Fintech facilities in UK get another shot in the arm with the global bank, Barclays, opening a mega Fintech operations space in the heart of Shoreditch, where over 40 similar start-ups are currently active.
According to reports, the new site is Europe’s largest co-working space dedicated to Fintech and will play host to more than 200 hours of learning, workshops, hackathons and networking on a monthly basis.
Launched as another extension of the ‘Barclays Rise’ initiative, the facility comes as the 7th in line, after New York, Manchester, Mumbai, Cape Town, Vilnius and Tel Aviv, where work is fast progressing on innovative Fintech products, services and platforms with other startup partners.
A multitude of projects are being worked on at these centres, including the famed Barclays Accelerator – powered by Techstars – which has been the backbone of the bank’s contract with several participants in the field of specialization, especially in the domains of Blockchain AI, and Big Data.
With sights set on becoming a technology leader in the Fintech field, Barclays has already announced the creation of 750 new UK tech jobs in the industry.
Says Group Chief Executive, Jes Staley, “Fintech startups are at the front of the technology wave that is changing our industry. Through Rise, we glean important insights; we can actively experiment with emerging technologies, and we can spot early trends and new markets as they form. This allows our employees, customers and clients to do things faster, better and at lower cost.”
The move, as the bank’s Group Head, Innovation, sees it, is an opportunity where the more vibrant the Fintech community becomes due to the bank’s presence, the greater its value contribution to customers and shareholders as well as to the financial services sector as a whole.
Obviously, the global leader knows what they are talking about and as for UK and the world, it’s another giant leap into the technology of the future which will transform the banking and financial landscape like never before.
