Barclays Africa Group, one of Africa\u2019s largest financial services group with close to 12 million customers, will collaborate with nine financial technology (fintech) companies to rapidly explore promising new technology-based solutions that could prompt significant improvements for consumers and in bank services.<\/p>\n
Barclays Africa will collaborate with fintech companies including Abe.ai from the US, Kapitalwise from the US, as well as FOMO Group and Byte Money from South Africa to test the potential to scale up and roll-out the solutions across the ten countries where Barclays Africa Group has operations. Others include Howler, FlexPay, Spatialedge, Sun Exchange and Avenews-GT.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe solutions created by these companies are among the top innovations in the fintech space in the world right now,\u201d said Yasaman Hadjibashi, Chief Creation Officer at Barclays Africa Group. \u201cAny of these solutions could have the potential to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the financial services sector in Africa,\u201d said Hadjibashi, who leads Barclay Africa Group\u2019s innovation agenda.<\/p>\n
Demo day<\/strong><\/p>\n The fintech companies are among ten businesses that participated in the 2017 Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars, a worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. The 13-week mentorship driven accelerator programme, hosted at Rise, Barclays Africa Group\u2019s fintech innovation hub in Cape Town during May to July, follows the renowned Techstars curriculum which comprises intensive networking and development initiatives. The experience is enhanced through the involvement of local and global mentors, including industry experts and Barclays Africa executives.<\/p>\n The ten companies showcased their solutions during a \u2018demo day\u2019 held in Cape Town. The participating companies were selected in a robust and competitive process that attracted applications from more than 50 countries. Barclays Africa Group is exploring potential agreements with further participants.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s demo day, to an audience of investors and corporate partners, showcased both the breadth and depth of the innovations happening here in Africa. I\u2019m excited by the calibre and potential that these companies have to offer,\u201d said Yossi Hasson, Managing Director of Techstars (Barclays Accelerator).<\/p>\n Staying ahead of the curve<\/strong><\/p>\n The financial services industry has experienced significant disruption over the past few years as agile fintech startup companies introduced solutions that brought step-changes to customer convenience and efficiency. Barclays Africa Group is staying ahead of the curve by embracing startups and their agile approach, seeking out their disruptive thinking and challenging the norm.<\/p>\n Rise, Barclays Africa Group\u2019s fintech hub in Cape Town, was established to foster innovation and create the future of financial services together with Rise centres in New York, London, Mumbai, Tel Aviv and others. The global Rise network is a community of the world\u2019s brightest startups, experts, investors and colleagues. The network offers startups access to an exclusive network of curated experts, businesses and partners so they can work together, learn together and solve the biggest industry challenges together.<\/p>\n \u201cInnovation is the powerful collaboration of bright humble minds that are continuously originating, testing and shipping new customer-centric products,\u201d said Hadjibashi.<\/p>\n Participants in the 2017 Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars<\/strong><\/p>\n Abe.ai<\/strong> Howler<\/strong> Spatialedge<\/strong> Sun Exchange<\/strong> FOMO Group<\/strong> Avenews-GT<\/strong> Byte Money<\/strong> FlexPay<\/strong> eCOIDA<\/strong> Kapitalwise<\/strong> Barclays Africa Group, one of Africa\u2019s largest financial services group with close to 12 million customers, will collaborate with nine financial technology (fintech) companies to rapidly explore promising new technology-based solutions that could prompt significant improvements for consumers and in bank services. Barclays Africa will collaborate with fintech companies including Abe.ai from the US, Kapitalwise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":14053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[565,399,19],"tags":[385,772,1813,679],"class_list":["post-14051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking-finance","category-more-news","category-regional-news","tag-africa","tag-banking-and-finance","tag-barclays-africa","tag-fintech"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAbe AI is a revolutionary AI platform that eliminates friction within customer interactions, helping banks provide superior customer service at scale while reducing operational costs.<\/p>\n
\nHowler is the powerful tech platform that event organisers use to optimise the planning, promotion, management and control of their events, and to create fault-free, frictionless, seamless guest experiences and \u2018moments that matter\u2019.<\/p>\n
\nSpatialedge \u2013 proprietary technology as well as wholly owned spatial and consumer data sets are used to drive precision targeted engagements with existing and prospective clients, growing both the customer base and customer lifetime value by enabling critical customer acquisition and retention activities to become data driven.<\/p>\n
\nSun Exchange enables anyone in the world to own and lease solar panels to power African businesses and communities to earn a solar-powered income. Sun Exchange closes a huge gap for commercial scale solar energy finance across Africa. The underpinning technology that enables this is blockchain, utilised to enable global micro-investing using autonomous secure smart-contracts.<\/p>\n
\nFOMO Group consists of two subsidiaries; FOMO Travel and FOMO Payments. FOMO Travel is a proven business which allows people to travel debt-free and conscience-free. FOMO Payments is taking the same model to the entire travel industry by allowing a wider scope of travellers to use the gamified, lay-buy, interest-free payment solution with any supplier.<\/p>\n
\nAvenews-GT is a decentralised ecosystem for agricultural trade that provides a digital trading platform based on blockchain technology to enable verified farmers and cooperatives to transact directly with agri-buyers such as retailers and manufacturers to reduce distribution costs, create financial security and increase supply chain transparency.<\/p>\n
\nByte Money is a receipting and allocation specialist servicing sub-Saharan Africa. The platform enables secure, verified and authenticated \u2018agent collections\u2019 and real time reporting for the microfinance industry.<\/p>\n
\nFlexPay Technologies offers an automated, reliable and accurate lay-buy purchase platform that increases merchant\u2019s sales by enabling customers to afford goods and services via convenient flexible payments. With both online and offline functionality, consumers are enabled to make payments towards the intended item for purchase over a stipulated timeframe.<\/p>\n
\neCOIDA is a web-based platform, bringing together employers, employees, medical service providers (MSPs) and the insurer, in a real time, seamless and integrated process that conforms to the full spectrum of statutory and policy requirements in the injury on duty market space.<\/p>\n
\nKapitalwise disrupts the way millennial investors invest in capital markets by simplifying the process through the automation of investment decisions. They empower financial enterprises with a simple and easy-to-use digital platform that will nudge users to make frequent but small investments. \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"