Startups whose business model is on the financial side (both personal and business), known as fintech, are experiencing a magical moment. In fact, two of the main venture capital (VC) investment firms, such as Sequoia Capital –which has invested in companies such as Apple or Zoom– and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which has invested in startups such as Slack or Instagram, invested the year spent more money on fintech than any other category, according to a study by CB Insights. In the case of Sequoia, almost a quarter of the hundred investments it made were in a fintech. A percentage similar to that of a16z, which added 206 operations.
white label card
It is a reality that is repeated internationally and that has reached our country, where fintech companies are also booming. Proof of this is the arrival of the Parisian Swan, a banking services startup that has decided to bet on Germany and Spain as they are “strategic countries” for the company, according to what Julia Turbany, vice president of sales, explains to that newsroom.
This startup allows any company that is not a bank (such as retail, tourism or any vertical) to offer banking solutions to its customers. Something that is achieved “with our structure, both technological and regulatory, which is offered in a personalized way to these white-label customers,” Turbany details.
Among its clients are Carrefour in France, which offers a banking product such as the benefits card with its own brand. “It is an à la carte banking product and for which a Carrefour user is also a final customer of Swan, practically without knowing it.”
Other examples of clients he works with are HR software companies. “Many times they want to streamline the way they move payroll or benefit money. By integrating with them, with a single button they can, without changing the application, carry out these procedures”, defends Swan.
Julia Turbany explains that her startup allows clients to carry out the same operations that they would do with a traditional bank, but without the structure of this organization, except in relation to credit, since they are not authorized to carry out these types of operations. In any case, Swan’s financial backing is associated with BNP Paribas. “Our team is made up of a large percentage of technical people, but also legal and compliance. The challenge and objective of our business, our priority, is to be the easiest and most agile on the market, but also the safest, the most trustworthy, “she defends.
mortgage management
Another business model is the one represented by Jorge González-Iglesias, CEO and founder of Gibobs Allbanks, who assures that, thanks to his application, users can have a better knowledge of their financial situation and, in addition, save money on the payment of your mortgage, while allowing banks to have among their clients those who best fit their business strategies.
«We have positioned ourselves in a world where the user has a much higher level of awareness about their finances than they had before, in which there is hardly any interaction with banks, and in which they have an urgent need to redefine how to find their suitable client, taking into account that people no longer go to the branches”, defends Jorge González.
The first product with which the startup has started to work is a mortgage, although the CEO assures that the entire platform serves to have greater control of personal finances and, from there, access better financial products. This entrepreneur ensures that the bank is only charged if the user ends up accepting the offer they receive through their platform. To do this, the person must register and allow Gibobs Allbanks to connect to their bank accounts, in order to be able to diagnose their financial health. “What we do is connect the user very early, even long before they have a house in mind, and we help them plan how to buy that house in the future. For this we connect to their finances, to the banks with which they operate, and we build a whole profile so that the user himself has a better financial situation », he explains.
sending remittances
Jesús Javier Guevara Monjes is one of the founders and CEO of Aura Pay, a prominent startup in the field of fintech, but which is also defined as social, given that its audience is those migrants who, above all, send money to their countries originally. “Thanks to our technology we are managing to reduce money transfer costs, facilitating financial inclusion in destination countries and technological and digital development in those areas,” this Dominican entrepreneur based in our country explains to LA RAZÓN.
The startup he represents aims to be a completely digital financial alternative in remittance management. Its commitment starts by establishing a commission of between 3 and 5%, regardless of the rate rise. As the startup explains, by making the dollar worth more than the euro, the process of sending money to Latin American countries becomes twice as expensive, since the euro is converted to the dollar and the dollar to the local currency. “There are very inflationary countries where commissions are up to 14%,” says Guevara, who puts the remittances that, only from Spain, are sent to the target countries of Aura Pay at 800 million euros.
In order to operate in our country, Aura Pay has had to receive a license from the authority. Those responsible for the start up are trying to standardize this file in order to be able to act throughout Latin America. They are currently working in countries such as the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, while Colombia and the rest of the southern part of the continent are the target market. In those countries, users only have to download their app to their mobile or computer to be able to receive the money and carry out different operations.
It should be noted that, in the case of the first two, Spain is the second and third country, respectively, that sends the most money remittances to these nations. The startup has closed a pre-seed round of 530,000 euros and is now looking for one of two million.