SWIFT Innotribe has selected five finalists from the European leg of its annual Startup Challenge to compete at Sibos 2013 in Dubai. These companies delivered pitches to an audience of the financial industry's leading angels, VC's and decision makers, held at Level39, Canary Wharf on 18 April.

The three early-stage start-up finalists are Azimo, with a platform that uses mobile and social technology to reinvent the way that economic migrants send money back to their families in the developing world; Kwanji's product that acts as a facilitator of international commerce, removing the complexities that SMEs suffer when making or receiving international business payments; and Paymandate with a simple, fast and safe solution to efficiently manage online mandates and contracts with their end-customers, respectively.

The two growth-stage innovator finalists are Virtual Piggy with a global payment enabling service that facilitates the online spending of under eighteens and young adults in a parent approved manner; and Waratek, who has made a breakthrough in solving a specific problem affecting the future use of Java as the industry moves towards higher levels of infrastructure virtualisation and private clouds, respectively.

They will now compete against finalists from the Singapore and New York showcases, which will be held on 16 May and 13 June respectively. Matteo Rizzi, co-founder at Innotribe, says: "London was a great start to the 2013 Startup Challenge with Level39 acting as the perfect host. All the pitches were of the highest quality and the finalists can be proud of their achievements. We wish them the best of luck at Sibos. We're now in to the second full year of the Startup Challenge and it's great that we're seeing our network of industry professionals grow. It's a compliment to the Challenge, which I hope will continue to give some great businesses the platform they need in the industry."

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