BNP Paribas and Plug and Play take their strategic partnership forward and launch Season 3 of the acceleration programme at Station F

In 2016, the BNP Paribas Group began to partner with Plug and Play – the Silicon Valley-based international innovation platform linking startups with larger corporations and investors – through Bank of the West, the Group’s subsidiary in California. This association became a global partnership in 2017, when BNP Paribas and Plug and Play launched an international acceleration programme for Fintech and Insurtech startups based at Station F in Paris, the largest startup campus in the world.

By the end of the first two seasons, 18 startups from 8 countries had helped to bring 20 pilot projects to fruition, alongside with BNP Paribas’ métiers and functions such as Risk and Compliance. These collaborations, frequently drawing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain technology, focused on 5 main topics:

• Customer Experience
• Customer Knowledge
• Information Security
• Back-office efficiency
• Services for small and medium-sized companies

“Our acceleration programme in conjunction with Plug and Play at Station F is at the heart of our open innovation strategy. We will take our partnership forward at the same pace over the next few months; the forthcoming rollout at scale of the best pilot projects will enable us to drive forward with our digital transition and to evolve customer experience.”, stated Jacques d’Estais, BNP Paribas Group Deputy COO and Head of International Financial Services,

Discover the 18 startups taking part in Seasons 1 and 2

Every Season of the 3-month Fintech and Insurtech acceleration programme, a batch of around 10 startups selected from all over the world benefit from a range of exclusive services, comprising:

• Opportunities for business development;
• Opportunities to raise funds;
• Assistance and support from BNP Paribas;
• Mentoring from Plug and Play;
• Invitations to appear at various conferences, plus other networking opportunities.

The 11 selected startups in Batch 3 are:

AdviceRobo

[The Netherlands] Psychometric credit scoring and risk reduction by predicting creditworthiness, default, prepayments and churn in order to support financial institutions and empower Millennials and SMEs that are not being adequately served by traditional banks.

Simple

[France] An insurance brokerage designed to meet all company needs – supplementary health insurance for employees; buildings insurance; company vehicle insurance – based on customised, affordable and reliable offers with no strings attached.

Duco

[UK] Duco helps non-technical staff to reconcile orders, transactions or reference data from different datasets, based on user-friendly self-service software, thus automating the manual reconciliation process.

OpenLegacy

[United States] Enabling the creation of an API in just a few minutes, with project rollout in a few weeks or even days.  OpenLegacy provides an API integration platform designed to leverage and modernise essential company legacy systems, enabling firms to drive forward with their digital transformation.

Mishipay

[UK] In-store self-scan payment technology. The customer can pay for his/her purchases with a smartphone and walk out without having to queue up at the checkout. MishiPay is as simple as that: walk in, select items, scan, pay and walk out.

Lore

[United States] An AI-based multi-language, multi-source document search, tagging and information retrieval solution. Users can retrieve the information they need from both internal and public documents, including newspapers, social network posts, company documents, press releases, and transcripts.

Pikcio

[France] PikcioChain provides a secure, compliant, Blockchain-based data ecosystem that enables the collection and exchange of personal data, enabling users to save time, reduce costs and increase Customer Satisfaction.

Tapoly

[UK] On-demand insurance for freelancers, contractors and SMEs, and everyone else in the sharing economy and the gig economy. If you wish to rent out your bicycle or a bedroom at your home, Tapoly will provide flexible insurance to cover all your risks so you can add new cover when you need it and pay premiums accordingly.

Neener Analytics

[United States] Neener offers alternative risk assessment services and marketing conversions. Based on behavioural and personality analysis, the company helps clients reduce defaults, boost the sales conversion rate and expand their business.

Yogosha      

[France] Yogosha is a ‘bug bounty’ platform, enabling website owners and developers to compensate ‘white hat’ hackers for reporting bugs and signalling vulnerabilities so as to enable the firm to improve its cybersecurity. The ‘bug bounty’ approach means that the firm only pays for actual bugs that are discovered.

Valoo

[France] A Digital Management Platform for belongings, enabling users to register, assess and manage everything they own. Users can work out the value of each of their possessions in real time, sell, lend or share them using the Valoo sales comparison service, take out insurance on them and make an insurance claim on the site free of charge.

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In parallel of this initiative and in the same objective of stepping up its presence in the world’s most dynamic innovation ecosystems, BNP Paribas will become, in May this year, one of the five “corporate founders” of the Fintech Europe programme offered by a new innovation platform run by Plug and Play in conjunction with TechQuartier in Frankfurt.

About Plug and Play Tech Center

Plug and Play Tech Center, a combined venture fund, innovation platform, startup accelerator, and corporate innovation consultancy, is the world’s leading platform for fostering Innovation and arranging investment in tech startups.  Forging links between startups and major corporations, Plug and Play Tech Center invests in more than 200 startups every year. Since it was set up in 2006, Plug and Play Tech Center has expanded its acceleration programmes to 28 locations in 11 countries all over the world.

With more than 220 partnering companies and 6,000 startups involved, Plug and Play Tech Center has created a dynamic tech ecosystem in a large number of cities. A landmark year for Plug and Play, 2017 saw the launch of 16 new programmes across the world, 426 startups accelerated in Sunnyvale, California, and the completion of 162 investment deals in the United States and 100 investment deals outside the US.