FinTech - Enterprise Innovation Institute

Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center to Receive Investment from Visa for FinTech Innovation

Investment to spur greater innovation in payments space

ATLANTA — Today, the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC)announced a new three-year financial commitment by Visa, the world leader in digital payments, to further accelerate innovation across financial and payments technologies (FinTech).

Patrick Williams is Visa’s North American head of digital partnerships.

ATDC, the state of Georgia’s technology incubator, works with entrepreneurs to build and scale successful technology companies. Its FinTech program, launched in 2015, has focused on building and growing FinTech companies in Georgia. Since its launch, the program has evaluated more than 250 startups, has 25 companies in its current portfolio, and produced one unicorn, Greenlight, a 2018 ATDC graduate now valued at more than $2 billion.

Visa’s financial sponsorship and leadership in the FinTech category will allow for continued growth and startup support for entrepreneurs in the program. As part of the sponsorship, Visa executives will mentor program participants and create connections to maximize opportunities to bring their FinTech innovations to Visa and its partner network.

“Georgia is our nation’s FinTech command center and we at ATDC are proud to partner with Visa to continue to drive innovation forward in this sector,” said John Avery, ATDC director. “We are dedicated to our FinTech ecosystem’s continued growth and success, and ATDC serving as the nexus to entrepreneurs, industry, investors, and Georgia Tech’s resources to help these startups thrive.”

Startups accepted into the incubator’s program will be integrated into Georgia’s robust FinTech ecosystem, where more than 200 FinTech companies generating $72 billion in annual revenue call home. Over 70 percent of all U.S. financial transactions are handled by payment processing firms headquartered in Georgia.

ATDC has hired Robert E. Daniel as the FinTech catalyst who will oversee the vertical, manage the pipeline, and evaluate these startups and their innovations for acceptance into the portfolio.

“We view Atlanta as a thriving FinTech community and an epicenter of financial technology expertise where Visa can become an integral part to its continued growth. A partnership with ATDC provides Visa the opportunity to get involved with supporting local startups as the future of payments continues to look bright, thanks to this world of innovative entrepreneurs,” said Patrick Williams, Visa’s head of digital partnerships in North America.

About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

About the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC)
The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC, a program of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, has grown to become the longest running and one of the most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia. To learn more, visit atdc.org.

Elavon Invests in FinTech Innovation with Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center

Investment will create valuable partnerships to spur greater innovation in payments.

Wally Mlynarski is Elavon's chief product officer. — Wally Mlynarski is Elavon’s chief product officer.

Elavon, a global payments provider and subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), announced a new and significant, three-year financial commitment at the Georgia Institute of Technology to further accelerate innovation across financial and payments technologies (FinTech).

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech is Georgia’s technology incubator. It focuses on building and growing FinTech companies in the state of Georgia. Elavon’s financial sponsorship will allow for further growth and startup support for entrepreneurs in the program.

As part of the sponsorship, Elavon executives will mentor program participants on topics such as software and applications integration as well as consultation on effective go-to-market strategies. As the FinTech space continues to evolve, partnerships with incumbents have become more important for an early-stage company’s customer acquisition and business model development.

“Our investment in this program and local FinTech companies brings us closer to the growing technology community in Atlanta and across the entire payments ecosystem, and is part of Elavon’s continued focus on integrated payments and eCommerce,” said Wally Mlynarski, Elavon’s chief product officer. “With this partnership, we are able to directly impact and shape the future of payments as technology and business models continue to rapidly evolve.”

In addition to receiving the benefits of being an ATDC program participant, startups in the incubator’s FinTech Program are integrated into Georgia’s FinTech ecosystem. This statewide ecosystem consists of strong public-private partnerships dedicated to the continued success of Georgia FinTech companies. ATDC FinTech provides access to industry, investors, and Georgia Tech’s resources to help these startups flourish as well as coordinating support from the Technology Association of Georgia, FinTech Atlanta, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

“We’re extremely excited to welcome Elavon as our partner in further developing Georgia’s early-stage FinTech startup community,” said Jeff Gapusan, who is ATDC’s FinTech executive-in-residence and secured the sponsorship. “Elavon is a world-class financial technology company. Its resources, mentorship, and insight will enable startup founders to also succeed in this highly complex space.”

The ATDC FinTech program currently hosts 35 early-stage FinTech startups. Since the program’s inception in 2015, ATDC FinTech startups and recent graduates have raised more than $65 million in angel and institutional venture capital.

About Elavon (www.elavon.com)

Elavon is wholly owned by U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest bank in the United States, and provides end-to-end payment processing solutions and services to more than 1.3 million customers in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. As the leading provider for airlines and a top five provider in hospitality, healthcare, retail, and public sector/education, Elavon’s innovative payment solutions are designed to solve pain points for businesses from small to enterprise-sized.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the world’s premier research universities. Georgia Tech is a national and international leader in scientific and technological research and education and is the nation’s leading producer of engineers as well as a leading producer of female and minority engineering Ph.D. graduates. Ranked among the top public universities by U.S. News & World Report, the Institute enrolls more than 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students in fields ranging from engineering, computing, and sciences, to business, design, and liberal arts. For additional information, visit gatech.edu.

About the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC)

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC has grown to become one of the longest running and most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia. To learn more, visit atdc.org.

Economic Development Lab hosts Peruvian delegation seeking innovation development

Universidad del Pacifico's Emprende UP — Members of the Universidad del Pacifico’s Emprende UP, were at Georgia Tech to learn about entrepreneurial ecosystems and best practices for innovation development and support. (Photo: Péralte C. Paul)

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Economic Development Lab (EDL) hosted a group of 12 professionals from Peru’s Universidad del Pacifico who sought to get a better understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems and best practices for innovation development and support.

The group represents the university’s Emprende UP, which serves as its center for entrepreneurship and innovation. Emprende UP runs pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration programs at the Universidad del Pacifico, a small, private Jesuit school and highly ranked in Peru and across Latin America.

“We chose Georgia Tech because the Tech model in entrepreneurship and innovation is similar to what we are doing in Peru,” said Javier Salinas, Emprende UP’s director. “At the end of our three days here, we recognized that we’re on the right track, but we can improve and refine our services for the Peruvian innovation ecosystem.

EDL, a program of Tech’s economic development arm, the Enterprise Innovation Institute, helps communities and organizations apply innovative ideas to economic development in business incubation and commercialization, strategic planning, and economic sustainability.

Economic Development Lab workshop — Brandy Stanfield-Nagel (right), program manager and faculty researcher at Economic Development Lab, discusses best practices techniques in startup development, with Diego Joseph Rengifo (left) and Carlos Zapata of Universidad del Pacifico’s Emprende UP. (Photo: Péralte C. Paul)

“The objective of this three-day immersion program at Tech was for the Emprende UP team to experience and learn from the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems here at the Institute and across Atlanta,” said Mónica Novoa, an EDL project manager.

“The group learned and acquired key insights and best practices by interacting with us, and with the invited speakers, entrepreneurs, and city officials through a series of intensive and experiential workshops.”

As part of that learning process, the Emprende UP team toured Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), which is the state’s technology incubator, and met with some of its startups in the financial technology (FinTech) sector.

The FinTech space was of particular interest because Emprende UP has spent the past 18 months developing an ecosystem around it and working with Peru’s banking regulators, leading financial institutions and international technology firms towards that initiative, Salinas said.

Beyond FinTech, the team focused on learning about other components that comprise successful innovation ecosystems, such as closer alignment with academics. They also saw how corporations seek to be near universities and tap into those schools’ research and innovation expertise.

In the past five years, more than 20 large corporations, including Delta Air Lines, AT&T, and Anthem, have opened corporate innovation centers in and around Technology Square to access the talents and technologies developed at Georgia Tech.

“The first takeaway is that we need to work more closely with the academia side — teachers and students,” said Martha Zúñiga, Emprende UP’s head of special projects. “The second takeaway is that Peru is just developing its innovation ecosystem and we have to support the growth of corporate innovation centers, because their inclusion is part of that ecosystem growth.”

EDL, which has had projects in 151 of Georgia’s 159 counties and more than six dozen initiatives in 9 countries, will be going to Peru in August as a follow up in continuing its ecosystem development work with Emprende UP.