Matteo Rizzi

Matteo Rizzi

• Much-lauded Global FinTech industry expert
• Entrepreneur and founder of swiftommunity.net and co-founder of Innotribe
• An investor who partnered in SBT Venture Capital
• Polyglot fluent in Italian, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish

Matteo Rizzi is one of the world’s most recognised and respected experts in FinTech. His twenty years of experience in this field has seen him foster amazing connections with global businesses, banks, startups, and investors.

After completing his education, Matteo Rizzi, who holds a University degree in Computer Science from the University of Genoa and a postgraduate degree in Financial Transactions from Solvay Business School, spent 13 years at SWIFT. Here, he held a key executive position and was involved in various aspects of the business, ranging from sales to global account management.

In 2007 Matteo Rizzi branched out and became the founder of swiftcommunity.net. This business was built based on the experience he had gathered while designing italiansonline.net. The latter was the world’s largest Italian ex-pat portal and came to life in 2003. This predates Facebook.

A year later, Matteo Rizzi became a co-founder of Innotribe, an innovation branch of SWIFT. From there, he went on to launch the Innotribe Startup Challenge, the world’s first global challenge for FinTech entrepreneurs. He also started the Enablers group. This features a cross-industry group of people who mentor Innotribe and SWIFT with regard to strategy and financial trends.

When it comes to his capacity as an investor, Matteo Rizzi has invested in and partnered with SBT Venture Capital. This was one of the first funds solely dedicated to FinTech investments.

By 2015, Matteo Rizzi had created and co-founded www.FinTechStage.com, a platform aimed at investors, innovators, and start-ups with the aim of fostering FinTech innovation on a global scale.

More recently, Matteo Rizzi was a Senior Advisor for Omidyar Network. This organisation, founded by Pierre Omidyar who also founded eBay, sees global investments in the Financial Inclusion and Digital Identity Division.

Besides his work life, Matteo Rizzi is also the successful author of “FINTECH REVOLUTION”, a book about how FinTech has transformed banking and other industries. He is also the recipient of a number of awards and accolades. He was, for example, nominated one of the “40 most influential FinTech executives in Europe” by Financial News from 2014 to 2016. Bank Innovation, in 2014, also named him one of the “30 Innovators to watch shaping the industry.”

Matteo Rizzi – Speaker

When it comes to speaking, Italian-born Matteo Rizzi is a polyglot. He is fluent in Italian, English,  French, Portuguese, and Spanish, comfortably addressing audiences in any of these languages.

Speaking Topics

• Deepening the Financial Sector: Let’s advance the dialogue and make progress from the Financial Inclusion angle. How the underbanked and the unbanked became the biggest opportunity for incumbents and FinTechs to tap on.
• Talent & Rebels: If you hire the same talents, you will end up in places where someone else has been before. Rebels and Innovators are often misguided, isolated and pushed away by large organizations. Matteo has been an Intrapreneur and an Innovator for the past two decades, and love to share his view on how to deal with misfits in your organisation.
• Dealing with FinTech Startups: Investing in Fintech startups and advising organisations on how to best deal with startups, creating the right collaboration environment.
• Investment and FinTech Trends: Often, executives of large organisations want to have a snapshot of the market, investment, and tech trends within the banking and insurance market. Having kept an investor hat for the past seven years, Matteo has first-eye insights constantly in the financial services marketplace
• Building Eco-systems; the Game of FinTech Thrones: Building strong financial eco-systems is key in every society. Matteo believes that the ingredients for a healthy and productive Fintech Eco-system are: government policies, startup community catalyzed, capital, and talent.
• Tech for Good: Technology with a purpose, sustainability, financial inclusion, and impact investing are becoming key factors in the way we do business, regardless of the part of the world we are looking at.
  What can we learn from the evolution of the emerging markets in terms of technology adoption, financial literacy and entrepreneurship culture?
  What’s in it for you?
  Understand the dynamics of emerging markets and how to apply some of the lessons learned to your business, witnessing amazing stories of resilience and tech enablement