BBVA names Next Bank Europe startup finalists
The finalists will compete at Next Bank Europe in Barcelona
Spanish bank BBVA has named the 20 finalists for the European leg of its financial services startup challenge, BBVA Open Talent, which will feed into the Next Bank Europe conference in Barcelona next month.
The event is part of an initiative called Next Bank Europe, which itself is the European leg of a wider project that covers business innovation and startups in North America, Central and South America and Europe. It is an expansion from the organisation’s efforts last year, which were mainly focused on Spain and Latin America. The focus is on technology and financial services challenges, as well as new ways of thinking about the customer.
Finnovista is also running events in Mexico, where the final of the North American start up competition will be held in October, and in Bogota in Colombia where the Latin American start up challenge final will be held. The events are supported by BBVA and will aim to present 20 of the most promising start ups from the 850 total entrants. Lazero Campos, former chief executive at Swift, is on the advisory board for the Next Bank Europe event.
The finalists chosen for the new banking category of BBVA Open Talent are:
- Cashboard.io, a free investment platform for retail investors
- Ininial, a banking and payment platform for unbanked customers in Turkey;
- FinGenius, a supplier of AI for financial services
- Aire, an alternative credit score platform
- Lendstar, an app for borrowing, collecting, prepay, splitting and sending money
- TransferGo, a remittance service for southern, central and eastern European migrant workers
- Bewa7er, a platform for buying and selling share rights to non-exchange listed companies in Spain
- ClauseMatch, a cloud platform for negotiating trading agreements for derivatives and commodities
- Pollen, a digital receivables financing platform
- ETFmatic, a savings platform based on index funds.
The finalists for the digital life category of BBVA Open Talent are:
- HeyPlease, a mobile app for order, payment and promotions at bars and restaurants
- Counterest, a platform for measuring physical, in-store traffic and behaviour
- Hand-in-Scan, which seeks to reduce hospital infections using education and verification technology
- Wazoku, a crowd platform that aims to help businesses evaluate and select the best ideas
- Watcherenterprises, a smart watch for children, connecting them to their parents
- Smarp, an employee advocacy tool that helps employees share content on social media
- AudioSnaps, a system that takes pictures with sound and embeds it in a standard JPEG file
- CloudDock, a universal adoptor for cloud storage that makes cloud services compatible
- Sedicii, used to identify people without exposing their private information
- Hooptab, a web-based gamification platform for advertisers
The Next Bank project grew out of the Innotribe Startup Disrupt event held in Madrid last year. That event was a partnership between Finnovista and Swift’s Innotribe innovation wing. Swift already had its own similar startup challenge, but it was decided that more needed to be done for the Spanish and Latin American community. The event has since grown and gone global.
“We had a staggering range of applications from very diverse disciplines,” said Reyes Bolumar from BBVA Open Talent. “These included inventive ways to measure credit scores using the power of the crowd, to engage in domestic and cross-border payments using digital technologies and to take control of your investment portfolio online. I look forward to seeing what all the finalists bring to the table in Barcelona!”
Next Bank Europe is the second of three regional events to be held this year, where a winner and runner-up will be selected in each category for each regional edition of BBVA Open Talent. Next Bank Bogota in South America and Next Bank Americas will be held on 4-5 September and 15-16 October respectively.
