Santander Launches Blockchain Challenge

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Santander InnoVentures has launched a global competition titled ‘Santander InnoVentures Distributed Ledger Challenge‘  with the aim of encouraging and supporting those startups that employ distributed ledger technologies and blockchain in the fintech industry.

The entry submission begins from November 5th, 2015 and the deadline is December 31^st.

In the next step, the startups will be shortlisted and then they will be further selected by a panel of distributed ledger and blockchain technology experts.

Later, the winner will be revealed at New York in January 2016.

Santander InnoVentures is a $100 million fintech venture capital fund of Santander Group and Onevest.

Alejandro Cremades, Co-founder and Executive Chairman at Onevest noted that the “financial industry’s processes are ripe for improvement and our investor community has an appetite to help startups in that space.  We look forward to fostering innovation in partnership with one of the most powerful players in the fintech space.”

The winner will bag $15,000 cash that would help in refining and nurturing the idea so as to make it ready for the angel investment.

And it does not end with just the cash; the winner will also get access to market and technology experts at Santander InnoVentures as well as Santander Group.

The Onevest will also aid the selected startup with mentorship and guidance, and once ready, the winner will be presented to its 1000-strong Angels private investor community to pitch for the ongoing funding.

Stating that the aim is to inspire innovation and encourage entrepreneurship, Mariano Belinky, who is the Managing Partner of Santander InnoVentures, said that the “distributed ledger technologies will create huge value for customers, banks and entrepreneurs who create new businesses around it. The Challenge will spark and accelerate that process for fintech startups.”

Earlier, a report was released by Santander which stated that the usage of blockchain could help the banks to save as much as $20 billion.

The research was titled “The Fintech Paper 2.0” and spoke highly of the blockchain, which is the technology behind virtual currency Bitcoin.