In its second year, the Barclays Accelerator is dedicating resources and efforts towards backing fintech startups that are attempting to solve financial and banking issues within the African context.
The Barclays Accelerator, powered by small and medium business empowerment organization Techstars, is a startup program of networking, mentoring and development, aimed at supporting breakthrough financial technology innovations that are focused on Africa.
This week 10 startups presented their innovations at a Demo Day in Cape Town which officially ended the 13-week accelerator program at Rise, Barclays Africa Group’s fintech innovation hub, according to ITWeb.
The presentations were used to explain how their innovative approaches to the fintech space solves a particular problem, while expanding on how the solutions also translate to a profitable business model for their startups.
Selected from a large group of applicants that came from 50 countries, Barclays will continue to work closely with these startups to explore promising new technology-based solutions that can benefit the financial services industry and their customers, reports IT-Online.
The final selection of startup companies that benefited from the 13-week program are from South Africa, Kenya and the U.S. – with nine of the 10 involved in the fintech space, while one of the companies, Howler, is a platform for event organisers.
Fintech startups from South Africa included FOMO Group, Avenews-GT, and Byte Money, while FlexPay is a fintech firm from Kenya.
Yasaman Hadjibashi, chief creation officer at Barclays Africa Group, celebrated the potential of the pool of fintech startups within the accelerator.
“The solutions created by these companies are among the top innovations in the fintech space in the world right now,” said Hadjibashi, according to ITNewsAfrica.
“Any of these solutions could have the potential to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the financial services sector in Africa,” Hadjibashi said.
“Innovation is the powerful collaboration of bright humble minds that are continuously originating, testing and shipping new customer-centric products,” she added.
