I’ll admit it: the only thing better than both Rippleshot and BioCatch making the finals in the MRC METAwards is the possibility that, since they are in different categories, there’s a chance both Finovate alums will take home the gold.

Big-data anti-fraud specialist Rippleshot, and biometric authentication innovator BioCatch, will join four other fintech companies at MRC Vegas 2015 on March 24-26. All six companies will compete in a set of final presentations to determine the winners of the startup and established company categories, respectively.

MRC CEO Danielle Nago said the awards serve as a “showcase” for those developing “progressive innovations” when it comes to dealing with payments and fraud. “This collaboration allows merchants to incorporate safe and efficient practices for their customers,” she added.

Competing against Rippleshot in the start-up category are allpago international and Risk Ident. Biocatch squares off against both Adyen and Agari in the established-company category.

Rippleshot made its Finovate debut at our spring conference in 2014. Based in Chicago and founded in June 2013, the company was co-founded by Canh Tran, CEO; Lucas Ward, CTO; Yueyu Fu, CPO; and Chief Scientist Randal Cox. Rippleshot was named one of ten “promising startups, to watch” by the 2014 FinTech Forward Rankings, and won “Startup Up and Comer” honors at the Chicago Innovation Awards in October.

Israel-based BioCatch made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014 in New York. BioCatch provides cloud-based behavioral authentication and threat detection for both mobile and online applications. The company recently launched its New Account Fraud Detection solution, and was featured in November 2014 by American Banker in its line-up of top 10 tech companies to watch.

MRC stands for “Merchant Risk Council.” Based in Seattle with offices in Madrid, Spain, MRC is a global, not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to operational excellence in the field of fraud, payments, and risk in e-commerce.