Barclays Bank recently selected the 10 fintech startups that will be participation in its second acceleration program, powered by TechStars, at its Africa’s Rise fintech innovation hub in Cape Town. According to TechStars, the second class’ applications extended to 52 countries across the globe and across a wide array of innovative fintech companies.
The 2017 program participants are the following:
- Flexpay
- Howler
- Spatialedge
- Abe.ai
- The Sun Exchange
- Byte Money
- Avenews-GT
- FOMO Travel
- KapitalWise
- eCOIDA
Yasaman Hadjibashi, chief creation officer at Barclays Africa Group reportedly stated:
“Our diverse, ambitious, and growth-hungry African continent with its young population is finding a growing self-actualization momentum now more than ever, with the largest segment being the millennials. Through our deep and lean collaborations with fintechs, and in fact all kinds of startups, we aim to further drive this momentum that can result in the creation and accelerated distribution of new products, experiences, and services that will make a difference for our African communities.”
Yossi Hasson, MD at Techstars then added:
“Each of the ten successful companies represented something unique that we believe has the potential to become a significant and relevant player on a global scale. Access to Barclays Africa’s base is a significant opportunity for these fintech companies to greatly accelerate their growth through partnership or distribution deals with Barclays and access to their senior executives as mentors, providing key expertise to the startups that ordinarily would be almost impossible to get access to.”
The 13-week accelerator program is set to kick off in mid-May.
