Decentralised ledger platform Hyperledger wins SWIFT’s Innotribe Startup Challenge 2015

SWIFT’s Innotribe Startup Challenge 2015, which seeks to recognise some of the world’s top businesses in fintech, has finally concluded with a winner.

US-based decentralised ledger platform Hyperledger — which enables the transferring digital assets — has secured the title of Innotribe Startup Challenge 2015’s top fintech company, walking away with US$50 000.

Forming part of major financial services conference Sibos in Singapore, the event brought together a total of 20 companies — 12 early-stage and eight growth-stage companies — that pitched in front of an audience of industry experts, VCs and representatives from some of the world’s leading financial institutions.

Read more: Here are Africa’s 5 Innotribe Startup Challenge finalists

The final event follows a year of regional showcases in London, Cape Town, Singapore and New York where a total of 60 companies pitched. South Africa’s YueDiligence, Notafy and Uganda’s Iwiafrica were among the chosen top startups.

 

Bravo to @danoprey and the whole @Hyperledger team! Winner of the 2015 Innotribe Startup Challenge #ISCFinale #Sibos pic.twitter.com/607wBAUicv

— Innotribe (@Innotribe) October 14, 2015

 

Read more: Innotribe Startup Challenge announces Africa’s 14 fintech semi-finalists

Below is a list of the 12 early-stage companies that pitched:

YueDiligence offers actionable and light-touch due diligence tool for entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers to assess deal readiness.

Notafy provides secure messaging infrastructure to help companies communicate with their customers via mobile instant messages instead of a costly SMS.

Iwiafrica (or IntelWorld) delivers mobile applications on top of existing mobile wallets to help banks and merchants increase mobile ecommerce.

Pariti helps people to avoid high-interest debt, access fairer rates of credit, and build a more secure financial future by offering tools, guidance and access to low-cost loans.

Revolut allows customers to exchange currencies at interbank rates — send amounts through social networks and spend money with a multi-currency card accepted anywhere.

Sedicii proposes a technology based on the Zero Knowledge Proof Protocol — eliminating the transmission, storage and exposure of private data during authentication or identity verification.

Read more: Innotribe Startup Challenge expects cryptocurrency, payments to be big

Bitspark is a leading crypto-financial services provider for the APAC region — pioneering the world’s first blockchain powered end to end Remittance service in addition to a blockchain auditable feature-rich trading exchange.

Jewel Paymentech is a Singaporean company providing an automated risk management platform for banks and payment facilitators to manage e-commerce merchant risk through predictive analytics.

Trustingsocial is inventing consumer credit rating for emerging markets by applying Big Data and Deep Learning technologies to social, mobile and web data.

Hyper is developing Hyperledger — a distributed ledger platform tailored for financial institutions to help mitigate settlement risk and prevent trade breaks and cut reconciliation costs.

SizeUp provides financial institutions with big data for their small business customers to make smarter decisions through data.

Token helps banks meet the requirements for fast and secure payments by providing an end-to-end payments ecosystem accessible to developers where all transactions are authorised using digital signatures.