Applicant name: Aquanow
Applicant Type: Private Company
Website: http://www.aquanow.io
Headquarter City: Vancouver
Headquarter Country: Canada
Innovation Name:  Global Digital Asset Infrastructure Provider
Innovation Type: Product
Category: Digital Innovation
Status of Innovation: In-Market
Innovation Active Since: 09/01/2018

Innovation Description: Aquanow was founded in 2018 with the goal of pioneering and creating the infrastructure needed to power the next generation of financial services. We believe that we are currently in the early stages of establishing an entirely new financial system built upon blockchains and smart contract technologies. In order for this transformation to progress, participants entering this marketplace will require reliable and robust infrastructure on which new products and services can be created.

Our company strives to not only be the trusted point of access into this frontier market for fintech companies and financial institutions, but also the foundation for reimagining financial services and the next era of the internet.

Innovation Inspiration: Despite many years of broad skepticism towards digital assets, it appears that we are approaching a key inflection point in public perception. Both business leaders and investment professionals have started to finally embrace that this asset class is here to stay. Forward-thinking companies are seeking to understand the impact and applications of web3 as it relates to their businesses not only to mitigate the risk of disruptive competitive threats, but also to explore new potential business opportunities for themselves.

Who can benefit from your innovation most? Although we are a B2B provider, our clients leverage our technology to offer services to both institutional and retail audiences around the world. The key decision makers that we interact with include executive management teams, product managers, and engineering leaders.

What are you most proud of about your innovation? Financial institutions and fintech businesses come to Aquanow to access a suite of API’s that allow them to enable digital asset workflows reliably and in a regulatory compliant manner. Our customers rely on Aquanow to abstract the complexity of these rapidly evolving technologies, and in doing so, significantly reduce the cost and risks associated with launching new products and services.

Why do you think you should win this category? Aquanow is the preferred infrastructure and liquidity platform for businesses that interact with digital assets – we are the market leader in Canada and continue to gain share globally. Our early success resulted from an extreme focus on research and development, leveraging the capabilities of our engineering team, and academic research partnerships with top universities like the University of British Columbia. What we have built is a cutting-edge platform that unlocks market opportunities and cost savings for our customers.

As an early mover, we benefit from the growth of our customers and economies of scale that come along with our position. Internationally, we have established ourselves in the circles of top tier firms that we collaborate with on a daily basis as trading counterparties.

Each month, billions of dollar value pass through our platform enabling a broad range of financial services for our clients.