The companies will battle it out to win US$10,000 at the Fintech Finals 2018

At the end of January, Hong Kong is hosting its local startup event called StartmeupHK Festival and as part of the celebration, 24 startups will be pitching for a chance to win US$10,000.

The pitching challenge is called Fintech Finals 2018 and it is run by Next Money, a fintech focussed community builder. This is the third edition of the event.

The startups will get four minutes to pitch in the following categories: Best Early Stage Startup, Best Growth Stage Startup and Best Mature Stage Startup. There will also be a Best In Show prize.

Let’s meet the competitors!

Ablepay — Norway

People want to use mobile phones for payments, but not every terminal can accept this form of transfer and a lot of businesses can’t afford the upgrade. Ablepay is a solution that upgrades any payment terminal into mobile phone payment platform.

It uses a smart chip that allows companies to leverage bluetooth technology and allow another option to accept money.

AgUnity — Singapore

A blockchain-based company, AgUnity wants to use the distributed ledger to create a validation system for co-operative farmers. Typically co-ops operate in an informal economy — agreements made on paper, verbally or community agreements.

According to AgUnity, this provides an opportunity for corruption in an industry that helps developing nations greatly improve their efficiency. With the blockchain, farmers will have a secure place to make sure the co-op is running in a fair and optimal manner.

Baasis — Singapore

Baasis is a digital solution for know-your-customer (KYC) protocols in Southeast Asia. The company has built an API that runs security checks (like documentation, facial recognition, address validation and eSignatures) in 132 countries. Baasis also updates its regulatory framework one per month to keep up-to-date with the latest laws.

The startup has been validated by the central banks of Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.

Beehive — United Arab Emirates

Beehive is a peer-to-peer lending platform and claims to be the first of its kind in the MENA region. It works like most P2P platforms in the sense that it allows SMEs to crowdsource investment capital while setting up a system to provide nice returns for investors. Its selling point is that it is regulated, so thus more trustworthy.

The company claims to have over 5000 investors on board and 200 companies.

Blue Pool — Hong Kong

Blue Pool is an asset intelligence tool meant to pinpoint signals that will help asset managers increase their revenue. A major pitch of the company is that it mines data from Chinese-language financial services (including news and social media) to help provide insights to people who don’t read Chinese.

It is hoping to integrate its machine learning and data analytics tools into the financial services industry.

Bluezelle — Singapore

Bluezelle wants to incentivise people to help solve a pain point of the decentralised network — the necessity to build apps using centralised cloud computing. Bluezelle wants to incentivise people to share some of their computer’s data space in return for tokens.

Also Read: VR eye-tracking, blockchain money remittance, conversational AI startups win K-Global Demo Day

The point is by spreading nodes around the globe, it eliminates a single point of failure and thus strengthens the security and performance of blockchain-based apps.

Caulis — Japan

A cloud-based fraud detector that helps detect identify theft according to a person’s online behaviour. It has a proprietary risk detection engine that it claims is significantly more affordable than the competition.

Caulis refers to the product as a ‘security solution as a service’ and provides a shared database that help crowdsource malicious users amongst its clients.

Checkbox — Australia

Checkbox wants to help “cure corporate amnesia” by providing a simple solution for internal experts to leave their knowledge for future employees. It is built around standardisation and makes it easy to add documents, processes and insights.

If an employee has been with a company for decades, they have a wealth of knowledge that oftentimes gets forgotten. Checkbox wants to help these people put pen to paper.

Chekk — Hong Kong

A member of Facebook’s first-ever incubator, Chekk wants to be an all-in one digital identity. The goal of Chekk is to take all of that digital data spread across the internet and bring it into one location. It would help people keep track of ID information, manage their online presence and message contacts all via the app.

Fingopay — UK

Fingopay is a hardware device that allows people to buy goods with their fingers. It doesn’t track fingerprints, but rather the underlying vein structure within our fingers. It is an external device that companies would provide as an option for securely paying for goods.

Users need to register their credit card and finger identity with Fingopay, but then they can use it wherever companies offer the service.

Fundaztic — Malaysia

Fundaztic is a P2P lending company based in Malaysia. It targets a fairly low amount of money, thus opening its services to micro-SMEs (usually referring to one or two people shops) and startups. The target range is MYR20,000 (US$4,900) to MYR200,000 (US$49,000). The repayment period should be between three and 36 months.

The company offers an interest rate of 5.88 per cent a year.

Future Flow — UK

Future flow maps the path of money in the financial system to help people pinpoint trends. It helps both regulators and financial workers because they can make policy or analysis decisions based on what the data provides. It also can help pinpoint economic crimes by highlighting disparities in the market.

identitii — Australia

Instead of customer information, inentitii wants to provide companies with transaction-level information. Dubbing it know-your-transaction information, the startup thinks it can change the way banks think about its transaction business.

It attaches rich information to payment messages so banks can discover granular information about what is happening within their transactions. It should help banks trade compliance information, document trades and streamline information.

Jumper.ai — Singapore

Jumper.ai wants to be the underlying infrastructure for people selling goods via social media. It uses hashtags so customers can buy things by replying to keywords and product hashtags. The service also walks users through the payment process and helps sellers manage orders.

Also Read: Malaysia’s online gold trading startup HelloGold wins TechMatch ASEAN 2017</strong>

It automates the messaging process and hopes to dramatically improve the efficiency of selling goods on platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

Lattice Limited — Hong Kong

Lattice Limited is an investment portfolio enhancement tool. It tries to sift through the noise to offer the best possible tactics for people to take to achieve their investment goals. It aims to help people make smarter decisions through transparency by providing feedback on how certain choices will impact a portfolio.

The product targets fund managers, not mom-and-pop investors.

No Password — USA

No Password is a multi-authentication security startup that wants to introduce password-free authentication protocols. It integrates all of the latest biometric technology by offering services for facial recognition, iris scanning, fingerprint ID and voice activation.

The goal is by seamlessly integrating all of these security measures, it will lessen the likelihood of a user losing control of their information.

PorftFolioQuest — Singapore

PortFolioQuest is a talent management and certification company that helps people become better portfolio managers through an in-depth course. The company is incubated by BankersLab, a financial education firm. It is a B2B product that builds its client list from banks, credit bureaus and financial sector vendors.

For example, the company will take people through real world scenarios and help them learn by allowing them to manage a virtual portfolio.

Sales Arm — United Arab Emirates

A digital sales tool that acts as a “personal assistant” to salespeople and allows them to manage their individual accounts. It offers real time tracking of information like pipeline management, geo-tracking and target achievements. It can also capture and store business card information so people can keep track of all their contacts on the go.

Scalend — Singapore

A big data company that wants to help people make data-driven decisions. It will combine important data, cleanse the information and provide predictive insights. It does this by leveraging a company’s existing IT infrastructure.

It also helps companies analyse their e-commerce vertical. For example, it has a full-blown merchant dashboard that helps companies better understand their sales situation. Finally, it has a customer analytics platform that goes beyond Google Analytics.

Searchlink — Hong Kong

Searchlink uses machine learning to help clean and optimise an the back-end of enterprise corporations. It takes files that are typical of any company and classifies them for sorting into a structured format. This helps with content mapping and can make typical tasks significantly more efficient.

The company targets a wide-range of industries, from health to financial services and even the public sector.

Sherlock Garden — Israel

A cognitive software that detects internal incidents of policy breach, breaking compliance guidelines, ethical concerns and violations of confidentiality agreements. It uses AI technologies like natural language processing, cluster computing and data stream to help executive teams monitor what is happening within their company. The goal is to spot potential scandals before they explode.

Smarttbot — Brazil

Smarttbot is a robo-investment company that automates investments for the stock exchange.

Trade Ledger — Australia

An end-to-end lending company that helps facilitate a variety of loan applications and tools. It can help with anything from micro-financing to supply chain funding. Its value lies in cashflow solutions that allow companies to navigate their loan situation while making sure they still have working capital. It also eliminates intermediaries.

Xencio — China

Xencio is a cashflow management startup that helps visualise a company’s situation so they can spot risks before they become problems. The goal is that it can facilitate planning which means companies will be able to more efficiently deploy their cash. Xencio also has proven itself as an effective means to detect suspicious transactions within a company.

—
Copyright: leeyiutung / 123RF Stock Photo

The post Meet the 24 global startups competing at Fintech Finals 2018 in Hong Kong appeared first on e27.