From almost 50 applicants we have selected the four most innovative ideas for serving the Emerging Middle Class to present to the largest expert audience on June 6th at CFSI and Sourcemedia’s EMERGE Forum in Core’s new home of Los Angeles.

This year includes many firsts:  our first bitcoin finalist.  Our first small business finalist.  Our first international finalist.

Blossom is a faster, better bitcoin wallet for mobile that’s making cryptocurrency accessible and reliable to more than wild-eyed libertarian cowboys. Blossom is moving quickly to get non-technical users onto the blockchain bandwagon.

Dealstruck is Prosper for small businesses: an online small business lender that’s scaling rapidly to provide cheaper, faster credit for America’s job creators. This is a huge market and we’re excited to see a great team get it right… so far!

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) provides a psychometric test that yields actionable credit risk information for lenders in emerging markets, for customers that don’t have credit scores. EFL’s test could allow millions of entrepreneurs around the world to become credit-worthy.

Moneyworks offers a holistic debt management package, allowing users to control their spending through a prepaid card and tightly integrated mobile app. The “holistic” part is what’s exciting: we see tons of PFMs that don’t work because they don’t try hard enough to influence users’ behavior.

Congratulations to these finalists.  On June 6th, they’ll duke it out and ~800 attendees of our EMERGE Forum will decide in real-time who wins the big prize and takes home the honor.  Thanks to all those who threw their hat in the ring.  I should make a special shout-out to Rezzcard’s Alex Cooper, who has participated four years in a row and whose walk-in rent payment systems are quite innovative, indeed!