WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Tech for Integrity Challenge (T4I), a landmark effort to encourage technology innovators from around the world to create cutting-edge solutions to promote integrity, accountability and transparency in the public sector and beyond, announced final awards for the competition today in Washington, D.C.
The awards were announced at an event hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to highlight the crucial role technology can play in tackling corruption around the world. The awards represent the culmination of T4I, a global open innovation competition in which companies of various types and sizes submitted technology solutions.
The initiative, led by Citi in collaboration with public and private sector allies, sought to source innovation in a number of areas, including government transactions and procurement; culture, ethics and citizen engagement; cutting red tape; and information security and identity. The T4I strategic allies include Clifford Chance, Facebook, IBM, Let’s Talk Payments, Mastercard, Microsoft and PwC.
In addition to awards presented at the six Demo Days in May and June, where 96 finalists presented their ideas, the T4I strategic allies today announced their own awards to companies that offered solutions that merited additional recognition. The Challenge also presented three additional overall awards, including the James Wolfensohn Game Changer Award for the most scalable, implementable and innovative solution.
T4I Final Awards
Clifford Chance
Clifford Chance is providing dedicated legal advice to six finalists, where international legal and regulatory insight has the greatest potential to support their development.
“We are excited to be working with AID:Tech, CARTO, DigiByte Holdings, ID.me, Tradle and SQREEM Technologies,” said Malcolm Sweeting, Senior Partner, Clifford Chance. “They are the best at what they do and, like all pioneers, they are pushing new boundaries. We look forward to working with them to overcome the legal and regulatory hurdles they may face and bring their innovations to a wider audience.”
IBM
IBM is awarding up to $120,000 of IBM Cloud credits and services, through the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program (GEP), to each of the following award recipients from the Demo Days that meet the program’s basic criteria:
- Abu Dhabi: 360ofme
- Buenos Aires: ID.me
- Dublin: digi.me
- Hyderabad: Docswallet
- Mexico City: CityGrows
- Singapore: Chekk
The IBM GEP will provide each award recipient with access to IBM technology such as IoT and blockchain, in addition to community support and learning resources. Additionally, they will be highlighted in the IBM Global Leader of Digital Government Transformation Marquis Cabrera’s Hacking Government column with CIO.com.
For the overall award recipient, ID.me, IBM will conduct a private workshop with industry leaders and experts who will provide additional mentorship and access to key stakeholders in support of further development of their solution.
Mastercard
Mastercard has selected AID:Tech to receive a $50,000 award and ongoing support and mentorship as it works to scale its business.
AID:Tech is an award-winning company that focuses on the delivery of ”digital entitlements,” such as welfare, humanitarian aid and remittances based on end beneficiaries’ digital identity. AID:Tech was the first company in the world to deliver international aid to Syrian refugees in Lebanon using blockchain technology. Focusing on providing innovative solutions to governments and corporates, the AID:Tech platform is helping its clients achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
A key focal point for the continued engagement with AID:Tech will be the Mastercard Lab for Financial Inclusion. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Lab innovates new technologies and solutions to further Mastercard's commitment to connect 500 million people previously excluded from formal financial services.
“We are impressed by AID:Tech’s vision and our shared mission to do well and do good,” said Deborah Barta, Senior Vice President of Innovation Management and Startup Engagement, Mastercard. “We believe that together we can improve access to and use of formal financial services, which will ultimately deliver more inclusive social and economic growth around the world. Mastercard Labs is excited by the opportunity to further explore synergies with AID:Tech as a result of our engagement during the T4I Challenge.”
Microsoft
"We have been pleased to support the T4I Challenge and are delighted to celebrate the award recipients at this ceremony," said Toni Townes-Whitley, Corporate Vice President of Industry at Microsoft Corp. "Corruption prevents societies and individuals from reaching their full potential. Through the power of cloud platforms and development tools, the participants have built solutions that counter these challenges through trusted, inclusive and transparent digital services. We are pleased to recognize the best of the best – the most creative and innovative solutions."
Microsoft is pleased to announce its T4I Challenge Strategic Ally award recipients.
Microsoft is awarding the Microsoft BizSpark+ Award to finalists from across the Demo Days. This award represents a full Microsoft BizSpark Plus membership, or an upgrade to an existing BizSpark membership, providing recipients with up to $120,000 of free Microsoft Azure cloud services over a two-year term. The selected award recipients, by Demo Day, are as follows:
- Abu Dhabi: from Nigeria, with its solution for Electronic Ticketing, Nultan
- Buenos Aires: from Mexico, with its Government Engagement Platform, Negocios Digitales
- Dublin: from the UK, with its risk-management tracking solution, Pole Star
- Mexico City: from Mexico, with its Business Transaction Monitor, Lefort
- Singapore: from Indonesia, with its Personal Data Ownership solution, Chekk
In addition, Microsoft has selected finalists to receive the Microsoft Go-To-Market Award, which provides a range of services, including co-marketing materials and activities, Microsoft app marketplace promotions and catalogue listing. The selected award recipients of the Go-To-Market Award are:
- Wallet.Services, an Abu Dhabi finalist from the UK, with its application for licenses and permits for citizens and business to help deal with the often confusing, opaque and time-consuming paper-based interactions. The solution focuses on control and management for the full life cycle of licenses, grants, tickets or permits and new services.
- CityGrows, a Mexico City finalist from the United States, with its workflow and transparency platform that helps local governments transition away from inefficient paper processes, using online processes on a cloud-based platform. This low-cost model provides automatic open data, building trust and transparency through increased public access to government information.
And finally, Microsoft has also chosen two finalists for entry into the Microsoft Accelerator program. The Microsoft Accelerator Award provides the award recipients with a four to five month tailor-made accelerator program for market-ready startups looking to go beyond the development of their product by scaling their business. The award recipients will access additional support for marketing, financing and building their go-to-market strategy, starting with the next Cohort intakes. The selected award recipients are:
- Quantexa, a Dublin finalist from the UK, with its financial crime resolution software, an innovative data solution that drives enhanced Know Your Customer (KYC) in financial institutions and more broadly across the related Financial Services industry.
- Docswallet, a Hyderabad finalist from India, with its document vault solution for digitally certified documents for visa applications, employment, higher studies and trade applications. The solution eliminates the exchange of paper and creates trust for digital documents shared between organizations and individuals.
Let’s Talk Payments (LTP)
Let’s Talk Payments selected SQREEM for its MEDICI live! Award, which recognizes the most promising startup worthy of the full support of the LTP innovation ecosystem.
“Our mission for the FinTech industry is to provide all ecosystem participants the research, connectivity and engagement tools for collaborative innovation. SQREEM impressed us with its own mission of using data for actionable insights to serve the FinTech industry. With the MEDICI live! Award, we are very pleased to award SQREEM the very best of what our FinTech market network has to offer,” said Aditya Khurjekar, CEO of LTP, sharing his enthusiasm in supporting the T4I program as a strategic ally, while he announced SQREEM as the recipient of the exclusive LTP award.
PwC
“PwC is proud to continue our involvement with the Tech for Integrity Challenge as it aligns with PwC’s Purpose – to build trust in society and solve important problems. Our team has seen the success such events have in surfacing up and curating innovators with creative solutions to address today's most pressing global problems,” said David Hoffman, Global Banking and Capital Markets Leader at PwC.
Overall T4I Awards
The James Wolfensohn Game Changer Award was presented to AID:Tech for its solution to bring social and financial inclusion to the world's undocumented and under-served populations using digital identity based on blockchain technology.
Additionally, the Catalyst Award was given to SQREEM and the Accelerator Award to Taiger and Trulioo.
“We are extremely proud of what Citi, our allies and our talented finalists accomplished through the Tech for Integrity Challenge,” said Julie Monaco, Global Head of the Public Sector Group in Citi’s Corporate and Investment Banking division. “T4I produced some incredibly innovative and promising ideas, and we look forward to the next phase of the Challenge as we all work together to develop these solutions and ultimately take some of them to market.”
"T4I clearly shows the power of crowdsourcing and open innovation as tools to address large-scale social challenges,” said Jay Collins, Vice Chairman of Corporate and Investment Banking at Citi. “This Challenge represents one of the largest public-private partnerships yet aimed at a specific Sustainable Development Goal. We are grateful for the support of our partners and look forward to working with governments and finalists to implement these integrity solutions.”
For more details on the Tech for Integrity Challenge, please refer to the T4I website: www.techforintegritychallenge.com.
Citi
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi