Wary of disruptive technologies, CitiBank is engaging with startups through hackathon

JP Morgan Chase, SBI and now Citibank. Traditional banking sectors are threatened by disruptive technologies in financial services industry and startups, which are developing technologies to solve customers’ query in a jiffy.

Tech-savvy consumers are now looking towards alternative financial solutions that have the potential to significantly disrupt traditional banking.

This is the reason why banks are engaging with startups on war footing to avoid disruption from payment banks, mobile wallets, new-age financial technology startups and crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.

In this regard, Citibank launched a corporate accelerator programme for the Asia-Pacific region to engage with startups from countries like India.

The accelerator programme, called the Citi Mobile Challenge, will go on for more than two months and combine a virtual hackathon with an incubator and Citibank is inviting developers from all across the region to participate in this programme.

Citibank India's head of consumer banking Kartik Kaushik said that the bank had already started engaging with a number of startups in India.
Citibank is also partnering with a number of Indian and multinational corporate like IBM, Amazon Microsoft Ventures, PwC, Wipro, etc to help handpick startups in sectors such as ecommerce and payments.

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