And now for some news out of Russia that includes nary a mention of Messrs Trump and Putin.

Just a few weeks after their debut at our developers conference in London, CASHOFF has won a place in the first ever Innotribe Startup Challenge Russia. The company, which specializes in collecting and analyzing financial data for use in credit scoring, loyalty programs, and PFM solutions, will join nine other startups in St. Petersburg, Russia to pitch their technologies during the Bank of Russia’s International Financial Congress.

“Innotribe Russian finalists present original, prospective, and ready-to-use products, which proves that (the) Russian fintech industry has overgrown the stage of following trends and ideas from developed markets and is ready for global fintech competition,” Bank of Russia deputy governor Olga Skorobogatova said. Companies participating in the challenge will get complimentary mentoring sessions – both in groups and individually – ahead of their pitches at the Congress. Audience members will select the three best startup pitches and those companies will be invited to participate at SWIFT’s annual global financial services conference, SIBOS. Those top three companies will also earn a $10,000 cash award.

Pictured: CASHOFF CEO Dmitry Gorkov during his presentation “Collecting and Analyzing Financial Data” at FinDEVr London 2017.

Kevin Johnson, Head of Innotribe Innovation Programmes at SWIFT underscored the opportunity of startups to gain “expert mentoring” and “exposure to financial institutions.” SWIFT’s Head of Russia, CIS, and Mongolia praised the “buoyant Russian fintech environment,” and called the collaboration between SWIFT, the Bank of Russia and Rosswift “very intense and very enriching.” Joining CASHOFF in St. Petersburg will be:

• BankEx
• Emotions Tech
• Evotor
• Iocus-soft
• Moneycare
• Oz Forensics
• SCORISTA
• TalkBank
• VentureClub

Founded in 2013 and with offices in Limassol, Cyprus and London, U.K. CASHOFF discussed strategies for collecting and analyzing financial data at FinDEVr London 2017. The company’s technology enables users to see their complete financial picture from payment cards to checking deposits to loans. Available as a mobile app for both iOS and Android –  CASHOFF automatically imports data from the user’s bank, e-wallets, and mobile network operators, categorizes transactions and generates budgets automatically, and provides detailed expense reports and recommendations for ways to save money and grow income.

“CASHOFF is a perfect title for a service dealing with the internalization of monetary transactions,” Gorkov wrote in an article for Entrepreneur Handbook earlier this year. “The system really helps to save money by searching optimal ways of planning (a) budget.” He added that the company plans to “develop a partner network, implement interesting events, special propositions, and bonus programs” in the near future.