Citi’s Most Promising Israeli Fintech Startups for 2020

Over 700 startups dealing with different aspects of fintech are estimated to be working in Israel today. They include payments solutions, business loans and credit, cybersecurity for payments, trading, and more. Citi accelerator, together with its collaborators Israeli Discount bank, software company Intuit Inc., and Visa published a list of Israel's most promising fintech startups. The list includes selected startups in a variety of categories related to the industry, such as trading and investing, lending and financing, commerce, and payments.

Thirty venture capital funds, including Viola, Pitango, Team8, Entree Capital, and Qumra Capital, were asked to select the most promising companies. The VCs were allowed to name only one of their portfolio companies for only one of the categories.

Here are the startups ranked by the investors as the most promising in the various categories:

Rapyd Financial Networks Ltd. ranked first in B2B payments category.

Founded in 2016, Rapyd has developed a Fintech-as-a-service platform that brings highly localized payment experiences anywhere. Entering 2020, Rapyd has tremendous potential driven by the expansion of global commerce and the need to embed financial services as an integral part of the next generation technology stack.

Trigo Vision Ltd. ranked first in the commerce and payments category.

Founded in 2017, Trigo developed a computer vision powered platform for a checkout-free shopping experience. Addressing the legacy brick and mortar market, Trigo is building a new operating system for retailers that has the potential to unlock a true grocery-wide revolution - revitalizing the in-store experience while keeping the best part of shopping alive.

Capitolis Inc. ranked first in the trading and investing category.

Founded in 2017 Capitolis has developed a platform that addresses capital market constraints in equities and foreign exchange. In the last year Capitolis’ platform has been broadly adopted by the world’s leading banks and hedge funds, and is well positioned to become a major industry infrastructure.

Chargeafter in lending and financing category.

Founded in 2016, ChargeAfter enables retailers to offer personalized financing options to their customers in real-time, at the point of sale, through a global network of lenders. By creating a new distribution layer, that neither banks nor retailers could build on their own - ChargeAfter is doing for credit what the large card networks once did for transactions.

Lemonade Inc. in InsureTech category.

Founded in 2015, and raised $480M to date. Lemonade is an online insurance company that offers homeowners and renters insurance powered by artificial intelligence and behavioral economics. Armed with a new business model, sophisticated technology, and a growing amount of data, lemonade is an agent of change in the traditional insurance industry.

Silverfort Inc. in cybersecurity category.

The adoption of IOT and cloud based infrastructure are dramatically changing the enterprise network, and are creating new challenges and attack surfaces. Silverfort is revolutionizing the “front line” of security by providing network based adaptive multi-factor authentication.

BioCatch in anti-fraud category.

BioCatch has developed a behavioral biometrics platform that analyzes human-device interactions to detect fraud, including identity theft and user manipulation. In the digital world, identity is the frontline of security and a central component that drives all engagements. Biocatch is expanding these capabilities by providing continuous authentication, bringing us closer to a brave, new password-less world.

Guesty Inc. in PropTech category.

The global vacation rental market is booming with marketplaces such as Airbnb driving the demand for residential properties. With such high demand from travelers, Guesty is providing a property management platform that plays a crucial role in helping property managers manage their business more efficiently, while supporting the transition of the shared economy and travel from a luxury to become more of a commodity.

WalkMe Inc. in customer engagement category.

WalkMe has developed a digital adoption platform, with a vision of transforming the way users interact with technology. Just like navigation systems (GPS) has changed the way we drive, WalkMe is a pioneer of digital transformation, changing the way we interact with both consumer and enterprise applications.

Unbound Tech in blockchain category.

As organizations move towards increased adoption of blockchain, with more value at stake, key management becomes a critical infrastructure component. In addition to its enterprise key management solution, Unbound’s multi-party computation platform has created a new layer of trust that brings us one step closer to adopting blockchain-based products.

Explorium Ltd. as the most promising startup in the early stage category.

Data is the new oil of the digital enterprise and while there’s a finite amount of oil in the world, the amount of data we create is growing exponentially. But what part of this data is relevant? Explorium is aiming to answer this question by doing for machine learning data what search engines did for the web – Explorium provides a data discovery platform that can find the most relevant data sources to a specific problem.

At a panel held last week as part of the ranking event that took place at Citi’s fintech innovation lab in Tel Aviv, Viola Ventures partner Omri Ben David said “Israel's fintech market continued to set new records in 2019. We see the industry maturing with large-scale capital rounds in insurance, payments, loans, and risk. At the same time, new categories are emerging, such as AI and back-office integrations, fintech for specific verticals such as healthcare, and the creation of innovative commerce platforms.”

"The Israeli Fintech market continues to grow every year and we are proud to recognize the most promising companies in their fields. Citi has been instrumental in this space from the start and is looking to engage more closely and invest in Israeli companies," Ornit Shinar, head of venture investing Israel at Citi, said.

"From huge banks to other financial institutions, they are finally all understanding things need to be done. Less startups are raising money in the seed stage. The next step is consolidation between fintech and banks. Banks will acquire startups to broaden their offerings.This is the year we will see big changes. Challenger banks were very hyped, but are now getting a lot of scrutiny, because only 2% of the population uses it as a main account and all they are doing is subsidizing signups. Banks will coop and consolidate Challenger and traditional banks,” Yodfat Harel Buchris, managing director at Blumberg Capital, said.

Roy Ben Daniel, Ventures Lead at Visa, said ”Visa’s open banking is a great fit for Israel as tech driven but there is a market and reg option—feels it's a big miss. A good place to start but it's already a market reality in the world why isn't Israel a player”.