These 10 startups won the Singapore central bank’s inaugural fintech awards

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As the Fintech Festival week draws to a close, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the startups that won the inaugural Fintech Awards. The distinctions are awarded to startups, tech firms, and financial institutions that have created “innovative fintech solutions.”

The winners were chosen out of 200 submissions from all over the world, most of them from Asia-Pacific.

The winners were chosen by evaluating the impact and uniqueness of their ideas.

The MAS Fintech Awards break down to three parts: The Singapore Open awards, which are, well, open to companies of any size based in Singapore; the Singapore SME awards, for small- and medium-sized enterprises; and Singapore Founder, aimed at domestic SMEs with at least one Singaporean founder.

The awards also include the ABS Global Fintech Award, given by the Association of Banks in Singapore to any fintech project implemented anywhere in the world, by any company.

The winners were chosen by evaluating the impact and uniqueness of their ideas, practicality of implementing and scaling them, and ability to work together with other systems.

Here’s how the awards went down:

MAS Fintech Awards, Singapore Open:

First place went to online social payments startup Fastacash, together with US$175,000 in prize money. Runners-up were multi-currency trading platform M-Daq and maritime fleet management and vessel tracking company Pole Star.

MAS Fintech Awards, Singapore SME:

Consumer behavior prediction startup Tookitaki ran away with the US$105,000 prize. Second and third places were reserved by loan application and management platform Turnkey Lender and peer-to-peer lending website Funding Societies.

MAS Fintech Awards, Singapore Founder:

First place, along with a US$105,000 prize, went to fraud detection and prevention company CashRun. Aimazing, a startup that’s trying to implement mobile payments through sound, and FinChat, a company making compliance tools for business chats on popular messaging apps, clinched second and third places, respectively.