Rwandan FinTech Firm Nominated Among Global “Rising Stars”

Mergims, a Rwandan FinTech Startup has been nominated among the top rising starts in the world.

The ranking, conducted by a UK firm under its “Pathfinder Ranking edition of 2016/2017.

Seventy startup companies took part in the rankings through a questionnaire providing detailed and prompt responses to Financial IT’s expert panel.

The panel was able to assess providers and their unique solutions and do a great research for the FinTech community.

“Over time, we hope that the Financial IT 2016/2017 Pathfinder Ranking will be revised and extended, so that it is seen as a crucial work of reference for the industry,” the report says.

For now, though, “we have ranked the 70 companies nominated on the basis of the average score for four main criteria and the quantity of funds raised.”

“We have recognized 50 most promising fintech startups from the list and named them TOP 50,” the report says.

Those companies that didn’t receive the high scores and remained below the line were nominated as Rising Stars, and Mergims is 4^th on this list.

MERGIMS is a B2B2C platform operating as ”Cash to Service/Goods” business model, that offers a cheap yet convenient and secure payment platform in Africa.

Mobile banking and payments appears to be the main focus of the numerous (mainly small) FinTech companies that have raised funds – from a surprisingly diverse variety of backers – over the last three years, the report says.

Key Takeaways

Most of the nominated Pathfinders are relatively small companies, with only 10 of the 70 having raised more than US$10m. Most have no more than a few dozen employees and associates.

Funding sources are varied. Although the Pathfinders come from a variety of countries, a disproportionately large number are based in the United States or the UK.

It is not helpful to be categoric about the main area of interest of each of the Pathfinders. This is because there is often an overlap between the major elements of FinTech as Financial IT would see them. Blockchain often plays a key role in security or KYC solutions: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often a key element of mobile banking solutions, and so on.

Nevertheless, about one fifth of the Pathfinders have indicated that mobile banking and payments are their most important areas of focus.

About one seventh of the Pathfinders have indicated that AI is their most important area.

Similar numbers are focusing primarily on each of block chain, data management or core banking and investment/wealth management technology.

Smaller numbers of the Pathfinders are focusing mainly on (micro)-lending, KYC/ security and other areas.

“Once again we congratulate the Top 50 most promising startups in the ranking and thank the rest 20 companies for being nominated. Next year could be more successful for our Rising Stars,” organisers said in an email.

Top 50 Most Promising Startups

1 TOP50 Atom Bank

2 TOP50 Nubank

3 TOP50 Lemonade

4 TOP50 Monzo

5 TOP50 Beam Wallet

6 TOP50 SETL

7 TOP50 NYMBUS, Inc

8 TOP50 Token

9 TOP50 Yoyo Wallet

10 TOP50 Grow Financial Inc.

11 TOP50 Point

12 TOP50 ComplyAdvantage

13 TOP50 Data Republic

14 TOP50 Smartkarma

15 TOP50 Elliptic

16 TOP50 Mesitis Pte Ltd

17 TOP50 Trunomi

18 TOP50 Prive Services Limited

19 TOP50 Beehive

20 TOP50 Ovamba Solutions (“Ovamba”)

21 TOP50 Qumram

22 TOP50 Coinify ApS

23 TOP50 B-Secur

24 TOP50 PensionBee

25 TOP50 Quantstore

26 TOP50 Pushfor

27 TOP50 ThisIsMe

28 TOP50 Earny

29 TOP50 Twisto

30 TOP50 Qonto (Olinda SAS)

31 TOP50 Valoot

32 TOP50 Veridu

33 TOP50 Splittable

34 TOP50 Equitise

35 TOP50 Thinknum

36 TOP50 Plutus.it

37 TOP50 Cendit

38 TOP50 Finimize

39 TOP50 Spotcap Global Services

40 TOP50 Bambu

41 TOP50 KyoLAB Limited

42 TOP50 Enterprise bot

43 TOP50 BlockEx

44 TOP50 bunq

45 TOP50 Ways2Wealth

46 TOP50 Configo

47 TOP50 SecurionPay

48 TOP50 BankEx

49 TOP50 Smartly Pte Ltd

50 TOP50 Everledger

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Rising Star mergims.com

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Rising Star MONI Ltd.