Thanks to our friends at The Fintech Times they have put together this nice little number on 5 companies to watch grow this year.
Below are five fintech companies out of the 300+ nominees that The Fintech Times believes have displayed the leadership and innovation required to make the list, we are looking forward to the Fintech Times series on the fintechpower50
ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide – the Universal Payments (UP) company and a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions – is one of the most prominent names featured amongst the nominees.
Since its inception in 1975, the company has developed software solutions to facilitate payment capabilities, and continues to do so today by powering electronic payments and banking for over 5,000 companies around the world. These include 18 of the top 20 banks worldwide and over 300 leading retailers. Their electronic payment software solutions enable over 150 billion consumer transactions each year.
BehavioSec
Having been selected five times for the FinTech50, another prominent list that recognises fintech companies for their innovation, BehavioSec is a strong candidate for the Fintech Power 50. Founded in 2008, BehavioSec is the first vendor to pioneer behavioural biometrics, and its platform is widely used by Global 2000s, thanks to its proven ability to significantly reduce account fraud and data theft. The result of groundbreaking academic research on artificial intelligence, the technology deployed by Behaviosec allows companies to continuously verify digital identities based on how an individual naturally interacts with their device.
On July 17 2018, the European Banking Authority (EBA) declared behavioural biometrics as “a proven technology delivering enhanced authentication and anti-fraud measures for payment service providers. Widely deployed across global banks, Behaviosec’s behavioural biometrics platform keeps customers prepared for PSD2 [Payment Services Directed 2] mandates and business opportunities.”
Bud
Established in July 2015, Bud has already been the recipient of several awards, including the British Bank Awards 2017, and featured on the FinTech50 that same year, and in 2018. Both an app and a website, Bud is a technology platform that links financial services together to help consumers find and use the most beneficial financial products and build their own banking experience.
In October 2017, Bud signed a deal with banking giant HSBC, as part of the latter’s venture into open banking, and raised £1.5m from backers including investment bank Investec and Spain’s Sabadell Bank. According to FinTechCity, Bud is in talks with over 40 banks around the world about possible partnerships.
Clinc
Led by Jason Mars – voted second most innovative CEO in banking by Bank Innovation in 2017 – Clinc has developed technology able to provide conversational AI experience with the only AI capable of delivering conversations superior to Google Assistant. Clinc‘s Finie assistant understands natural language and is able to provide and power a number of services. These include personal financial management, wealth management and market insights, customer service and quick-service restaurants. Clinc‘s AI Platform allows members of any organisation, irrespective of technical skill, to design and deploy next-generation conversational experience for customers.
Zachary Gipson, Chief Innovation Officer of USSA, a Fortune 500 financial services group, commented that “Clinc has much more advanced natural language understanding than the big players in the market.
TNG FinTech Group
The Next Generation (TNG) enables financial services for the 1.2 billion people who are unbanked across Hong Kong and 12 other countries. Its founder and CEO, Alex Kong, a serial tech-entrepreneur, is currently shaking the Asian-Pacific region’s money transfer and payments systems industries. Kong believes the days of the traditional money transfer systems that the big banks use are numbered. TNG‘s e-wallet users can send and receive money across the globe in real time for a $3 fee.
Since its app-launch in November 2015, TNG has gone from strength to strength and, in January this year, Kong declared that he expected monthly turnover to hit HK$1bn soon. At that same time, he said TNG‘s fund-raising target was at least US$1bn (HK$7.8bn), and that the company was planning an initial public offering. Kong aims to set up his business in up to 150 countries, since this is essentially the global presence that modern e-commerce demands.
Cover Photo by Taras Shypka on Unsplash
