Santander InnoVentures, the $100 million fintech venture capital fund of Santander Group, in partnership with IE Business School and Accenture, today announced PayKey as the winner of the ‘Pitch Slam’ competition at the first Fintech Venture Day, held in Tel-Aviv.

Held across three different locations, Fintech Venture Days are a global initiative, part conference and part competition, bringing together regional stakeholders with the aim of exploring the issues faced by startups in the financial technology sector. Incorporated into each event is the Pitch Slam – an open competition in which innovative startups vie to win access to the expertise and capabilities of all event partners:

·         Santander InnoVentures will provide guidance and best practices for raising capital. Also, the possibility of receiving funding exists for those startups that qualify under the Santander InnoVentures requirements: www.siv.vc

·         IE Business School will provide the environment and mentorship required to excel in this dynamic industry

·         Accenture will provide advice and market insight to help the startups go to market effectively and scale quickly

Daniel Peled, CEO and co-founder of PayKey said: “Winning the Fintech Venture Day Pitch Slam in Tel Aviv is hugely exciting for us and further validation of the secure mobile payment technology we’re taking to market. We’re seeing that banks are more open to innovation and willing to push the boundaries when it comes to delivering a great customer payment experience that’s also highly secure. The event gave us a great opportunity to present our ideas in a very competitive pitch, to a high caliber judging panel.”

Drawing on an impressive depth of financial services technology and VC experience, the panel judging the competition consisted of Mariano Belinky (Managing Partner at Santander InnoVentures), Rodrigo Kuri (Head of Santander’s Bank of the Future), Jacob Benadiba (Country Managing Director Accenture Israel) and Juan José Güemes (Chairman of the International Centre for Entrepreneurial Management at IE Business School).

Mariano Belinky, Managing Partner at Santander InnoVentures, and a member of the judging panel said: “With Fintech 2.0 just around the corner, we’re committed to encouraging and empowering vibrant fintech ecosystems globally – and our Fintech Venture Days look to do exactly this. Our first Fintech Venture Day in Israel has been a great success. There are some really exciting fintech startups in the region, and we saw five great pitches covering applications for managing secure mobile payments, identity verification, virtual currency bank accounts, multi-lender marketplaces and payment installment plans. PayKey is a worthy winner and the area of secure mobile payments is ripe for growth.”

The other startup finalists selected to present during the competition section of the event were: Credible, Splitit, Neema and IAmReal.

Jacob Benadiba, Accenture Israel Country Managing Director added: “The Israeli fintech market provides a strong source of talent and new innovative solutions, with more than 400 fintech startups in existence, and growing at a pace of one new company every week. Accenture is fully committed to being a key player in the global fintech community, including Israel. We see this ecosystem as essential to better execute our main mission which is to help our clients in the financial industry be more successful and capitalise on this exciting momentum of transformation.”

The remaining two Fintech Venture Days will take place in Madrid and Sao Paolo, in April and May respectively. For more information and to apply for the Pitch Slam, please visit http://www.fintechventuredays.com/