Six Sizzling Fintech Startups to Watch: Highlights from Money20/20 Europe

Six sizzling start-ups to watch…

Hannah Duncan 

 Quizzing founders is normal for fintech journalists like me. Interviewing six at a time, onstage with a microphone, slightly less so. But this is Money2020, everything is extra! 

Tucked within the plushy purplish press lounge (try saying that after a cocktail from the enfuce stand), six glistenning fintech startups strutted their stuff today. They flexed their innovations like body builders, showcased their successes like superstars and had a moment to truly shine in front of a room chockfull of journalists. Armed with a microphone between us, Anastasia Kinsky, host at Fintech TV, Tony Clark, host of The London Fintech Podcast and I got to work, digging into the granular details behind the glory. Here are some of the top highlights. 

… Is it a delivery driver? The captain of a cricket team? No! It's Fintech Pitch Winner, Aviel Intelligence

Winner of the Fintech Pitch Live, Aviel Intelligence's Peter Griffin wowed the room with a fraud-beating service that works by wasting criminals’ time with AI-generated victims. His company creates synthetic personas that obtain criminals’ bank account numbers and flag them to financial institutions. Simple, but genius. The AI-generated people are as creative as the solution. “We have a delivery driver from Manchester", Peter elaborates. “We have someone who works on an oil rig. We even have the captain of the village cricket team small Cotswolds village". 

Together Peter estimates that millions of pounds have already been protected from fraudsters, as Aviel Intelligence captures hundreds of fraudulent accounts every day. “We provide those mule accounts to banks, and banks use those mule accounts to take action to stop the scam before it happens", he explains. For those who remember Daisy, O2's fraud-busting AI grandma, the concept is similar. But it goes further, taking the banking information and doing actually something concrete to prevent future fraud. The precision intelligence technology catfishes scammers like never before and is truly worthy of the sought-after Fintech Pitch trophy. 

Risky business makes for good business 

Still buzzing from his latest board of director appointee (none other than iconic payments pioneer Robert Kraal), Founder and CEO of Fraudio, João Moura took to the floor next with gusto. Also focusing on risk, his company protects merchants from sketchy identity theft. He spoke about how fraudsters obtain bank account details by pretending to be buyers, steal financial details and then replicate the identities using AI. But they’re no match for João.  Having studied AI himself for two decades at PhD level, João is well ahead of the game, stopping criminals in their tracks left, right and centre. Fraudio processes "more than 100 million transactions monthly", he explains, covering about 2 million merchants globally". And the firm is gaining traction. "We grew four times last year, and already doubled our revenue and transactions. With fraud showing no signs of slowing, Fraudio's neck-craning growth is just the beginning. They're aiming to hit 80% of transactions. Go João!

Protecting consumers against risk continued to ripple-down the startup line-up, making it the hottest topic. CEO of Vouchsafe, Chloe Coleman has also set out to protect us from the fraudsters stealing our identities. “Bank statements, receipts, identity documents, even biometrics, they can all now be fabricated really quickly, really easily using really cheap tech”, she highlighted. “The rising tide of AI fraud means that every single business has to find a better way to re-establish trust with their customers, with their partners, with the businesses they work with". 

Vouchsafe helps businesses learn more about their customers from the widest possible data sources so they can make an informed assessment, without creating friction. And its already got some impressive backers. 

Exceptional origin stories and profiles

Some of the founders had truly captivating origin stories. The kind that movies are made of. So, if any Hollywood producers reading this, sign the rights quick! 

CEO and co-founder of Softbees, Tetiana Dashevska has kept her startup afloat and thriving even during the invasion of Ukraine. “When the full-scale invasion started, like many Ukrainians, we were shocked and we worked in shelters, in evacuation trains, buses, in unfamiliar cities", she recounts. 

Now working across Poland and Cyprus, Softbees is a clever service that helps banks quickly launch digital banking applications, middleware infrastructure and backoffice administration platforms across different markets. One of the most fundamental lessons Tetiana learned along the way was that "there are no universal platforms for launching a digital bank", she reveals. “Every market is different, [with] different compliance requirements, different payment structures and even different customer behaviours". Making this process seamless for banks takes a lot of work. Softbees has found particular success in Africa, helping to launch new innovations which benefit the consumers. 

Another compelling story is that of Co-founder & CEO of SAPI, Mai Le. Simply put, Mai Le is what profile pieces were made for. She had the courage to leave a cushy role at Goldman Sachs to follow her convictions. Mai had the simple ambition to lend money to “local legends”, but instead of charging a fixed rate of repayments, SAPI takes a cut of the profits. As she puts it, by “risk sharing with the business themselves", the company actually helps “them fund the next growth milestone or expansion". 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 90% of the loan book goes towards funding women and immigrant-owned businesses. These are groups are notoriously underrepresented across financial services. As a “women immigrant business owner” herself, Mai is inspirational in the way she uses her skills to fix the problem, seeking to provide "fast, fair and flexible capital” to smaller businesses. Huge congrats to SAPI as well, for achieving their first profitable month. 

From healthtech to fintech and back again 

Savannah Price, Founder and CEO of Serene rounded off the excellent origin stories by revealing that she never intended to work in fintech at all! She was very much team healthtech. Savannah set out to support people battling with mental health, by identifying unusual spending activity and intervening before they plunged themselves into debt. “I've got siblings who struggle with mental health challenges”, she explains. “The only thing that worked for us was we started looking at their bank statements…we could see very subtle patterns in the changes of how and where they were spending money”. 

While under-reported, debt and mental heath issues often come hand-in-hand, and affect a large proportion of the population. A recent UK study, for example, uncovered that 45% of the people who fall into energy bill arrears suffer from a mental health vulnerability. Serene tracks financial transactions, flagging any which could be a sign of mental health deterioration. At this point, “we could actually step in, engage the right support providers, the right services, and provide that wraparound care before issues escalated”, Savannah explains. 

Just like that, an hour flew by. A lot of information condensed into one jam-packed session - classic of Money2020. For myself, and the others of my panel it was a privilege to get a front row seat with these six sizzling startups.