Italian open banking company Fabrick launched a challenge for European startups working on business-to-business digital banking and payments solutions. The B2B FinTech for Future call underlines that "the dawn of fintech era was strongly focused on B2C applications", but now "B2B fintech has been gaining attention and the next wave will be increasingly led by B2B providers". Like Fabrick itself, which is using the challenge also to develop its ecosystem of collaborating companies.

Founded in June 2018, Fabrick describes itself as an "open financial ecosystem created to promote Open Finance through the development of innovative digital services, based on the logic of open banking". Its clients are banks, institutions, fintechs, large corporations, SMEs, top merchants and startups operating in any sector. Its ecosystem now includes Fabrick itself, Axerve, Centrico and the digital bank Hype. Most of the ecosystem companies come from the digital activities of Banca Sella, one of the first Italian Banks to work on the digital side of banking.

B2B FinTech for Future is looking for interesting startups working in one or more of six key areas: invoice management and account payable, payments, lending, prospect and client data analysis, vertical SaaS solutions, digitization of sales and procurement processes. The call is open to startups of each stage (pre-seed, seed, early stage, early growth, growth) and each maturity level (prototype, MVP, ready to market, product on the market).

Applications can be submitted until October, 16th. A fintech expert panel will carefully analyze the application and select the most promising ones, says Fabrick. During next November, the selected startups will be carefully evaluated with "deep dive sessions". The challenge will close with awards going to the best solutions.

The "most distruptive startups" - Fabrick adds - will get the chance to partner with the company and to showcase their services/APIs on Fabrick Platform. Networking with peers counts, too: startups will be able to join a wider fintech community, to (maybe) launch new open banking innovation projects.