As it does every year, Challenges magazine yesterday published its selection of "100 start-ups where to invest in 2023" in 6 categories: #FinTech, #DeepTech, #GreenTech, #BioTech, E-commerce and Digital Service.
In the FinTech category, only 9 start-ups managed to convince the jury, including Welcome Place.
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Enfuce, Visa, SINGA, Microsoft and Ashoka, WILLA and PayPal, Paris&Co Finance & Assurance (ex Le Swave) and Mastercard and also the French Red Cross.
Welcome Place is the first neobank designed for new arrivals to accelerate their financial inclusion. The start-up gives them access to a complete range of services, including payment and money transfer services. This start-up is included in Challenges' selection of "100 start-ups to invest in in 2023".
Welcome Place: the neobank for new arrivals
When Rooh Savar, 40, arrived in France from Iran as a political refugee in 2009, he was confronted with the difficulties that immigrants face when opening a bank account in their host country: unfamiliarity with the profile, preconceived ideas about financial capacity... and the language barrier. Yet having a bank account is essential for economic independence. Ten years later, Rooh Savar, who holds a degree in sociology, a diploma from the Ecole supérieure de journalisme (ESJ Paris) and experience at the head of Singa, an association for integrating immigrants through entrepreneurship, founded Welcome Place with Caroline Span, 35, at the end of 2022, a prepaid card for 10,000 Ukrainian refugees, financed by an NGO.
"We had to move extremely fast," explains the co-founder, a former director of Mednum, a cooperative fighting digital exclusion. Welcome Place intends to use this pilot as a neo-bank for immigrants in France, to accelerate their financial inclusion.
With a range of services including emergency money transfer and tontine, a common kitty in African and Asian communities where friends lend each other money. Incubated at Singa, Welcome Place has been selected by Willa, a support program dedicated to women in fintech. It is also backed by Microsoft, Ashoka and Visa. With over 2 million non-Europeans arriving on the Old Continent every year, the aim is to reach over 5 million users by 2028.
Thank you!
Rooh Savar - CEO, Caroline Span - COO
