A pair of Finovate alums – Privakey and bleu – have earned spots in the 2020 class of the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator. The program, launched this June, is dedicated to supporting innovative startups in both the fintech and healthtech industries. A total of 15 companies from nine countries were selected for the Accelerator’s incoming class.
Each participating startup will get up to $120,000 in IBM Cloud credits, an in-person workshop in the U.S., technical and business mentorship, and business value design assistance, as well as access to IBM’s network of partners, customers, and stakeholders. Startups will also work with program collaborators such as IBM Alpha Zone, Queen City Fintech, and MEDICI.
The IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator added that it will use IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services powered by LinuxONE to ensure program startups have “the highest level of security, uptime, availability” as they innovate and scale their solutions.
Privakey demonstrated its cloud-based, identity and authentication service at FinovateFall 2017. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Privakey began the year with the release of the latest version of its Privakey CX solution. Last month, the company launched its PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) solution.
“Our PSD2 compliant solution is designed to eliminate what merchants fear most about SCA – shopping cart abandonment,” Privakey CEO Charlie Durkin said. “The customer experiences a transaction flow that is intuitive, simple, consistent, and contextual. Privakey eliminates out-of-band codes and other inconvenient authentication methods typically associated with SCA.”
Making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2015, bleu leverages low energy Bluetooth beacons to facilitate mobile transactions. A small wireless device sends a Bluetooth signal to a customer’s Bleu app when they enter a store. The beacon links the customer with the store and when the customer is ready to pay, they choose their preferred method of payment to automatically complete the transaction.
The Los Angeles, California-based company was founded in 2014. Sesie Bonsi is CEO.
Along with Privakey and bleu, the rest of the cohort is below:
- Azaad Health (healthtech – Pakistan)
- BioTrillion (healthtech – U.S.)
- Cube Wealth (fintech – India)
- encore (fintech – U.A.E./Pakistan)
- Fostrum (fintech – Canada)
- Galen Data (healthtech – U.S.)
- Home Lending Pal (mortgagetech – U.S.)
- MotionsCloud (insurtech – German)
- My Allergy (healthtech – U.K.)
- px pulse (healthtech – U.S./Pakistan)
- Verge.Capital (fintech – Ireland)
- Wayapay (fintech – Kenya)
- Well Kept Beauty (healthtech – U.S.)
The startups selected for the Class of 2020 were chosen by an expert panel of peers from IBM and Queen City Fintech. The criteria used by the panelists included team, value proposition, mission, problem statement, vision, target market, business and economic model, and technical roadmap.