Ukheshe, Mindbridge named winners of SA Reserve Bank’s global fintech hackcelerator

The SA Reserve Bank (Sarb) has named SA’s uKheshe and Canada’s MindBridge Analytics the winners of its 2019 Global Fintech Hackcelerator @ Southern Africa competition.

The global fintech hackcelerator, which is sponsored by KPMG Matchi, is a fintech acceleration programme that creates a platform for fintech firms to demonstrate their innovative solutions to the complex financial challenges in the Southern African region.

The Reserve Bank said in a statement yesterday that it views such global fintech acceleration programmes as enabling processes to embrace fintech, while affording the opportunity for regulators to appraise benefits and risks in a balanced manner.

The Reserve Bank said that 95 fintech firms from across the globe applied for the hackcelerator

In all, 95 fintech firms from across the globe applied for the hackcelerator.

The entries were validated by KPMG Matchi and scored by a team of 24 industry executives from Absa, Capitec, Discovery, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), FirstRand Group, Investec, Liberty Group, National Treasury, Nedbank, SA Reserve Bank, Standard Bank and the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA).

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank and KPMG Matchi announced the top 12 fintech firms that showcased their solutions yesterday at a demo day. They included Ctrl, E4 Strategic, Emerge Analytics, Hydrogen, Nimbla, Paycode, Sedicii, Strands, Tautona AI and Wealth Migrate (see this story).

The two winners were selected by a panel of judges from the Reserve Bank, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), KPMG Singapore as well as local financial industry experts.

Johannesburg-based Ukheshe enables informal merchants, traders, street vendors and casual labourers to accept real-time digital payments from cardholders or different payment apps, without needing to have a bank account.

In April, the startup announced that it had raised $500 000 in seed funding on a valuation of R100-million from FiTech Ventures and Ocean on 76 (see this story).

The fintech startup was founded last year by Jason Penton and Clayton Hayward (pictured above).

MindBridge Analytics’ AI Auditor platform automates the ingestion and analysis of data, as well as learns from user interaction to identify fraud.

The two startups will each receive:

• A stipend towards travel expenses to attend the 2019 Singapore Fintech Festival
• An opportunity to pitch their solution live during the Hackcelerator Demo Day at the 2019 Singapore Fintech Festival and engage with industry experts
• Funding to develop a contextualised proof of concept to be deployed within a year from the demo day
• Work with corporates to contextualise a solution to their needs, while obtaining market entry into the Singapore and Asia-Pacific region

Read more: Reserve Bank, KPMG Matchi name 12 finalists of fintech hackcelerator
Read more: SA fintech uKheshe nets over R7m from investors on R100m valuation

Featured image: uKheshe co-founder Clayton Hayward (Supplied)