ED MASLAVECKAS

CEO and Co-founder

Bud Financial

Bud is a digital bank manager that helps people find the best usage for their money through smart analytics and recommending them financial products that are suited to their lifestyles and needs. We use transactional and behavioral data to put intelligence behind our product matching. We integrate financial service products, so customers have a seamless end to end experience when using multiple services in one place.

The problem we are solving is that, unless you work in financial services, you probably don’t know what the best thing to do with your money is, or you probably don’t have access to advice. By deploying Bud within banks, suddenly everyone will be able to have a bank manager in their pocket that will help them make smarter decisions with their money, no matter how much or how little they have.

An essential part of our business is helping people become more comfortable with financial products. Part of that is education and contextual automation. So, features like our glossary are there to help people understand new terms, businesses and products. Then, using transactional data, being able to highlight some services that might give users more affordable access to credit, or no fee FX products will help broaden their understanding of the market and maximise their money.

MASAHIRO TAKASAKI

Founder and CEO

Doreming

Doreming is one of the Fintech 100 firms nominated by KPMG to help financial inclusion for unbanked and underbanked workers. Doreming enable workers to tap into their earned wages in real time via mobile phone. Helping smooth cash flows and personal finances for those who either live hand to mouth or might otherwise fall prey to loan sharks. We named the company Doreiming that motivates workers to step up like the musical scale, Do-Re-Mi.

We focus on scaling up to create social impact on millions of workers’ lives and lifting them out of poverty. Social business is different in terms of business models and margins, on the other hand partners who can contribute and allocate resources to work together to tackle the social problem and value social impact more than maximizing profits, would be the right partner. We think teaming up with the right business partners will be the key in scaling up financial inclusion.

Unbanked and underbanked adults need ID and different risk assessment, and simple tool to access affordable financial services. We can help unbanked and underbanked workers to create their IDs when they register their HR profile to our payroll platform under the review of employers. We help workers to build their employment and payroll history as an alternative or additional data for risk assessment, so that they can access to financial services. Because we can help financial institution to collect premium and repayment of loans, financial institutions can provide financial services at lower costs.

We have helped underbanked workers by giving early access to their earned wages. We created the service in Japan for Internet Café Refugees around the time of the Lehman Crash. Internet Café Refugees are people who live in Internet Cafes and half of them work in hourly low paid temporary jobs. What they required was money as soon as they work to eat and be sheltered, so they could work the next day.

TOM RHYS JONES

Head of UK Business Development

Expensify

Expensify is innovating the receipt and expense management space.

Expensify’s web and mobile app eliminates manual expense data entry with a patented OCR technology. Our streamlined workflow allows both employees and accountants alike to focus on making their business more productive and profitable. Expensify partners with the top business solutions to create direct integrations to accounting packages, time tracking solutions, and other workflow tools. Our goal is to ensure that all aspects of a user’s business is as efficient and automated as possible, saving time and boosting efficiency.

We offer a freemium version of Expensify, which lets anyone use our app regardless of their financial situation. With the movement to make tax digital, Expensify’s freemium offering also fills a big gap for customers who need to keep an audit trail of their expenses, but can’t necessarily afford a complex digital system. Affordable accounting products are crucial for smaller businesses with a tighter budget, enabling an SME to close their books on time each month just as a large corporation would do.

On top of startups, SME’s, and large corporations, we also work with thousands of nonprofits to streamline the important socially-minded work that they do. Expensify enables employees and admins to spend less time completing the tedious task of managing their business expenses. We’re proud to support the work our nonprofits customers do by letting them focus on their work while we take care of their expenses.

VICTOR TROKOUDES

Co-founder

Plum

Sixteen million people in the UK have savings of less than £100. The cited barriers to saving boil down to: prioritizing the present over the future (temptations of saying YOLO), a lack of interest or understanding in finance, and the time and effort involved in creating a traditional savings plan (establishing a 5+ year plan, etc). Plum takes the onus off of people to establish their savings for them.

Plum removes the barriers to establishing savings by automating the process, applying artificial intelligence, and utilising chatbot technology to communicate. Plum’s AI analyses spending patterns and determines a safe amount of money to save that won’t impact users’ day-to-day lives. Savings are kept safely aside and accessible anytime by texting the bot on Messenger. Behavioural science tells us humans are not wired to save; instead, we actually prioritize our current desires over future goals. Plum’s intelligence sidesteps our pre-programmed human tendencies, ensuring our future selves are looked out for.

There is a large proportion of the UK population who, for one reason or another have difficulties understanding financial products and find that current savings products do not work for them. Plum is able to help the user regardless of their financial literacy. Through data analysis our algorithm can help people from all walks of life prepare for the future.

I think that by taking small sums frequently, we are educating and conditioning millennials to begin saving early. The impact of this is huge and can help a generation begin to build a sizable pot for the future.

CÉLINE LAZORTHES

Founder & CEO

MANGOPAY

I realized that there was no single payments business with the functionality to accept payments, hold these payments in escrow and pay out seamlessly. This meant that multiple partners were needed to facilitate the payment’s journey, causing unnecessary friction, complication and cost. From this, MANGOPAY was born. With the E-Money Issuer license, our white label technology enables us to cover every step of the payments process, taking the pain out of payments for online marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms.

Every step in the financial system is difficult for a startup and its founder – opening an account, connecting to financial services and so on. At MANGOPAY we enable new startups to launch. For example Pumpkin, one of our clients in France, a chat app that allows you to transfer money, was launched in 2015 by business school students. There was no traditional payments solution available to meet their needs. They couldn’t have launched at all without MANGOPAY and now they have 200,000 users. The major impact we have is enabling entrepreneurs to launch innovative businesses and scale them.

We’re dedicated to sharing economy and crowdfunding platforms, most of which are very disruptive. Companies come to us because they have complex payment flow which traditional payment solutions can’t handle. For instance, The Food Assembly brings together people to buy fresh food directly from local farmers and foodmakers. With our technology, they are able to offer a shorter supply chain. Everyone gets a better deal: communities get to know each other, farmers get a fairer price for their work, and and customers get delicious food. That’s game changing!