Caulis wins the Nikkei award at Japan’s largest Fintech Summit FIN/SUM 2023

Japan’s largest fintech summit FIN/SUM2023 was held from March 28 to 31, sponsored by Nikkei and the Financial Services Agency. The last day featured a pitch competition, where ten national and international companies competed by presenting their business models and future prospects.

The “Nikkei Award” for best company was won by Caulis, which provides security services for financial institutions. The company works with financial institutions and power companies to provide services to identify fictitious accounts, detect unauthorized access and prevent money laundering.

The unique method of cross-checking data from power companies, including information on active power equipment from across Japan, with information such as addresses and financial account information, was praised for improving the accuracy of fraud detection. Caulis has already achieved stable profitability.

Other promising startups that advanced to the final round of the pitch competition include:

• Aruyaumu – works with local governments to create NFTs and give them as return gifts for “furusato” tax donations, which allow people to donate their tax to their favorite municipalities. The company is expected to thrive in Japan, where the use of NFTs for regional revitalization is gaining momentum.

• Payment technology – a service that automatically distributes and transfers employee salaries to digital wallets or securities accounts other than specified banks, in response to the recent increase in digital money circulation in Japan.
• Paytner – a service that automates invoicing, digitization, storage and transfer, with the special feature of being able to make transfers automatically. It is expected to ease the burden of accounting tasks, especially for small businesses.
• Kiva – provides an “extended warranty service” for e-commerce (EC) businesses to encourage users to purchase items with confidence. This initiative is gaining attention as an effective measure to promote more purchases on EU websites, especially in regions where consumers are not yet used to online shopping. The sign-up rate for users has exceeded 30%.
• efit – an asset management platform that enables sophisticated investment strategies using AI and robots. In Japan, where the savings rate is already high, policies and measures strongly promote a shift from savings to investment.
• LUCA Japan – operates a digital platform business to spread alternative investments to multiple investors. The company has entered into a strategic partnership with the Singaporean company Xen Capital and is developing products for the Japanese market.
• SJ Mobile Lab Japan (Singapore) – offers financial services such as payment, savings, investment and insurance through advice based on customer perspectives and carefully selected products.
• G-Bank Technologies (Estonia) – offers a platform that provides multilingual and mobile financial services to foreign talents living in Japan who struggle with language barriers. The founder is himself a foreigner and aims to change the disadvantages of Japan’s financial services. The company has already moved forward with API collaboration with major banks.
• Futurae (Switzerland) – founded by security researchers from ETH Zurich who use the latest technology to provide services such as security enhancement and customer analysis.

Fintech startups in Japan that receive high praise tend to focus on areas such as asset management support, business digitization, security and e-commerce-related services. Interestingly, these happen to be the same areas where Chinese startups excel. Given the relatively small number of startups in Japan, more and more foreign startups are venturing into the country either independently or by partnering with local companies. This provides opportunities for Chinese startups to also thrive in the Japanese market.