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Cape Town - A new hub for financial services in Woodstock, Cape Town, aims to boost entrepreneurs in the local fintech industry.
According to Camilla Swart, eco-system manager at Barclays Rise for Africa, the Barclays Rise Accelerator for fintech start-ups in Cape Town follows on similar hubs already established in Manchester, London and New York. Fintech hubs in Tel Aviv and Mumbai are expected to follow soon.
The sites are designed to integrate fintech entrepreneurs for partnerships with Barclays.
"We look for tech entrepreneurs focussed on all sorts of innovation to disrupt financial services, but key themes for us are blockchain, peer2peer lending, financial inclusion, insurance and mobile banking," said Swart.
"The hub is designed to support entrepreneurs in tech. We talk about it as being a physical site, but a digital community."
The expertise available can, for instance, help the entrepreneurs to get to scale. Opportunities are also created to meet investors at other hubs, like New York and to get to know the eco-system over there.
The accelerator programme, designed by Techstars, is the hub's flagship and 462 applications - 59 from South Africa - had been received from all over the world to take part in the Cape Town programme. The process to filter these down to the ultimate final ten candidates chosen to take part in the 13-week intensive mentorship programme will culminate in a demo day.
Due diligence will form part of the process and according to Swart it is highly likely that the participants will finish the programme with some partnerships in place. The hub also runs other programmes and, according to Swart, it offers a very focused co-creating space. Furthermore, local and international experts are regularly invited to deliver presentations in the hub's event space.
"Barclays hopes the result will be innovations that solve for the bank's needs and create cutting edge products and services for customers. We will invest or partner with the best ventures that resonate most with us. The top execs in the bank are mentors along with successful seasoned entrepreneurs," said Swart.
Paul Nel, head of open innovation at Barclays Africa Group, said from an entrepreneur perspective, Rise provides an access point for Barclays and Absa to connect to and collaborate with the broader FinTech ecosystem.
"Its all about connection, co-creating and scaling what we believe to be the solutions of the future. For entrepreneurs, Rise can bring the thoughts, ideas and concepts together in a professional, dynamic yet creative environment," he said.
"The access to our international offices provides further deepening and insight. We need to get the minds and skills working together - seamlessly and quickly. We believe this brings a sustainable competitive advantage to both Barclays and the entrepreneurs. It is after all about doing something new and different. We have a desire to make this real. Not just a talk shop. We want to and will build strong partnerships with the ecosystem."
