Swisscom intensifies commitment to FinTech start-ups

Swisscom is supporting financial institutions in the digital banking sector with market forecasts from the banking think tank e-foresight and innovative achievements. “Close co-operation with FinTech companies is an important factor for success in terms of product development. We are thus integrating digital creativity into a complex enterprise,” explains Oliver Kutsch, Head of Banking at Swisscom. Swisscom is now creating the optimal organisational conditions for this collaboration: In the Digital Business unit a dedicated FinTech Cluster is now being developed. Under the direction of Johannes Höhener, the founder of e-foresight, collaboration with FinTech Start-ups will now be institutionalised. The focus will be on the following topics: Collaborative economy (e.g. crowdfunding and B2B lending), Access and identification (e.g. identity management for opening an account digitally), Blockchain financial applications and digitisation of SMEs (e.g. digital accounting for SMEs). “Our goal is to identify innovations in an early development phase to examine business ideas together with the start-ups 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,” says Johannes Höhener.