Here’s a Peek at ING’s Fintech Focus & New Accelerator

From Rabobank to Adyen to ABN Amro, the Netherlands has been a global spark for fintech evolution in recent years. Which is why ING Groep NV‘s fintech strategy deserves a look. The Dutch bank — minus its US direct banking venture, which was sold after the credit crisis — announced that it purchased Qustomer, a Belgian digital loyalty platform. (Think of it as LevelUp, without the payments functionality.) But what is more prescient is the bank, which is still in more than 40 countries and had $1.1 trillion of total assets at the end of last year, disclosed the companies it has just admitted into its new accelerator. The three companies are:

• Moneytis – money transfer comparison service
• Whydonate – online donation platform
• Checkmetrix – data analytics for small retailers

The accelerator began taking applications last July. The three startups were chosen from a pool of 68 applications. Interestingly, the startups all home in on a very particular financial function: cross-border payments, charitable donations, and analytics. Yes, analytics is a particular “financial” function, too — increasingly, analytics is assuming a prominent place in financial transactions, especially when there is an element of commodification at play. (See ChartMogul’s new analytics platform built on top of Stripe.) That ING’s startups don’t seem “revolutionary” is a reflection of the accelerator’s approach: ING is looking for startups that have products which can be enhanced during the six-month program into “something that solves a valuable problem for customers.” And that means ING still sees global remittances and charitable giving, as well as financial analytics, as having “problems” that need to be “solved.”