Visa and Crowdpolicy launch 2nd Cohort for Visa Innovation Program
Visa Innovation Program 2nd Cohort Selection Day
In this cohort 36 mature and advanced companies from Greece and Cyprus applied to enter the Program in the challenges of #Digital Economy, #New payment flows, domestic and cross border #Rethink payments in the Retail and #General Application. In order to be adaptable to the new environment sector and challenges, the whole process was held online in two stages. Initially, 20 successful mentoring slots between Banks, Crowdpolicy and fintechs took place on the 9th and 10th of April. Special thanks to our partners from Alpha Bank, Attica Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece and Piraeus Bank.
Following the mentoring slots a very successful Selection Day was held on the 10th of April with great participation of 50 around executives and startups attending during the whole event. It was the successful second and final evaluation phase of the companies applied to participate in the 2nd Cohort of Visa Innovation Program Greece and Cyprus. In this phase 9 companies were shortlisted to pitch during the Online Selection Day.
During the Selection Day we had a distinguished Advisory committee comprised of executives from Visa executives, Banks and 3 VCs 2 from Greece Unifund and Metavallon and one from Bulgaria — Eleven Ventures attended and Crowdpolicy. And also a Jury Committee from Visa comprised of Sevdalina Vassileva, General manager Visa SEE, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, Ozan Ozturk, Head of strategy and market planning, Visa SEE, Andreanna Pappas, Coutnry Manager Greece and Cyprus and executives from all the Banks participating in the Program and George Karamanolis, CTO/CIO Co-founder and Mr. Michael Psalidas, Managing Director Crowdpolicy.
50 participants and executives stayed connected during the whole virtual Selection Day, the spirit was high the whole time as the pitches from all the shortlisted companies were particularly interesting and engaging!
Mrs. Sevdalina Vassileva, General manager Visa SEE, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, Mr. Ozan Ozturk, Head of Strategy
The Jury Committee had a very difficult task and at last 6 companies were chosen to enter the Program, here mentioned in alphabetical order and not by selection order:
GivingStreets provides a financial inclusion platform that enables spontaneous cashless donations to homeless, buskers, charities (unbanked) and facilitates the cashless redemption of the collected donations to collaborating businesses.
It uses state-of-the-art technologies to work (smartphone apps, QR-code) and provides unparalleled transparency and accountability in process by means of blockchain and smart contracts. Ultimately, GivingStreets enables the financial inclusion of unbanked individuals into a cashless society.
Quadible helps financial organisations reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. We offer an AI-platform that continuously authenticates their users, without the need of any user input, by learning more than 14 unique behavioural patterns such as the way they move, the way they use their devices, their biometrics and transactional patterns.
Our customers get a far more secure and user-friendlier authentication that mitigates fraud and discards burdensome passwords/multi-factor authentication, helping them deliver a better service to their customers while saving costs at the same time.
iSPIRAL is a leading regulatory technology software provider delivering state-of-art AML, KYC, Risk and Compliance solutions. Over the past 11 years we helped hundreds of organisations meet their compliance and regular obligations. Our expertise spans in various sectors such as Banking, Investment, Forex, Insurance, PSPs, Audit, Legal firms, Telecommunication providers, Hospitals and Clinics, and Governmental bodies.
Plum is an AI assistant that boosts your bank balance. Plum’s smart algorithm finds ways for your money to effortlessly grow. Plum automatically saves, finds better deals for the bills and invests the savings for the future. Plum was born on Facebook Messenger but now lives on iOS and Android too.
We believe that the next stage for Open Banking is Credit Scoring and Income Verification. It will be a challenging journey of building trust. We are here to help you incorporate them with your current processes.We are developing a new type of credit reference, which is: Instant, transparent, automated & highly predictive Based on customer’s account data using Open Banking (PSD2).
By this opportunity we would like to thank all the participants in this Virtual Selection Day of the 2nd Cohort for Visa Innovation Program. Let’s move ahead to deliver fantastic PoCs and collaborations!
Next Steps
The kick-off meeting for the selected startups of the Visa Innovation Program is programmed for the 24th of April. Off we go to a successful 2nd Cohort!