The 15 most innovative firms providing banking solutions

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
- 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!