Barclays opens Europe’s largest fintech site in London
Rise London
Barclays has opened its new open innovation site, Rise London, in Shoreditch – hailed as Europe’s “largest co-working space dedicated to fintech”.
Rise will be a place for start-ups, corporate clients and others to co-create new products, services and platforms. The bank also has six other innovation sites in New York, Manchester (UK), Mumbai, Cape Town, Vilnius and Tel Aviv. In each location, it operates multiple programmes for open innovation, including its Barclays Accelerator.
Jes Staley, Barclays group chief executive, says technology “must be a core competency of a global financial institution, and we intend to be a leader in the industry”.
He adds that last week, Barclays announced the creation of 750 new jobs in its UK technology centres.
Rise London will house more than 40 firms, along with banking and technology teams from Barclays. It will play host to more than 200 hours of learning, workshops, hackathons and networking on a monthly basis.
The bank adds that in 18 months, Rise has completed 70+ deals between Barclays and fintech companies. Rise is also helping internal start-ups within Barclays to scale.
