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Cape Town – Banking giant Barclays has concluded new proof of concept agreements with South African startups as the bank drives local innovation partnerships.
As part of its Rise programme, the Absa parent company concluded a 13 week accelerator programme with finance and technology startups to drive banking innovation.
“Innovation for us, although it’s not always linked to technology, innovation is all about pioneering new disruptive technology,” Paul Nel, head of Open Innovation at Barclays Africa, told Fin24 on Thursday.
The bank has employed a strategy of partnering with startups in its race to scale digital banking innovation.
“We run a process that hundreds of start-ups apply for; we choose the best 10 and bring them into the environment. But what’s really exciting about it is whatever happens in New York or London, we all have access to,” Craig Bond, chief executive of Retail and Business Banking at Barclays Africa Group told Fin24 recently about its Rise programme.
Deals
READ: Barclays on Absa mobile banking: Watch this space
The bank has concluded 10 proof of concept agreements and one commercial agreement with the startups.
“The simple reality is that Barclays Africa and Absa want to participate in this space because the essence of what we’re trying to achieve to help our customers is being addressed here,” said Nel.
“The real excitement that we see here is that we can actually partner with some young bright minds - or some older bright minds – to really bring some new thinking to the party,” he added.
Barclays hopes that the partnerships will help the bank drive digital innovation and believes it can help startups navigate the financial services regulatory framework.
“We as Barclays and Absa are looking at ways we can actually partner with them so we’re signing a whole lot of proof of concept and commercial agreements with them to see how we can actually experiment or try out things to see what the impact would be,” Nel said.
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