Licuos named Spain’s best startup at Next Bank Madrid
Spanish startup Licuos challenged eight rivals in Madrid to win the Startup Disrupt competition
Spanish business to business payment platform Licuos has been named as the winner of Innotribe Startup Disrupt, a competition to find the most innovative financial services startups in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.
The competition, held at Next Bank Madrid conference on 25 June, was supported by a host of Spanish institutions including Spanish start-up support organisation Finnovista, Nasdaq, and Swift’s Innotribe innovation wing. Approximately 40 firms registered for the event, of which nine were chosen for the final. A panel of judges, including Andrés Fontao and Fermin Bueno from Finnovista, Nektarios Liolios from Innotribe, Gary Stewart from Wayra and the audience as the fifth judge, made the final decision.
Licuos was created to help firms settle their commercial debts. The platform provides netting, payment and funding services for accounts receivable and payable for business. The idea is to allow customers to reduce their dependence on the traditional banking system and ultimately free up cash for use elsewhere.
The platform uses algorithms in an attempt to automatically generate the most efficient netting, payment and funding proposals possible. The netting on Licuos happens without the need for the customer to move cash manually. Meanwhile, the platform also allows buyers to borrow money from a liquidity fund owned by private investors, so that they can make payment early. Licuos is compatible with SAP, Oracle and other ERP systems.
“The Innotribe Startup Disrupt is a great initiative, whereby we were finally able to pitch on our home turf,” said Iker de los Rios, chief executive at Licuos. “We’ve spent the greater part of the last six months travelling across the US and Europe pitching our business to potential partners and investors, and it is satisfying to know there is as much, if not more interest in fintech here in Spain.”
The other eight competitor companies consisted of Bull4All, an online platform that offers investors financial advice and strategies; Captio, an app that helps companies manage expenses; Fintonic, a free online personal finance service; and Glownet, a cashless payment and event management tool. They also included Kantox, a marketplace where companies can exchange foreign currencies without using a bank; swaPay, a mobile payment method based on QR codes and NFC; Tradeslide, a gamified trading platforms that allows traders to have their skills independently validated, and TwitterTransfer, an application that allows money transfers between individuals via Twitter.
Next Bank Madrid was supported by Wayra, a Latin American and European start-up funding firm created by Telefónica, as well as the IE Business School in Madrid. However, the event in Madrid is part of a wider drive to reach out across the entire Latin world – especially Latin America. Sao Paulo in Brazil, Santiago in Chile, Mexico City in Mexico and Bogota, Colombia have already been shortlisted for future events. As the winner of the Innotribe Startup Disrupt, Licuos will receive a demo slot at the Innotribe space at the Sibos conference in Dubai in September.
