Abu Dhabi Global Market admits several blockchain startups to its 3rd Reglab Cohort

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the International Financial Centre in Abu Dhabi, announced that it has approved 10 local and international Fintech startups to its reglab cohort. The 10 were selected from a pool of 36 applications and will join the first pool of 16 bring the total to 26.

Mr. Richard Teng, Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority ADGM, stated, “ We are looking forward to working with the newly admitted start-ups, which offer fascinating propositions such as financing, payments and insurance solutions that can benefit the SME sector. The quality of the firms that have been selected, primarily from the UAE, has been impressive, and speaks volume of the strength and attractiveness of ADGM as a jurisdiction for FinTechs to establish themselves and expand into the Middle East, Africa and Asia region. We have to date the second most active Fintech sandbox globally and most successful regulatory sandbox in the region, and will continue to innovate to better serve the needs of the financial services industry and our economy,”

The 10 applicants include blockchain startups from UAE such as BedouinChain, a digital private financing platform where business-to-business commercial trading partners and institutional lenders conduct commercial and financial settlement and short-term debt capital finance transactions including invoice factoring and working capital finance. The platform will cryptographically register transactions on a private permissioned immutable distributed ledger network enabled by digital programmable self-executable smart contracts.

From Kenya there is Bitpesa which aims to accelerate the growth of businesses in frontier markets by developing innovative treasury management solutions that reduce friction, improve efficiency, and support digital interoperability. Launched in Nairobi, BitPesa now has offices in Lagos, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, and Dakar.

Again from the UAE is BlockTrust which is building the leading provider of digital trustee and custodial services across crypto currency assets for the Middle East, North Africa, India and South East Asia with an ultra-secure Institutional-grade and multi-geographic digital vault. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, BlockTrust will provide a highly regulated and financially transparent digital asset partner for financial and non-financial institutions, family offices, sovereign and pension funds as well as qualified individual customers.

Lucid Pay in UAE is also part of the cohort. Lucid Pay is a blockchain-based, smart settlement system for the hospitality industry. The system allows hotel guests to pay for services, activities and amenities at the hotel with the Lucid Pay wristband or digital wallet. The system records information on each transaction on the blockchain, reducing the risk of fraud and the time it takes to resolve disputed payments. The solution can be fully integrated with the hotel’s existing payment and point-of-sales systems, and participating venues outside the hotel.

Also in the Blockchain realm and coming from the UK is World Reserve Trust. World Reserve Trust (WRT) aims to create an ecosystem where public and private sector entities can participate in a DLT-enabled commercial trading platform. The WRT platform would have a proprietary digital currency issued to users of the platform in exchange for fiat currencies. A buyer and seller would therefore make purchases and sales by using digital currency as a medium of exchange.

Finally Xinfin from Singapore is also a blockchain solution provider in the cohort. XinFin is focused on international trade and finance. It has a scalable, secure, permissioned and commercial grade Blockchain architecture that can eliminate inefficiencies in global trade and financing and enable institutions to provide real time settlement as well as enabling cross border smart contracts.