US-based financial services firm Wells Fargo has selected four US-based startups working on ideas such as high school financial planning and palm-operated authentication to participate in its Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator.
The latest cohort lifts the total number of participants in the initiative to 17, with each company eligible for equity investments ranging from $50,000 and $500,000.
The accelerator targets startups developing products related to financial services, in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and payment processing.
Previous participants in the accelerator include identity authentication developer EyeVerify, which was acquired for $100m in September 2016 by Ant Financial Services, the financial services affiliate of e-commerce group Alibaba.
The four startups to be selected are:
- Edquity, which is based in New York and which has developed a financial planning app to help high school and college students calculate the impact of their tuition fees and living costs at university;
- Hurdlr, a Washington DC startup working on a tracker app for those working in the gig economy to help monitor finances, tax and performance;
- Redrock Biometrics, a San Francisco manufacturer of an authentication platform that will use palm prints to unlock devices through a low-specification camera; and
- SimSpace, a cybersecurity software startup operating out of Boston that offers testing and occupational training to help organisations prevent malicious cyber attacks.
Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo’s innovation department, said: “This program plays an increasingly integral part in helping us explore and implement breakthrough ideas to build a better bank.”