Santander launches distributed ledger startup challenge
Santander believes distributed ledger technology could be worth billions
Santander has launched a competition to support startups using distributed ledger technology in financial services. Through its subsidiary InnoVentures, the bank hopes to promote distributed ledger tools that could improve banking processes.
The competition is a joint effort between Santander and Onevest, a crowdfunding community focused on startup investing. The Santander InnoVentures DL Challenge is aimed at startups worldwide; it will focus on areas such as mortgage processing, trade finance and asset leasing. The winner of the Challenge will receive a $15,000 cash prize to help fund the startup and get it ready for angel investment.
“Our aim is to inspire innovation and encourage entrepreneurship,” said Mariano Belinky, managing partner of Santander InnoVentures. “Distributed ledger technologies will create huge value for customers, banks and entrepreneurs who create new businesses around it. The Challenge will spark and accelerate that process for fintech startups.”
Onevest will provide mentorship and guidance before presenting the winner to its 1000 Angels private investor community to pitch for ongoing funding. The winner will also be given access to market and technology specialists at Santander InnoVentures and its parent, the Santander Group.
“The financial industry’s processes are ripe for improvement and our investor community has an appetite to help startups in that space. We look forward to fostering innovation in partnership with one of the most powerful players in the fintech space,” said Alejandro Cremades, co-founder and executive chairman at Onevest.
Entrants will be shortlisted and then selected by a panel of DL and blockchain technology experts at a Challenge event to be held in New York during January, 2015.
Santander’s InnoVentures subsidiary was set up in London in July 2014. The bank released a report earlier this year, The Fintech 2.0 Paper: rebooting financial services, which estimated the value of distributed ledger at several billion dollars.
