Swisscom, Switzerland's dominant telecommunications company, is creating an investment fund for fintech startups. It is what the fledgling industry has been waiting for.
Swisscom is the real power behind the Swiss fintech industry – and has now launched what the combined force of Swiss banking hasn't managed so far: a specialized and potent fund for startups in the fintech business. In addition to the fund, the state-controlled company also founded a dedicated fintech cluster in its digital business unit, Swisscom said in a statement today.
The cluster will institutionalize the cooperation with fintech startups in the financial industry. The new organization has been put under the guidance of Johannes Hoehener. He is the founder of e-foresight, a think tank dedicated to digitization issues funded by Swisscom and banks such as Raiffeisen.
Make Projects Ready-to-Market
The focus of the cluster will be on projects such as crowdfunding and lending, identity management, Blockchain, and digitization of small- and medium-sized companies.
«Our goal is to identify innovations in an early development phase to examine business ideas together with the startups and to make them ready-to-market in collaboration with our banking specialists, like we did with 'Run my Accounts' for Valiant and 'wemakeit' for Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank,» Hoehener said in the statement of Swisscom today.
The Power Behind Fintech
The dedicated investment fund, Swisscom Ventures, has 10 million Swiss francs to invest in partnerships with the potential for the financial industry.
Swisscom says it is already working with half of Switzerland's banking industry on digitization issues. The fund will set a new measure in the country as well-funded investment vehicles remain a scarcity. By contrast, Kickstart Fintech Accelerator, the fund launched by UBS, Credit Suisse as well as Swisscom, has a little more than one million francs to spend.
