Our Holland FinTech Meetup last Friday was a great success and filled with excitement! Partnered with MoneYou, this meetup was held in the inspiring Startup Village in Amsterdam. Apart from various pitches in the fintech area, the finale of the banking hackathon was part of our program.

The Meetup was located in the exciting Startup Village, a community with innovative high-tech and science based startups. The event shares the entrepreneurial and inventive spirit of the venue, where innovative companies pitch their ambitious application of technology and future entrepreneurs (students) present their solution to the banking hackathon. This edition, we were joined by the companies MoneYou, Declaree, SDK.finance and Fraud dynamics.

The founder and CEO of Holland Fintech, Don Ginsel commenced the event with his inspiring vision on the future of fintech. Next Menno van Leeuwen (Business Development at MoneYou and Manager innovation centre at ABN AMRO) gave a warm welcome to the crowd and shared his expertise on the changes in banking. Since he has experiences in both the startup and traditional bank environment, he gave us insightful perspectives on the roles and interaction of the two.

Next on the program was the Future Banking Bootcamp, a banking hackathon where multidisciplinary teams consisting of digitally savvy students from Artificial Intelligence, Business, Marketing etc. got 48 hours to co-create, prototyping, hacking and pitching a concept. The students had some great pitches that help young people to buy a house, control their expenses and invest in charities. All teams were questioned by a tough jury of experts, but the students were able to defend their projects. The jury then left the student waiting in thrilling excitement and retreated to discuss the concepts.

Following the student pitches, we had some ambitious company from the Holland Fintech network to pitch. First, founder of Declaree, Bas Janssen shared his solution to simplify the outdated declaration process companies are still dealing with. With a simple application, employees are able to declare all sort of expenses in the matter of seconds. Next was Sjoerd Slot, founder of Fraud Dynamics. His pitch made it clear for the public to understand the growing risks of financial crime. He believes his company is able to combat these risks in a smarter way. The closing pitch was held by Alexey Malyshev, CEO of SDK.finance. This pitch amazed the crowd with the versatile services SDK.finance can provide. With over 180 API’s, the services allow companies to save cost and time without compromising on the quality.

Finally, it was announced that the concept of investment in charities won the competition. The jury find it fascinating that the winning team was able to come up with an original concept, despite all the crowdfunding websites nowadays. The event was rounded up with the opportunity for participants, attendees and student to network with drinks and snacks. We want to thank MoneYou for organising this event and we hope to see you all next month!