The showcase was held at The Westin, on Wednesday 6 May, in partnership with SWIFT’s African Regional Conference (ARC) taking place from 5-7 May 2015.

ARC brings together policy makers, industry leaders and the broader financial community from across the African continent. This year’s conference theme ‘Seizing the Opportunity’ focused on Africa’s abundant potential and looked at the role of financial technology innovation in the region. Typically attracting up to 500 delegates from around 40 countries, the conference was the perfect place for our fifteen early-stage and growth-stage startups to deliver compelling pitches around their innovative products that could support the economic development of the continent.

The three early-stage startup finalists are:

Intelworld delivers mobile applications on top of existing mobile wallets to help banks and merchants increase mobile e-commerce
Notafy provides secure messaging infrastructure to help companies communicate with their customers via mobile instant messages instead of costly SMS
YueDiligence offers actionable, light-touch due diligence tool for entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers to assess deal readiness

The two growth-stage startups finalists are:

2Quins enterprise SaaS financial information tool, Green Model, slashes the time and expense of meeting banks’ operational and regulatory reporting requirements
ZAQ Finance provides debt reduction, savings, and low-cost credit products to help low-income Africans become more financially secure

Fabian Vandenreydt, Head of Markets Management, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute at SWIFT says: “London, Singapore, and New York are part of the top ten cities in FinTech for years now. We were delighted to bring the Innotribe Startup Challenge for the first time to Cape Town this year, drawing attention to the innovation happening on the ground in Africa. It was an exciting step, and we now wish the finalists the best of luck for the Finale at Sibos later this year.”

Commenting on Africa’s innovation landscape, Hugo Smit, Head of Sub-Sahara Africa at SWIFT says: “There is a genuine spirit of innovation in Africa and the semi-finalists who pitched in Cape Town really shows the appetite there is in this market for new business models and harnessing technology in new ways. I’m delighted that SWIFT and Innotribe are able to offer these young African companies this platform and wish them best of luck in Singapore at Sibos. We are already excited about the next African Showcase at ARC 2016.”

The Cape Town event was the second regional showcase to be held in 2015 and was sponsored by Level39 and Wells Fargo. Next steps of the Startup Challenge programme will be the regional showcases in Singapore on 28 May, and New York on 18 June.

For more information about the Innotribe Startup Challenge and how to register to the upcoming showcases, please visit our website.

To access the full list of companies participating in the 2015 Startup Challenge, please click here. Companies are listed in alphabetical order and by showcase.