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Top FinTech Startups Selected to Join Plug and Play's Financial Technology Innovation Platform
23 startups chosen for the third batch of Plug and Play FinTech

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After sourcing over 820 startups, Plug and Play's Financial Technology Platform of Innovation has accepted 23 startups into its third batch of the program. The current corporate partners of the program include Assurant, Banco Original, Bank of the West, BNP Paribas, Capital One, Credit Suisse, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Finstar Labs, Intuit, JCB, MUFG, Santander, Sumitomo, TD Bank, USAA, and U.S. Bank. These corporate partners will work side by side with the startups for three months through mentor sessions, structured deal review, pilots, investments and even acquisitions.

(Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338862)

"With our latest additions of globally leading financial institutional partners, our ecosystem continues to scale with opportunities for growth on behalf of our startups both in Silicon Valley and in markets across the world," says Scott Robinson, Founder & Director of Plug and Play FinTech. "This unprecedented level of support will result in new levels of innovation from our startups."

This batch includes a range of innovative startups including:

FinTech Batch 3
Startups

Description

Abra

Abra is the world's first telco, device and OS agnostic mobile movement appliance. With Abra, cash is stored directly on the smartphone. Abra merges money transfer and payments via a single digital cash wallet that works anywhere in the world. There is no bank, no prepaid card and no third party involved in managing, storing, remitting or accepting funds. Abra leverages the blockchain technology to enable Abra users to purchase digital currency, and once it is purchased to directly store the digital asset directly on their respective smartphones. Abra is backed by American Express, RRE Ventures, Arbor Ventures, First Round Capital, Jungle Ventures, Ratan Tata, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group and other prominent investors.

Access

Access is a mobile aggregator of equity and debt crowd funding deals, simplifying investors' search for the right deals. Think of Access as Kayak.com for private dealflow. With Access, investors can curate deals from many asset classes including: startups, real estate and alternative assets. Deal sources benefit by receiving targeted investor leads and analytics on investor preferences.

Alpaca

Alpaca is a VC-backed SV-based company that helps individual financial traders build automated trading systems using deep learning, to expand platform to be an algo-trading marketplace eventually. The first public mobile app will be launching at Feb-end 2016, and is suppored by 10+ year veterans from AI, database and financial industries.

Amber

Amber is a highly secure, patent-protected card consolidation platform that is free to consumers. Because its core technology is EMV consolidation, Amber can take a variety of forms—from plastic cards to wearable devices—allowing maximum consumer adoption and 100% merchant acceptance. Capitalizing on consumers' purchasing and card information, Amber provides unique, data-driven services to both consumers and business partners.

BlockNotary

BlockNotary Video Interview is a blockchain-based KYC solution designed to help businesses reduce costs and risks by providing trustful and pleasant customer experience. We combine omnipresence of mobile devices, richness of video format and immutability of the blockchain to remotely verify customer identity, accelerate customer service and reduce the possibility of fraud.

BlockSeer

BlockSeer is a data science company with a focus on blockchain analytics and forensics. Its analysis tools are used by law enforcement (including the Secret Service, IRS, and FBI) and financial institutions.

CriskCo

CriskCo is a credit risk analysis and management software start-up operated out of San Francisco and Tel Aviv, Israel. We enable credit providers to evaluate the risk of their credit applicants by managing accounts receivables data with a proprietary algorithm, and reduce credit risk by predicting a customer's potential credit risk while preventing collection loss. CriskCo offers the traditional financial institutes with fintech advantages and capabilities.

CyberFlow Analytics

CyberFlow Analytics is the leader in network behavior analytics and provides a software only solution that enables customers and MSSPs to secure Enterprise networks and the expanded Internet of Things (IoT). The solution combines advanced network behavior analytics (Binocular Fusion Analytics), Threat Intelligence and leading visualization capabilities to machine learn acceptable normal network behavior and identify malicious activity within milliseconds.

Data Simply

Data Simply is redefining the way people reduce investment risk. Its Financial Intelligence Engine takes unstructured data, such as words, and interprets them like a financial analyst. Data Simply use its engine to turn company SEC filings into signals so investment professionals know when something good or bad happens with companies they track, and even get it sent right to their phone.

DoubleNet Pay

With its full set of APIs, web, and mobile application, DoubleNet Pay provides the next level of digital integration to support the automated management of bills and savings. The only financial wellness solution that facilitates action, patent-pending DoubleNet Pay is fully integrated with one of the world's largest payroll providers and in proof of concept with three Fortune 50 employers.

Drastin

Drastin offers search-driven advanced data analysis for enterprises, with the convenience of a google-like search box and English queries. In a business environment where data sources are going through an explosion, and it is a challenge to get accurate reports and insights in a timely manner, Drastin solves the problem by allowing users with 100% accurate data analysis instantly.

eThor

eThor is a universal API for in-store point of sale (POS) systems. We enable companies who are building a variety of different applications to plug those applications into the POS system at the merchant. Its primary focus is on financial technology such as mobile wallets, loyalty, gift cards, and payment terminals.

Payso

Payso is a 100 percent white-labelled mobile peer-to-peer payments and instant messaging platform for banks, credit unions and phone carriers (think Venmo as OEM software).

Places

Founded in 2015 in San Jose, California, Places offers a streamlined community-driven marketplace for people to list, explore, and buy homes online. As real estate professionals and tech geeks who've been on both sides of the traditional home-buying process, we're excited about turning something that's often time-consuming and complicated into an experience that's simple and fun.

Risys

Risys: Use machine learning and big data to cut KYC and AML analyst time in half!

Skuchain

Modern supply chains are complex. Global commerce continues to operate on a foundation that was established 350 years ago. Blockchain technology has ushered in an era of unprecedented trust that makes collaborative commerce with innovative supply chain finance and inventory tracking possible. Skuchain has built patent-pending solutions using blockchain technology for supply chain and trade financing.

Skymind

Skymind is the commercial support arm of Deeplearning4j, the most widely used deep-learning framework for Java. Skymind is the Cloudera of deep learning. Our flagship use cases are fraud detection for finance, recommender systems for e-commerce, and image detection for hardware makers.

SmartFi

SmartFi is the first robo-advisor for savings that grows your money by automatically finding and allocating your savings to the best financial product for your saving goals.

SnapCheck

Incredibly, paper checks still account for 70 percent of B2B payments, costing businesses $74 billion in direct costs and fraud losses annually. SnapCheck's digital check platform combines the benefits of electronic payments with the universal acceptance of checks to substantially reduce costs, virtually eliminate check fraud, and solve the chicken-and-egg problem that is hindering the migration to electronic payments between businesses.

TitanFile

TitanFile is the easiest to use and most comprehensive secure correspondence and file sharing solution for administrators and professionals in financial institutions and their clients. TitanFile is the only correspondence solution that provides client-side encryption with zero knowledge and integrates with enterprise systems such as Outlook and document management systems to support diverse workflows and security requirements

Token

Token is developing the architecture, protocols, paradigms, and secure identity system for next generation payments. Token allows application developers to use a single, secure, simple, standard open API to move money and allows banks to issue digital currency. Unlike Ripple and Bitcoin, Token was designed by a team of bankers and tech experts for compliance and compatibility.

WiActs

WiActs offers the next generation of identity management and passwordless single sign-on solution designed around biometrics and frictionless multi-factor authentication. WiActs' solutions - compatible with over 5,000 SaaS apps, web apps, and cloud services - allows your users to securely and conveniently log into all their accounts from all of devices without passwords. It's time to end social engineering, phishing, and cyber-attacks targeting credentials.

Plug and Play FinTech is an ecosystem connecting forward-thinking corporations and venture capitalists with startups that are developing technology that is defining the world of financial technology. This Innovation Platform runs twice a year for 20-30 FinTech-focused startups that are chosen by Plug and Play's venture team, VC partners, and corporate partners.

The startups will pitch their polished ideas to corporate partners and investors at Plug and Play's FinTech, Retail, and Materials EXPO. To see these startups in person, attend Plug and Play's EXPO on May 25th. Register here: http://bit.ly/21EAejP

About Plug and Play Tech Center

Plug and Play Tech Center is the world's largest global technology accelerator and venture fund. Since inception in 2006, our program has expanded worldwide to include entrepreneurs from 24 countries, providing necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley. With over 350 startups and 300 corporate partners, we have created the ultimate startup ecosystem. Plug and Play provides active investments with 180 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and more than 365 networking events per year. Companies in our community have raised over $3.5 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk. For more information, visit: http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com

Media Contact:
Allison Romero
Phone: 408-524-1457
Email: allison@plugandplaytechcenter.com

 

SOURCE Plug and Play