The Finlab, a Singaprean fintech-focussed accelerator program that produced quite a few interesting companies in 2016, is off and running for its second cohort.

This year’s edition will wrap up in early-August and it features a wide range of companies that include P2P payments, bonds transparency and regulatory tech, among others.

Finlab is a joint venture project between United Overseas Bank and the government technology agency, SGInnovate.

According to a release, the programme aims to help, “identify, develop and support innovative businesses keen on growing and expanding into the ASEAN markets”.

Let’s meet the eight companies!

BondLinc

Many of the mobile financial trading platforms are focussed on the equities market. BondLinc wants to bring the same efficiencies and transparencies to the bond market. It believes that access to information is limited to relationship managers or expensive terminals.

Bondlinc allows users to trade bonds, explore information, receive updates and keep track of the news.

Aimazing

This contactless mobile payment company uses sound wave technology to facilitate the transaction. A person will put their phone and microphone to the payment processor and an inaudible sound wave will process the transaction.

The advantage is it does not require a specific piece of hardware or operating system and can be used with any device that has a microphone (which is practically every mobile device people carry these days).

Chynge

Chynge is a regtech company that wants to use AI to help make cross-border transactions safe, transparent and fast. It has a flagship product called AI.Compliance.bot.

HelloGold

HelloGold is a an app for people to buy and sell gold at their convenience. It is interesting because it allows people with the bare minimum financials (MYR1 or SG$0.32) to buy gold. It charges a 2 per cent annual management fee. The company sends users the physical gold so they don’t lose that advantage of buying the metal.

The company also advertises that it follows Shariah compliant business practices.

PayKey

This P2P payment company allows people to send money to one another via any social media platform. It integrates a payment button into a person’s keyboard that they can then use when having a chat.

Payment Key is pursuing the white label strategy so banks can use the button to integrate a user’s bank account with their chat keyboard. Pressing the ‘pay’ button would allow someone to pay another person directly with their integrated bank account.

Quber

Quber is reverse engineering the personal savings process. Users ell the app what they are saving for, and then Quber helps them with the personal finances to achieve that specific goal.

According to its website, the company is also looking into partnerships with financial institutions and retailers.

Tookitaki

This startup is using analytics to help financiers with predictive models. The platform uses machine learning to optimise risk-flow models and says it helps mostly in the compliance and operations space.

It claims it can improve efficiency by 40 to 50 per cent.

TransFICC

The pain point TransFICC is trying to fix is the headache for banks of integrating with multiple fixed-income trading platforms. I wants to bring a fragmented market under one open-sourced API.

It targets Asset Managers so they can become more efficient while more easily navigating differing regulations from a fragmented industry.