uKheshe, South Africa’s cheapest and most convenient QR cash card and microtransaction platform, and Mindbridge, which automates the ingestion and analysis of data, and learns from user interaction to identify fraud have been named winners of the 2019 Global Fintech Hackcelerator @ Southern Africa competition.
The Global Fintech Hackcelerator was launched by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and powered by fintech/bank matchmaking platform, KPMG Matchi, creates a platform for firms to demonstrate their innovative solutions to complex financial challenges in the Southern African region.
The competition gave fintech firms from all over the world an opportunity to submit an application in response to problem statements constructed by the SARB in collaboration with other local and international industry experts.
The regional hackcelerator received 95 entries from interested fintech firms located across the globe. All responding firms were validated by KPMG Matchi and scored by a team of 24 industry executives from the following organisations: Absa, Capitec, Discovery, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), FirstRand Group, Investec, Liberty Group, National Treasury, Nedbank, SARB, Standard Bank and the Technology Innovation Agency.
The top 12 innovative and sustainable fintech solutions were announced in early October and today the respondents showcased their solutions at the Fintech Demo Day. A panel of judges from the SARB, FSCA, KPMG Singapore as well as local financial industry experts formed a team that selected the two winning solutions.
Ukheshe empowers informal merchants, traders, street vendors and casual labourers to accept real-time digital payments from cardholders or different payment apps, without needing to have a bank account.
MindBridge Analytics’ AI Auditor platform automates the ingestion and analysis of data, and learns from user interaction to identify fraud. Leveraging machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing, 100% of transactions are reviewed, and results are easily searchable.
The SARB congratulates all participants and the winning solutions. The SARB views such global fintech acceleration programmes as enabling processes to embrace fintech, while affording the opportunity for regulators to appraise benefits and risks in a balanced manner.
Reads
80