Claveo Software - http://claveo.com/ - providing a simple mobile app that alerts the user whenever anyone logs into their account online and provides an account open or block capability
DemystData - https://demystdata.com/ - provides big data analytics to integrate online, social and internal data in order to provide a more comprehensive profile of customers
Digital Shadows - http://www.digitalshadows.com/ - follows social media commentary in 21 languages and, using semantic analysis, finds out anything that might cause issue for a bank
Funding Options Ltd - http://www.fundingoptions.com/ - simplifying financial management for SMEs by using cloud based accounting services to banking APIs with accounting software
NestEgg - http://www.nesteggfintech.com – provides a white label online wealth management advisory tool for banks to offer to the mass affluent: “a MoneyDesktop for investment accounts”
P2P Cash Technology - http://p2pcash.com/ - provide a free money transfer process to connect the millions of remitters to the billions of unbanked people who use a mobile phone
PhotoPay - http://www.photopay.net/ - turns bills into a payment transaction in a simple photoclick on a smartphone
PlayMoolah - http://www.playmoolah.com/ - a fun online platform to engage kids with banks and the learn financial management through gamification under parental control
Snappay - http://www.snap-pay.com/ - turns any mobile into a point of sale using an app, with no dongle required or complex signup process; it’s just a simple download
XYverify Corp. - http://www.xyverify.com/ - locates whether financial transactions are being made by the customer by geolocating the customer’s mobile through the cloud, and checking that the mobile and transaction are in the same physical place
There are also five growth-stage innovators in the final:
Gust - http://gust.com/ - a global platform for sourcing and managing seed and early-stage equity investments
Lenddo - https://www.lenddo.com/ - a system that mines social media and online communities to assess someone’s trustworthiness
OpenGamma - http://www.opengamma.com/ - an open source quant tool for investment markets trading
Pendo Systems - http://www.pendosystems.com/index.html - a system that provides exception processing and multi-jurisdictional reporting using tax accounting data to assess the risk of countries and companies
The Currency Cloud - http://www.thecurrencycloud.com/ - an end-to-end cloud based cross currency payments service for low cost and transparent transaction processing
The voting is under way with the winner announced in the closing plenary. Can’t wait!
Now off to nick some more goodies from the stands before everything finishes.
UPDATE: PlayMoolah won!
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