Barclays establishes Europe’s largest fintech space in London

Financial services giant Barclays announced that it has established Europe’s largest co-working space dedicated to fintech in London.

Barclays’ flagship open innovation site ‘Rise London’ is situated at Luke Street, in Shoreditch and brings together carefully curated fintech startups across the globe, along with other Barclays’ corporate clients and experts.

These early-stage fintech startups will work with Barclays’ customer and business opportunities and together help to create the future of financial services, the announcement stated.

“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,” Jes Staley, Barclays Group Chief Executive, said.

At the new fintech innovation center, Barclays will co-create new products, services and platforms along with our startup partners. The financial services firm will collaborate with leading investors, corporates and other industry experts in seven international cities including New York, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, London, Cape Town, Manchester and Vilnius. The company plans to operate multiple programs in these locations for open innovation, including the award-winning Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars.

These Barclays’ programs in the seven cities will facilitate quick engagement between Barclays and the Rise Fintech community that will lead to creation and development of new models, long-term financial solutions, among others.

The new fintech site in London will serve as the base for over 40 fintech startups including banking and technology teams from Barclays. Rise London will serve as a place of collaboration for fintech leaders and venture capital communities. It will conduct over 200 hours of workshops, learning, hackathons as well as networking, on a monthly basis.

“Rise is an open innovation platform to engage fintech startups with customers and clients to invent new business solutions. Our vibrant community taps into the agile and disruptive nature of these ventures,” Michael Harte, Group Head of Innovation at Barclays, stated. “For us, the more vibrant we make the fintech community, the greater the value contribution to customers and shareholders as well as to the financial services sector as a whole.”