Financial tech start-ups go into Dragons' Den

Jack Ma has never been on Dragons' Den, the TV show where entrepreneurs beg for start-up money, but Asia’s next generation of financial technology start-ups appear to have taken the plunge.

At the FinTech Innovation Lab in Cyberport in Hong Kong on Thursday, eight start-ups pitched ideas and products to an audience of 100 venture capitalists and bankers. It was much like Dragons' Den but bigger and with more coffee breaks.

While global investment in financial technology ventures more than tripled to $2.97 billion in 2013 from $928 million in 2008, according to a report by Accenture, much of that investment has taken place in London...