Although “open finance” may be considered a fairly new concept, it is gaining popularity fast.
Open finance is a type of data-sharing model that allows users to easily share their financial data with third parties. The data itself doesn’t necessarily have to come from a bank as it could also come from a government body like the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), for instance.
In the Philippines, early-stage investment firm Kaya Founders has recently joined forces with Brankas, one of the leading open finance technology companies in Southeast Asia, to aggressively promote this new concept.
The two firms have since launched the inaugural “Open PHinance Challenge,” an eight-week accelerator program that aims to generate innovative, high-value open finance products for early-stage startups in the Philippines. The program’s goal is to help solve audiences or the company’s operational needs more creatively.
Eleven startups have already been chosen, and they will soon start an accelerator program to develop the next generation of open finance products for the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Brankas and Kaya Founders, along with their local partners in the Philippines, will support entrepreneurs through mentoring, networking, and product development.
Philippine-based startups to vie for the prize of P5-million capital
Seven homegrown companies in their early stages of operations have made it to the inaugural Open PHinance Challenge. They will vie for a chance to meet potential global investors and stakeholders and for the more than P5 million capital reward.
These Filipino-owned firms are among the 11 finalists that were cut from thirty teams and startups that applied for this competition and include Betterteem Technologies, Inc., Cropital Enterprises Corp., and DyipPay Revolution Corporation. Two other firms that made the cut operate in Singapore and Brazil.
Completing the roster are teams of newly-operated businesses in the Southeast Asian region that have multiple locations overseas.
The finalists were selected for their problem identification, product relevance, innovativeness, and team dynamism.
Open PHinance challenge to kickstart ‘Banking 3.0 in PH’
Todd Schweitzer, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Brankas, said: “We are now at the beginning of ‘Banking 3.0’ in the Philippines, where we are unbundling and embedding financial services and reducing reliance on the financial institutions (FIs) to build financial products on their own.”
Schweitzer added that more and more FIs are seeing a business value in partnering with start-ups like the accelerator participants, where they can distribute, monetize and share data on behalf of the FIs.
“This is what we hope to enable with the Open PHinance Challenge, and hope that it benefits the users of the participants as well,” Schweitzer said.
Three winners will attend the Singapore Fintech Festival from November 2 to 4, 2022 where they will give a presentation on the main stage.
The participating teams will go through week-long intensives covering pitching, funding, user validation, company development, and product ideation over the following weeks.
The participating teams will create a distinctive product and presentation, which they will present on October 14 with the help of subject area experts to be assembled by Brankas, Kaya Founders, and local partners. The teams will be thoroughly evaluated based on their product and pitch in what the organizers called “Demo Day in Manila.”