Raiffeisen Bank Albania and Kosovo launches the second round of “Elevator Lab Challenge”

Tirana, Pristina, Today, on May 7, 2019 Raiffeisen Bank Albania & Kosovo have launched the second round of the program Regional Elevator Lab Challenge Albania & Kosova.Elevator Lab program was introduced for the first time in June 2017 by Raiffeisen Bank International. Elevator Lab is already the largest corporate fintech accelerator in Central and Eastern Europe. This is the third season of Elevator Lab and the RBI Group is looking for applications from international fintechs in various fields. Ten RBI network banks in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) part of this Albania and Kosovo support the group-wide program with their own fintech initiatives "Elevator Lab Challenges" and "Elevator Lab Bootcamps".Raiffeisen Albania and Kosovo organize for the second consecutive year the program "Elevator Lab Challenge”. What is new this year is the Elevator Lab Albania & Kosovo has a joined Program that give the opportunity to startups from both countries to present their ideas to one competition in 2019, the Regional Elevator Lab Challenge Albania and Kosovo."Regional Elevator Lab Challenge" Albania & Kosovo is calling all interested, start-ups, fintechs etc, to apply with their ideas and solutions in  Regtech, SME Banking, Retail Banking, Cyber ​​Security, FX Solutions, Large Corporates & Institutional Clients, and Advanced Analytics & Artificial Intelligence.The call for applications starts today and end  June 3,2019.APPLY NOW for “Regional Elevator Lab Challenge” Albania & Kosovo and win three monetary price for the three winners and the possibility to win a wild card for the semi-final of the group-wide fintech partnership program.A detail description about  this program can be found at: https://elevator-lab.com/challenges/regional-2/***In 2018, Symmetric was chosen the winner of the local Elevator Lab contest with its Openpay (Peer-to-Business) payment solution enabling the retail customers to instantly pay merchants using their smartphones.Currently RBAL is working with Symmetric to go live with Openpay. The cooperation agreement has been already signed and the solution will be piloted during the 1st half of May with selected merchants. Openpay will enable our customers to use an alternative payment method to cash and cards, and will be the first time in our market where QR based payments will be used by individual consumes at merchant’s points of sales across the whole country.***In 2018, it was the first year that Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo hosted its local Elevator Lab Challenge. Partnered with ICK, it was a successful challenge with many different startups and fintechs participating from all over Kosovo. In the end, the jury panel selected Trekandi as the first place winner and second place winner AR Vision. Trekandi was also the wild card winner and was part of the final selection round for the Elevator Lab Challenge in Vienna. Trekandi is the first IT company to offer online applications for financial products in Kosovo.With AR Vision, what started out as a basic banking concept, has since evolved into a successful Proof of Concept, and has now singed a contract with Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo, for developing an App based on Augmented Reality. Currently they are working on their first MVP, and the cooperation between the fintech and the bank has been very successful.