Innotribe London Startup Challenge winners announced

Three early-stage startups and two growth-stage innovators have been announced as the winners of SWIFT Innotribe’s London Startup Challenge

The European final of SWIFT Innotribe’s annual Startup Challenge saw 15 promising fintech and financial services startups present their businesses to an audience of financial industry executives and early-stage investors.

Innotribe is SWIFT’s initiative to enable collaborative innovation in financial services. At last week’s event, held at Level39, the audience picked three early-stage startup finalists and two growth-stage innovators as winners.

Winners

The three early-stage startup finalists are Azimo, which uses mobile and social technology to transform how economic migrants send money back home; Kwanji, which makes it easier for SMEs to make and receive international business payments; and Paymandate, which offers a solution to efficiently manage online mandates and contracts with end-customers.

The two growth-stage innovator finalists are Virtual Piggy, a global payment-enabling service that facilitates online spending for under-18s, and Waratek, which virtualises Java at software level in the financial industry.

Sibos 2013 final

The five winning companies will now on to compete against finalists from Singapore and New York at SWIFT’s annual Sibos conference, held in Dubai this September.

“London was a great start to the 2013 Startup Challenge, with Level39 acting as the perfect host,” says Matteo Rizzi, co-founder of Innotribe. “All the pitches were of the highest quality and the finalists can be proud of their achievements – we wish them the best of luck at Sibos.”

The London Startup Challenge was the first of three regional challenges to be held in 2013 and was sponsored by Invest NI, HP, Level39 and Sberbank. The Singapore and New York Startup Challenges will be held on May 16 and June 13 respectively.

Rizzi adds: “We’re now in the second full year of the Startup Challenge and it’s great that we’re seeing our network of industry professionals grow. It’s a compliment to the Challenge, which I hope will continue to give some great businesses the platform they need in the industry.”