The Singapore Fintech Festival is called the largest fintech conference in the world. We’ve been there and checked it out. The numbers here speak for themselves. The 7th edition of the festival, which was attended by Accelpoint in November 2022, attracted more than 62,000 visitors from 115 countries. During this record-breaking edition, more than 850 speakers took to the stages and the exhibition space brought together more than 450 exhibitors.
The organisations behind the success of the next edition of SFF are the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore’s central bank and financial market regulator, and Elevandi, a public entity created to foster open dialogue between the public and private sectors to advance the development of fintech in the digital economy. Additionally, the conference is supported by entities such as Constellar and ABS (The Association of Banks in Singapore), among others.
The visit happened thanks to our close collaboration with the conference organisers and Magdalena Smolak – head of the Singaporean foreign office of the Polish Investment & Trade Agency. Accelpoint has been running the pan-European European FinTech Hackcelerator programme for three years now, through which startups from the old continent can find their way to the markets of Central and Eastern Asia and have the opportunity to be present at this largest industry event. Three years of intensive collaboration have allowed us to build a network of extensive global partners. Some of the institutions supporting our initiative include top European accelerators and fintech support institutions, as well as most of Singapore’s ecosystem.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for two years our programme has been mainly organised remotely. We were therefore extremely pleased in 2022 to see the loosening of restrictions, which enabled us to travel and meet with partners face-to-face. Our representation consisting of Hubert Anyzewski – founding partner and board member Jakub Jankowski had a great number of fruitful conversations with representatives from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Economic Development Board of Singapore, and Block 71 – a leading accelerator in the region, among others. We also visited The Embassy of Poland in Singapore and participated in the Eurochamp event organised by the Polish Investment & Trade Agency. We also visited the headquarters of Enterprise Singapore, where we had the pleasure of discussing further collaboration with Jyo Shankar and Lucas Tan. In addition to talking to existing ecosystem partners, we also had the pleasure of meeting with the Singapore Blockchain Association, Afthoniala Lab, Grehill, among others, and attended a very interesting event organised by Digital Pilipinas – an organisation that supports the digital development of the Philippines ecosystem.
However, one of the main reasons for the delegation was to support and facilitate business connections for this year’s winners of the European FinTech Hackcelerator, namely startups Aleph Zero and Blockbank. It was representatives of these companies that we introduced to Reuben Lim of the Singapore FinTech Association, among others. Additionally, we supported our finalists during the grand finale of the Global FinTech Hackcelerator, during which the startups presented their technologies in front of representatives of major corporations and investors.
And what do the winners this year deal with? Aleph Zero is a new blockchain platform that is faster than most of the solutions built on top of existing technologies. It is a DAG-based protocol that while being fast and scalable, is still actually decentralised and secure. And Blockbank is the all-in-one cryptocurrency app. The power of DeFi and CeFi technology in a simple & secure application.
“SFF is, as every year, the place to see the future of the fintech and blockchain industry. I am delighted that after a period of pandemic we were able to once again visit and meet with leaders and innovative projects not only from Asia but from around the world talking about the future of the industry.
For the past 3 years, we have had the pleasure of working with the Singapore board and dozens of partners to showcase the best fintech and blockchain projects from Europe. This year, Europe was represented by Aleph Zero and BlockBank projects.
Our collaboration with Singapore is growing and we are very pleased that Accelpoint has been chosen as the partner to develop European-Singapore cooperation in the area of innovation. We invite any projects interested in scaling towards Singapore to contact us and follow the European FinTech Hackcelerator programme.” – Hubert Anyżewski emphasises.
