Elevator Lab, organised in partnership with Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is an exciting fintech competition that has just moved into its second round of selections.

Of a vast total of 407 startups in the running, eight leading tech pioneers in the areas of investment, analytics and open banking – to name just a few – have been chosen to go forward and pitch their ideas to a live panel in the final stage of the tech challenge.

They range from locations such as the United Kingdom, Austria, Israel, France and the Netherlands and have become part of a leading fintech community, which was, in fact,  recently awarded by the Central European Startup Awards as the best Accelerator programme in Austria.

As well as being considered the largest fintech programme in central and eastern Europe, it was just a few months ago in June that the RBI signed into a partnership with one of the Elevator Programme’s original applicants, serving to highlight the potential that this round’s participants could face in the future.

“Elevator Lab has quickly earned an excellent reputation in the fintech scene. The applications’ quality was even higher this year than in the first round. I look forward to working with the finalists on the projects,”  RBI CEO Johann Strobl recently said in a press release.

RBI is central and eastern Europe’s leading corporate and investment bank and has markets in over 14 global regions. With an estimated 16.7 million customers and 2,400 outlets across the area, their influence in finance and their support of fintech continues to steadily grow.

The involvement in Elevator Ventures, a corporate VC fund which was launched earlier this year, has made this opportunity one of the most sought after opportunities in fintech.

Ireland’s Cambrist is one of the lucky eight finalists. It is a multi-currency optimisation platform that allows payment processors to authorise payer’s details for international transactions. They are joined by UK-based CityFALCOn, a technology that rates financial news and its authors in order to deliver an effective overall newsfeed that can optimise content preferences for the viewer. French startups CopSonic and SESAMm, Austrian FINABRO, Dutch company Limitless, Israel’s PayKey, UK-based Pisano make up the total eight leading financial technologies for this round.

Elevator Lab’s pilot project has a budget of 200,000 euros as well as offering its participants access the RBI IT sandbox via API. They offer over 20 mentor sessions, bring together the financial community and provide prospective tech specialists with all the support they need to make a mark on the fintech industry.