Accenture Ireland country manager, Alastair Blair, speaking at the FinTech Innovation Lab. Image via Connor McKenna
A showcase of the ones to watch in terms of the future of Irish fintech was held at the Accenture FinTech Innovation lab in Dublin on 30 March after six outstanding start-ups completed a 12-week mentoring programme.
The Dublin iteration of the Accenture FinTech Innovation Lab was first announced back in October of last year as an accelerator supported by major finance players AIB, Bank of Ireland, Citi, Fexco, State Street, Realex Payments, Ulster Bank and Credit Suisse, and even tech giant Google.
Held at the NDRC in Dublin 8, this year’s participants showcased how their start-up concept has changed since it was first brought to the mentors at the beginning of the 12-week programme.
Six young businesses took part in the showcase, covering a wide range of fintech areas that aim to disrupt what we consider as the traditional banking sector, including Bblockchain, AI, financial wellbeing, and service virtualisation.
One of the key takeaways for the companies was getting their first taste of media exposure to sell the ideas of their prospective companies and, judging by their conversations with Siliconrepublic.com, that side of things appeared to go without a hitch.
Joining the founders of the fintech start-ups was Jon Bradford, who has years of experience working in the sector, and now holds the position of co-founder of founder community F6S and Tech.eu.
Bradford was one of those involved in the interesting panel discussion on what are the obstacles to scaling fintech in Ireland, something which is a crucial part of a company’s progression.
Accenture Ireland’s Sinead Barry has been instrumental in getting the FinTech Innovation Lab up and running in Dublin and, speaking with Siliconrepublic.com, said: “I think [Jon Bradford] has put a very clear challenge to us. Yes, Dublin does have the possibility to be a centre of innovation for fintech.”
The six fintech companies taking part included:
Ostia
Ostia is an innovative supplier of service virtualisation technology to build smart test systems that support prototyping, agile development, iterative testing and validation of business solutions, making the process faster and cheaper.
Coinprism
Coinprism has built Openchain, an open-source blockchain platform that can be used to issue and manage digital assets in an efficient, secure and scalable way. offering near-instant settlement of transactions, compared to hours, or sometimes even days, with current systems.
Courtsdesk
Courtsdesk is a legal news service supplying live, actionable data on protagonists in civil and criminal prosecutions across the entire courts system, allowing users to cross-check corporate filings with court proceedings for the first time.
Cogni
Cogni (previously known as Bizbaze) is a collaborative commerce platform with digital banking to help SMEs and micro-enterprises find new markets and customers with evidence-based insights through the use of collaborative commerce and artificial intelligence.
Juggle
Juggle provides a financial wellbeing program for employers that can directly improve the financial performance of their business, reducing employee stress by improving their control over their finances to improve productivity, lower costs and improve staff retention.
Touchtech Payments
Touchtech provides a safer and simpler solution than the traditional password-based solutions that have so alienated banks’ customers and inflated costs. Using its SecureCode software it promises to provides simple, secure authentication across all of a bank’s digital channels.
