Our December Holland FinTech Meetup last Friday was a great success! Hosted by Rockstart, this meetup was held at their new Amsterdam HQ. As well as various pitches from companies in fintech, the event included ample networking time.
The Meetup was held in Rockstart’s new HQ where the startup accelerator has recently expanded to welcome more guests, startups and events. The guests and the venue all had entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. The guests — Signaturit, Lender&Spender, Investormatch and Limitless — pitched their ambitious applications of technology to finance and the discussion was animated by countless, diverse questions from the audience.
Don Ginsel, the founder and CEO of Holland Fintech, opened the event talking about his vision of fintech and how it develops in an exciting place between consumer demand, regulation and technology. Don also mentioned the often forgotten eIDAS regulation which affects some of this month’s presenters. The eIDAS applied from July 2016 and established EU standards of online identification. Next, Andrii Degeler introduced Rockstart and its programs for startups across web and mobile, smart energy, digital health and recently added, Artificial Intelligence.
The first pitch was from Signaturit’s Salvador Severich. This Barcelona-based company uses biometric data to identify signatures. Its product can be downloaded via their API and integrated into any website or ID system. The company is now operating across 4 countries with 40 customers.
Next on the program was the Lender&Spender’s Robert Leclercq. The P2P allows users to borrow money directly from other lenders, without a bank acting as an intermediary. They are proud that they are the first PSP to have a first fully digital application process. Due to the sensible criteria for loans, there have not yet been any defaults.
Peter van Meersbergen from Investormatch was next to share their fintech solution. The company provides funding for other innovative companies between 25 thousand and 2 million euros.
Lastly, Judit Bogos from Limitless took the floor. Limitless wants to help millennials become investors. The micro-investment app allows users to invest small amounts after every time they spend money. They launched a micro-savings version of the app in partnership with bunq in September 2017. After PSD2 and open banking is implemented in 2018, the app will be able to connect to every bank in Europe.The rest of the evening was an extended networking session with drinks, snacks, and a great atmosphere at Rockstart, with the first snow of the winter. We’ll look forward to welcoming you at our first meetup of 2018 in January.
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