Meet the Rising Stars of Visa Innovation Program Europe 2023

The Visa Innovation Program Europe is a partnership platform for fintech companies and Visa clients spanning across Southern Europe. The program empowers fintech firms to solve the payment and commerce issues of the future, strengthen their product propositions, and supply forward-thinking solutions for Visa’s vast network of partners.

Selected fintechs in the Visa Innovation Program Europe gain numerous growth prospects, including the partnership with Visa and its network. They receive customized mentorship, access to over $300,000 in perks, and resources that facilitate global business expansion.

Meet the fintechs selected for VIPE Spain and Portugal Edition

The Visa Innovation Program Spain & Portugal Edition Kick-off Event on May 16, 2023 commenced with enthusiasm, gathering key players in the fintech ecosystem. Kaan Akın from Hackquarters, along with Eduardo Prieto of Visa España, extended a warm welcome to all attendees. Eva Ruiz, Gus Martinez, Jaime Cerdeira Pascual, Marta Aguirre, Melihcan Yucel, Montserrat Lerena, and Kerman Ispizua, all part of the Visa team, formed the “Dream Team” that shared their expertise and insights. Sabina Babayeva from Hackquarters provided an overview of the VIPE agenda and the program’s process, setting the stage for exciting opportunities. The selected fintech companies for 2023 captivated the audience with their innovative pitches. Engaging discussions and exchanges took place during the event, fostering a collaborative environment to drive forward fintech innovation in Spain and Portugal. The kick-off event marked the beginning of a transformative journey, empowering participants to revolutionize the payment and commerce landscape in the region.

This year, the Visa Innovation Program Europe Spain and Portugal Edition has significantly impacted the fintech ecosystem, with 111 applications received from Spain and Portugal, 15 shortlisted, and 8 selected for the program. Let’s see who they are!

Dedomena AI: Dedomena AI is an Artificial Intelligence company that provides data solutions for businesses by putting privacy first.

Coverflex: Coverflex is a digital platform that provides flexible compensation solutions beyond salary for companies, helping manage benefits, insurance, meal allowances, and exclusive discounts while allowing employees to customize their compensation packages.

Fraudio: Fraudio provides centralized AI-powered fraud detection solutions for the payments ecosystem, connecting merchants, payment service providers, and other players to prevent and fight fraud in real time.

Goscore: Goscore provides cross-border credit scoring solutions that promote financial inclusion, using transactional data and ML to deliver fair risk profiles and portable financial histories.

HolyWally: HolyWally is a no-code B2B white-label wallet-as-a-service platform that enables businesses to prototype and launch a payment solution for users in weeks with a modular plug-and-play partner network.

Reveni: Reveni is a platform that turns returns into a sales and loyalty lever by offering customers instant, easy, and risk-free refunds.

Toqio: Toqio is a SaaS fintech platform that enables companies to create fully branded banking and finance solutions. Toqio offers a comprehensive platform for developing innovative fintech solutions, including a customizable Marketplace of partners.

DoGood: DoGood People is a sustainability-focused startup that provides a software app for employees to practice sustainability by completing challenges related to the SDGs.

Meet the fintechs selected for VIPE Italy Edition

The Visa Innovation Program Europe Italy Edition Kick-off Event on May 18, 2023 was an exciting gathering that set the stage for transformative innovation. Attendees were welcomed by Kaan Akın from Hackquarters, and introduced to the esteemed Visa team, including Luca Airoldi, Luca Moroni, Filippo Manca, Melihcan Yücel, and Andrea Zamboni. Sabina Babayeva from Hackquarters provided a comprehensive VIPE agenda and process overview. Selected fintechs for 2023 showcased their groundbreaking solutions, inspiring the audience with their potential. Engaging Q&A sessions sparked insightful discussions, while the networking session facilitated valuable connections and collaborations.

At Visa Innovation Program Europe Italy Edition, we’re proud to collaborate with Talent Garden, Europe’s leading digital skills academy, which helps empower people and organizations through transformative experiences. After a rigorous selection process, we’re excited to announce the 6 fintechs selected for the program – out of 74 applications from Italy and 10 shortlisted. 

CashDirector: CashDirector is a Business Digital Assistant for MSMEs, helping them save time in their daily administrative and financial tasks and manage their cash flow. 

Conio: Conio is a digital assets custody and management provider with a patented fund recovery system and aims to be the most trusted company by financial institutions and enterprises.

Fairtile: Credit Intelligence and Automation Platform leveraging AI technologies to generate insights and automate actions using device data and other sources to unlock new business value and customer experience.

Ineo: Anti-fraud and digital onboarding services for KYC and AML identification and acquisition, digitizing remote and face-to-face onboarding processes.

STEP 4 Business: STEP 4 Business is a global digital challenger for SMEs that utilizes open banking, open finance, and IT competitive advantages to provide a unique user experience.

Voiceme: VOICEME is a secure customer authentication platform that uses voice recognition and 5 other factors, including payment, document signing, access control, and identity confirmation. 

Meet the fintechs selected for VIPE Turkey Edition

We kicked off The Visa Innovation Program Europe Turkey Edition with a gorgeous event on June 6, 2023. The event began with a warm welcome from Onur Devran Çakır from Visa, followed by an engaging presentation on program outcomes from 2019 to 2023 by Sabina Babayeva from Hackquarters. Then our rising stars showcased their innovative solutions and potential to revolutionize the fintech landscape. The event wrapped up with a networking session, a crucial part that allowed participants to foster potential collaborations and explore further opportunities. 

This year, the Visa Innovation Program Europe Turkey Edition has significantly impacted the fintech ecosystem, with 55 applications, 10 shortlisted, and 5 selected for the program. 

Abonesepeti: Abonesepeti is a subscription management platform that helps you subscribe, manage and unsubscribe your subscriptions in one app. Members can manage subscriptions, lower their bills, build budgets and automatically set aside money to reach their savings goals.

Agrio Finans: Agrio is an impact-oriented financial technology solution that prepares the Agriculture and Food economy for Greendeal. The solution enables the issuance of green deal-compliant digital assets for the agriculture and food supply chain with a usage of governed financial authorization.

Craftgate: “One-Stop” Shop Payment Orchestration: Craftgate Craftgate is a comprehensive payment orchestration solution that empowers you to seamlessly integrate and manage multiple virtual POSs, payment service providers, and alternative payment methods through a unified dashboard.

Enqura: EnQualify : Next Generation ID Verification powered by AI on Mobile! EnQualify is a Gold Stevie Award 2023 winner, super fast ID Verification platform including Identity card, face verification and multi factor customer authentication, based on Enqura’s state of the art “AI on Mobile Edge” technology. Digitally onboard your customers in less than 1 minute!

Recepta: Recepta is a platform that helps businesses to offer customized paper and digital receipts to their customers, without requiring any personal information like email or phone number at checkout. Recepta uses the payment card number to identify the customer, ensuring that customers are protected from spam emails, calls, and marketing messages.

Meet the fintechs selected for VIPE Greece, Cyprus, and Malta Edition

We had a wonderful Kick-off event on May 19th where we met with the founders of the selected fintech companies that will be participating in the Visa Innovation Program Europe Greece Cyprus & Malta Edition. We spoke about their individual journeys in the program including access to funding opportunities, showcasing, a vibrant network having access to the European market, partnership & funding opportunities, mentorship and much more. We showcased some success stories from previous cohorts and flagship projects, giving the startups a glance of what’s ahead and what they can achieve. We also went back and forth about the program through a Q&A session and were able to share the opportunities it will bring for each startup and their respective tech ecosystem.

Let’s meet the selected fintechs for VIPE Greece Cyprus & Malta!

Billys provides a vertical SaaS platform for building management ultimately solving the problem of lack of transparency, reporting, and coordination in cash payments for service charges in apartment buildings.

Cloudeo is looking to solve the problem surrounding the complexity and fragmentation of the geospatial market, they are simplifying geo-business for customers & partners by providing a wide range of geo-data products, GIS software, and applications from various providers on a single platform.

Envirly is a carbon management software that is designed to help companies track measure and reduce their carbon footprint helping them meet the needs of the market companies that are embracing sustainable strategies.

Futurae is an authentication suite platform that makes the authentication process easier and safer for users and companies. Ultimately, it helps developers integrate secure and user-friendly authentication methods into their applications.

Loyale is a marketing platform that is solving the problem of customer retention and increasing repeat purchase rates that will ultimately help businesses automate their marketing, boost sales, and increase their repeat purchase rate.

MyTeam uses its online platform to solve problems relating to optimizing the daily operations and financial management of sports clubs and organizations, as well as improving communication with their members.

Môveo is a Complete Enterprise Platform SaaS platform that uses unstructured data from past conversations and knowledge centers to create enterprise-grade conversational AI agents that allow enterprises to easily automate any business process.

PayNetX has developed a global hybrid platform designed to revolutionize the way traditional financing and decentralized financing work together, solving the problem of integration between the two.

And to wrap this article up

The Visa Innovation Program Europe serves as a dynamic alliance hub, connecting visionary fintech enterprises with Visa clients throughout the Southern European region. It ignites the potential of fintech companies to revolutionize the realm of payments and commerce, elevating their product offerings to unprecedented heights and delivering ingenious solutions to Visa’s extensive network of partners. This is just the beginning, stay tuned!

Wrapping up Season 4

720 days later

Concluding the Visa Innovation Program Season 4 with a celebration full of innovation and fintechs! This year, we hosted a big international Demo Day event at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. Sixteen fintechs graduating from the Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish hubs presented their innovative solutions that address some of the financial services industry’s biggest challenges, such as advancing next-generation payments experiences, empowering SMEs, unlocking new payment flows and building a smarter and more sustainable future. Continue reading to learn all insights!

Time for a recap

Since its inception in 2018 in Bulgaria, the Visa Innovation Program has swiftly evolved into a gravity point for the best fintech entrepreneurs and a growth machine for emerging fintech startups across Europe. It has completed 4 cohorts in Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, and attracted over 900 applications from more than 60 countries. Among those, 72 start-ups were selected and have successfully graduated with a total of 68 pilots. A key feature of the Program is to give local fintechs access to Visa’s global network of business partners, and 133 Borderless days have been organized in the last two years alone to foster cross-market connections and collaborations. The program delivered a total of 1300 mentorship hours. Fintechs participated in 84 investment rounds and received more than 350 million euros worth of funding. One of the first participants to the program, Payhawk, became Bulgaria’s first unicorn in 2022. And we are just warming up. 

Season 4 Demo Day

The Visa Innovation Program Demo Day, one of the biggest gatherings of the fintech ecosystem in the region, started with welcome notes by the General Manager of Visa, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Israel, Ms. Sevdalina Vassileva.

“Visa is constantly innovating to make new and future payment methods and channels better and more accessible to all. This is what guides our approach to collaborating with fintechs to create new ways to pay and be paid. The Visa Innovation Program started as an individual local program and within 4 years, it expanded regionally. I am proud to say that the program was also launched in Spain this year, following its success in our markets, and we hope to expand its reach further. As we are set to announce an open call for the next cohort soon, I am very pleased to see that the Visa Innovation Program has become a truly institutional platform that is here to stay”. 

The Demo Day continued with a discussion panel with speakers from all around the world, demonstarting the large network the Visa Innovation Program has managed to attract throughout the years of its existence: “Fintech powers the future of everything — reimagine the way people live, work and play in the digital era”. The discussion was conducted by the industry leaders, Apostolos Apostolakis, Founding Partner at VentureFriends, Momtchil Elenkov, Fintech Director of Viber Rakuten, Ohad Maimon, CEO of Hyp, and Saner Mesçioğlu, CVC Director of Aktif Ventures.

The Visa Innovation Program alumni also joined us for this Demo Day and shared their experience with the graduating 4th Cohort:

Who grabbed the awards?

During the event, the audience had the opportunity to watch demos from the sixteen fintechs graduating from the Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey and to vote online for their preferred startup in the following categories:

  • Most Valuable PoC
  • Best SME Solution
  • Most Innovative Startup
  • Most Eco-Friendly Fintech

And the winners who grabbed the awards were… drumroll, please:

Last but not least, Beatrice Larregle, Regional Managing Director, Southern Europe, Visa, closed the event with some insightful remarks. She pointed out the importance of creating more inclusive economies and developing solutions that are more accessible to all. She congratulated the fintechs, thanked all the attendees, program managers, clients and the Visa Team, and mentioned that the team is already busy preparing the 5th Cohort of the program!

 

Wrapping it up

Overall, the Visa Innovation Demo Day was a huge success, attended hybridly by over 230 special guests from the startup and fintech ecosystem, Visa and bank executives, PoC partners, and stakeholders of the Program. There is no doubt that the Visa Innovation Program has established its way in the startup and fintech ecosystem, and Visa has enabled the whole process with 4 cohorts in the row! The future looks even brighter. Season 5 of the Visa Innovation Program is coming with even more initiatives, wider reach, bigger community, more exciting PoC opportunities, and larger investor pool. Stay tuned!

Watch the whole Demo day below.

Meet the fintechs – Native Teams and Prime Dash

The fourth season of the Visa Innovation Program is running full steam ahead…and almost coming to an end. The participants are actively working on their innovative solutions, and we continue to present them in more detail. In the final part of our “Meet the fintechs” series we are happy to present two promising startups – the UK-Macedonian Native Teams and the Romanian Prime Dash. Continue reading and get to know them better!

At a glance:

The Problem

The world is experiencing a remote work revolution. At the same time, employers who hire remotely are faced with the challenge of having to manage tax, legal, and administrative matters in many jurisdictions. On the other hand, freelancers and gig workers have limited access to welfare benefits, pension, bank loans, if they don’t possess regular employee status. Many of them go to great lengths in establishing their own companies and hiring an accountant just to handle payments and tax.

The Solution

Native Teams solves these pains by offering an employee of record (EOR) service, as well as a digital payment wallet that facilitates the relationship between companies and the freelancers working for them. Through its subsidiaries in the various jurisdictions it acts as a local employer, drafting and filing all employment related paperwork and taking care of tax and social insurance payments. Unlike other competitors, Native Teams caters also to single freelancers, who can choose to handle their existing income through the platform and obtain employed status.

Why is this important?

Remote and hybrid working have become the new normal for many companies which didn’t use freelancers before. Globally, there is a growing population of freelancers, gig-workers, and self-employed who represent the Great Resignation trend and the evolving concept of the future of work. More and more people see freelancing as a long-term career path and the field is expected to continue to grow as a younger generation enters the workforce.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Native Teams’ founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Native Teams?

We had the best inspiration a startup can have and that is to find a solution for the challenges
we had as a team of freelancers. Our journey started around 6 years ago, when some of our current team members were freelancers as well and we had various problems with outpayments and proper employment status. It started working for us, so we wanted to share it and help the rest 70.4 million (according to the latest statistics for 2022) freelancers out there.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Native Teams? 

The biggest challenge we have faced repeatedly is scaling with the growth. We have been
lucky enough to see double digit month-on-month growth every month since launch, even as the
numbers have started to get bigger. This means that the systems that worked a month or two ago soon hit capacity and we need to change things (again). 
There are some areas we know we could do a little bit better with more resources applied to them, but we’re sometimes a little slow to get ahead of the demands.

2. What is your next big milestone?

Our big goal is to redefine how people get remunerated for the work they do. Our next milestone on that journey is to have full coverage across all European countries, as well as starting to close significant business in our first two non-European countries. We aim to marry this increasing breadth of coverage with going ever deeper in the countries where we are already active: The longer we’re in a country, the steeper our growth curve there.

4. What does success look like for Native Teams?

Success looks like changing forever the way employers pay people for work, and the way that employees get remunerated for what they do.

Furthermore, success for us and our company means building something more than just business. It shall look like a happy place for our team members and a place where they find satisfaction and growth
everyday, both personal and professional. We see success as a journey not a destination, so a
broad segment of a couple of things including change in the way things are done in the world with our proposition and a supportive and yet challenging and exciting company to work in for our team members.

At a glance:

The Problem

Difficulties encountered by the financial institutions:

  • Systems Legacy – Lack of full automated process in lending process;
  • Time-To-Cash – Access real time credit data is a game changer in payable and receivable in finance;
  • Risk Monitor – Monitor in real-time your customers’ accounting, commerce and banking records;
  • Value Added -Differentiate from Competition.

Difficulties encountered by the SMEs owners:

  • Meeting needs – Insufficient funds to cover bills and obligations;
  • Saving More – For college, retirement, payment for a house ;
  • Tax Efficiency – Streamlining taxes to achieve tax cuts or higher tax;
  • Financial Health – Knowledge and improvement of financial health.

The Solution

Prime Dash provides Real-Time Credit Data to banks and financial institutions for the SME segment – to support the development and offering of tailor-made lending products and services. Its Decision maker (for SMEs) and Credit Management platform (for banks, financial institutions), work together in a ecosystem, enabled by APIs.

Why is this important?

65 million firms or 40% of formal MSMEs in developing countries have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year, which is equivalent to 1.4 times the current level of the global MSME lending.

Founder Blitz

Meet Prime Dash’s founder and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start Prime Dash?

I believed in the project when I met my partner and identified that the problems I have are the same as his problems, even if we were on different continents, in different worlds. I identified that we had the necessary skills to build and deliver a global solution.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Prime Dash? 

Our biggest challenge was to prove that the relationship between FIs and SMEs needs to change. Here we are now supported by our bank partners who share the same value. The relationship must take a new path. FIs must become a partner. It is true that this has been a challenge in the last 3-4 years, but the environment has changed a lot and everyone has rethought how to do business in the way we emphasize loyalty in business relationships

2. What is your next big milestone?

To validate our tool and business model from a partner who is a global player. We aim to change the status quo of financial literacy in the next 2-3 years and we are happy to share the same vision with global players like Visa, Microsoft and financial institutions, also with our users, companies, the engine of any economy. All of this means validation for us and motivates us.

4. What does success look like for Prime Dash?

Success for us is to validate a global need for our products. We already have users all over the world, on 4 continents – our product and its positioning in the market are being validated. We know that success comes as long as you have the right product for the right market. We are there!

It's a wrap!

And it’s a wrap! Now it is time for Demo Day preparations. Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Visa Innovation Program visited Malta

In August, the Visa Innovation Program “sailed” to Malta. The two hubs, from Greece – Cyprus, and Bulgaria spent three exciting innovation-packed days in Malta exploring the local fintech ecosystem and getting in touch with some major stakeholders based in Malta.

In a nutshell

The visit established a good foundation for a great promotion of the Visa Innovation Program among various industry players (banks, regulators, startup organizations, co-working spaces and entrepreneurs) and gave us the chance to target specific goals in the regional market.

The country’s past serves it well in this regard. Malta has been known for being a hub for trading and commerce throughout its history, and while it may well be one of the smallest economies within the European Union (EU) today, it is also regarded as being one of its most resilient, with the country recording an annual GDP growth of around 6% in the last couple of years.

Our days were full of meetings and exchange of interesting involvements from a vibrant startup ecosystem with key players of the Maltese ecosystem we interacted with.

A quick taste of the Maltese Ecosystem

Thriving Banking system 

According to Moody’s, the Maltese banking system is stable due to the resilience of the domestic banking system, with domestic banks following a conservative and traditional banking model. During our days there, we met with some of the most amazing and worldwide known banks of Malta to learn more about the local ecosystem:

Bank of Valletta – the first public company to be listed on the Malta Stock Exchange, and APS bank – well known for its ethical banking tradition and exemplary corporate social responsibility practices supporting Maltese culture, art and various charitable causes. We also met with BNF Bank – a key player in the Maltese financial services sector, well known for its ambition, responsibility and empathy.

Fintech stories all around Malta!

We also had the chance to meet with promising fintechs, startup founders, and organizations. Malta has nothing to be jealous of from worldwide fintechs and startups and some of them were amongst our meetings:

Paymix Pro – due to its inherently transparent nature, is here for those who play by the rules, and Insignia Cards Limited – one of the most bespoke high-end lifestyle management service groups in the world, and we were amazed by their future plans. 

Fyorin – payments and financial operations platform which can eliminate all the barriers a start-up may face in a traditional banking environment. Metaverse Architects – a 3D Modelling & Game Development studio for the Metaverse known as decentraland, and Free Hour – Malta’s largest student & youth platform founded by a 17 years-old guy!

Finance Malta – a public-private initiative set up to promote Malta as an International Financial Centre, gave us valuable insights on the whole market of Malta. While other organizations like Junior Achievement Malta, an impactful youth-serving NGO that inspires young people to succeed in a global economy and Malta Enterprise – the country’s economic development agency, tasked with attracting you to invest in Malta – are doing a great job in connecting the whole ecosystem around promising events. One of them is  coming up on the 13th-14th October, Startup Festival Malta – we will be there!

Co-working Spaces

There is no better way to feel the air and breeze of the ecosystem than paying a visit to a co-working space. Therefore our visit in SOHO Office Space left us with the best impressions – one of the best workspace solutions in Malta impressed us by its modern, alternative work environment. If you are listed among sauna lovers, tick this as well!

It's a wrap!

Malta has a dynamic ecosystem, with exciting opportunities and potential! There is no doubt that Malta is fast becoming a hotbed of innovation and opening its doors globally to fintech entrepreneurs.

We are excited about future possible partnerships between the two ecosystems and looking forward to seeing what’s coming next! Stay tuned because something big is coming soon!

Meet the fintechs – Valuelenz and EV Loader

September is here and the summer is swiping away but the Visa Innovation Program is running full steam ahead.  In Part 6 of our “Meet the fintechs” series, we are excited to present two fintechs from the Greek Hub – get to know better Valuelenz and EV Loader.

At a glance:

The Problem

In shopping, consumers are looking for what they have been missing due to the limitations of the shopping channel they may be using at the moment. More specifically they expect:

  • Independence, rich information, personalized offers, self-checkout, mobile payment, and queueless exit in the physical store (scan-pay-go).
  • Guidance, confidence, and speed for making the right choice in remote shopping (e.g. in the e-shop).

Retailers have been unable to offer a unified shopping experience to consumers, both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with salespeople assistance.

The Solution

Valuelenz is the most comprehensive hybrid commerce solution, empowering a flexible and easy-to-use phygital shopping, overcoming the limitations of each shopping channel. How to shop depends on the consumer’s mood. Valuelenz enables consumers to enjoy a convenient, personalized and fun shopping experience, both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with assistance. Valuelenz works on a mobile, but does not require a mobile app download. It also supports 26 languages, including Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Arabic, etc.

Why is this important?

Valuelenz offers consumers shopping freedom with no limits, like no other phygital shopping platform. And the retailer enjoys increased sales and customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Equally importantly, Valuelenz is readily available not only for big retailers, but also for SMEs alike. Valuelenz does not require any investment in software or hardware, and can be up and running very quickly with big company features at very affordable subscription cost.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Valuelenz’s founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Valuelenz?

We realized that shopping has been traditionally (and still is) limited, both in-store and digitally, with different barriers depending on the shopping channel/venue. We decided to bring together the best features from all shopping channels/venues, to provide a unified shopping experience for shopping freedom, convenience, confidence, and fun, with no limits.

We purpose-built Valuelenz to make it the most comprehensive hybrid commerce platform, offering a phygital shopping experience both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with assistance. This is what we call ‘omni-context’ (the new omnichannel), allowing the retailer to start from one use case (‘context’) and expand as needed.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Valuelenz? 

The biggest challenge that we are still facing is to convince retailers of any size that the dilemma whether shopping should be physical or digital is a false one. Shopping can be both physical and digital. But seamlessly merged and not separated in silos. Retailers are gradually accepting that new reality, until it eventually becomes the new normal. No retailer will be able to afford offering anything less, because they will seem outdated to their customers.

2. What is your next big milestone?

Valuelenz has already been successfully implemented with several large retailers in various sectors, namely fashion, cosmetics, consumer electronics, and supermarkets. Those implementations of Valuelenz were fully customized to the specific requirements of each retailer.

Our next big milestone is to package Valuelenz appropriately, so that it can be offered with predetermined feature sets, to facilitate a quick and cost-effective deployment for SMEs. Our vision is to democratize hybrid commerce and phygital shopping even for smaller retailers.

The Valuelenz cloud architecture, the SaaS business model, and the localization of 26 languages, enable an unlimited scalability for global expansion.

4. What does success look like for Valuelenz?

Success for Valuelenz will be to materialize its vision and make phygital shopping the new normal across the world for retailers of any size.

At a glance:

The Problem

Businesses such as hotels or retail shops that have invested in electric vehicle charging stations are not maximizing the return on their investment. We provide an interoperable application to these businesses to help them efficiently manage charging stations, earn revenue and attract the rapidly growing market segment of electric vehicle owners.

The Solution

Business, like hotels, can list their electric vehicle charging stations in EV Loader app in order to increase the frequency of charges at their stations, offer a streamlined payment system for drivers and keep track of the transactions that occur at their charging station, through a web and a mobile app. 

Drivers can download the app to find charging stations in Greece and Cyprus and transact with ease when they need to charge their electric vehicle.

Why is this important?

The main pain point for drivers of electric vehicles is charging away from home. The process of finding charging stations and paying for charging sessions in locations such as hotels is not optimal and this still discourages many drivers from switching to an EV. Streamlining this process unlocks value for drivers and business owners.

Founder Blitz

Meet EV Loaders’ team and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start EV Loader?

We started EV Loader, because we as owners of electric vehicles we struggled to find hotels that had EV Charging Stations during our trips. And even when we managed to locate charging stations, the process to initiate a session was not streamlined at all. We had to ask at the hotel reception for a key, in order to start and then repeat the process to stop the session. We thought that it would be much easier if we could pay via our mobile phone and initiate charging session via a mobile app.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established EV Loader? 

When we initially launched the app in the first charging stations, we had really demanding workload. We were developing new features for the app, while at the same time providing live support for the first drivers/users with a very small team. Luckily, we were soon able to expand the team with additional members that are handling real time support through a more streamlined process now.

2. What is your next big milestone?

Recently we entered the Cypriot market via a partnership with two local companies involved in EV charging installations. The next milestone is to initiate similar partnerships in more countries in Southeastern Europe to increase the number of stations that are managed by EV Loader.

4. What does success look like for EV Loader?

We want EV Loader to become the EV charging station management application of preference for hotels and retail locations in SE Europe. 

It's a wrap!

As part of the Visa Innovation Program, both startups are actively meeting with potential partners and clients, participating in various workshops, further developing their products… and exciting things are coming up! Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Meet the Fintechs – Qumpara and Alternatif

While everyone is taking their deserved break, the startups of the Visa Innovation Program are using this time to grow. And we continue to present their innovative solutions in our “Meet the fintechs” blog series.  In Part 5, we are excited to present two startups from Turkey – meet Qumpara and Alternatif SuperApp. 

At a glance:

The Problem

  • CPG brands needs a reward mechanism that could give them freedom from retailer cashier systems. 
  • Traditional trade promotion mechanisms cost money and time. 
  • Price promos are losing its momentum. Brands & Retailers are struggling to influence shoppers' path to purchase.
  • There is a gap between the shoppers and the consumer brands.
  • Shopper Data is too cluttered. Most of the data are claim-based and not real-time.

The Solution

Qumpara is a platform that rewards shoppers with cash back, discount offers or instant rewards. With its receipt recognition system, Qumpara brings online capabilities to offline shopping, delivering loyalty and instant win solutions to consumer goods (CG) brands. The transactional data collected from receipts, helps CG brands to understand and develop deeper relationships with shoppers to drive desired purchase behavior. Powered by rich, first-party purchase data, collected in real time from real shoppers, Qumpara drives activations that deliver measurable impact. 

Why is this important?

Qumpara puts money back in shoppers pocket without coupons or discount codes. They just scan a receipt from their grocery shopping and stores, and start earning digital rewards or direct cash back. While shoppers use Qumpara to save money on their daily buys, it tracks the item level information and lets brands and retailer partners utilize direct consumer relationships to leverage total brand presence, developing deeper relationships with shoppers. Having a truly consumer-centric approach to data changes how consumer goods (CG) brands and retailers operate.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Qumpara’s founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Qumpara?

We created Qumpara to disrupt the trade marketing ecosystem.  We could see how brands were struggling to understand shopper behavior and how they are unable to create the right incentive to the right consumer. Qumpara erases pain-points for both shoppers and brands creating a direct meeting point for them.  We give  brands actionable insight about  shoppers and create meaningful marketing mechanisms to influence their behavior. For shoppers, we make their grocery shopping journey more enjoyable and profitable. 

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Qumpara? 

Macroeconomic issues like inflation, interest rates, geopolitics, and market volatility are impacting all brands and shrinking budgets. At Qumpara, we have always put our focus on dreaming up new ways to make our product more useful, more rewarding and fun for consumers, and more valuable for brands. Even in the most difficult environment, we were happy to see the more rewarding we get, the more consumers we have reached, and the brands have thrived.

2. What is your next big milestone?

We have proven our business model in Turkey and willing to expand our business abroad. We believe upcoming global economical conditions generate an opportunity for Qumpara, since high inflation is a driving point for a business promising “reward” and “cash-back” to shoppers.

4. What does success look like for Qumpara?

We dream Qumpara to be the number one shopping companion in the region. From discovery of new products or brands for their everyday shopping, to the payment process, and the recurrent purchases or visits, Qumpara used as a unique bridge between digital and  physical  shopping experience is our goal.

At a glance:

The Problem

As a result of the industry’s ambition to have the ability to make apps and receive payments, every brand is eager to make a digital wallet application of its own. However, this situation causes serious expenses for companies and results in individual customers having dozens of applications on their phones. The application of a coffee shop, the loyalty application of an oil company, and the digital wallet application of a stationery store… it is both tiring and far from reliable for the end user that they all have to be downloaded separately, their passwords must be kept, and their credit card information must be given to all of them.

The Solution

Creating a marketplace by revealing a ready-made solution for all brands in a single application is one of the groundbreaking benefits of Alternatif SuperApp to both corporate and individual customers. Apart from this, showing the clearest locations of the branches of the companies, enabling wallet sharing, and most importantly, offering campaigns for all brands can be counted among the other benefits.

Why is this important?

Giving brands a digital wallet infrastructure that enables them to become fintech and making it free is admirable in terms of the acceleration and efficiency of the process. Unlike normal payment methods, it allows businesses to get to know their customers better, so they can offer them more appropriate and more relevant campaigns, and this enables individual customers to encounter a more personal experience for themselves and increase brand loyalty.

Founder Blitz

Meet Alternatif SuperApp’s founder and learn more about the vision and next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start Alternatif SuperApp?

We had a successful example of this idea. We made a wallet app for Havaist (a transportation company for airports). We realized that we could apply the experience we gained here in different sectors. Afterwards, we predicted that it would be more efficient to gather all these brands in one place instead of making separate applications. Then, we decided to make a marketplace for many brands from all sectors in one app: Alternatif SuperApp.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Alternatif SuperApp? 

Convincing brands that we gave it for free was one of the first big challenges we faced. We can say that it was also a difficult process for brands to be convinced that they could get paid by taking part in this little-known application. Apart from this, there were difficulties in virtual POS processes with banks in the early stage of the application.

2. What is your next big milestone?

First of all, we want to establish the same system in countries such as Azerbaijan and Qatar. Being able to implement Alternatif SuperApp in a market outside of Turkey is one of tour biggest goals.

4. What does success look like for Alternatif SuperApp?

Being the most preferred application among payment and loyalty applications in Turkey and being chosen by hundreds of brands is the success dream of Alternatif SuperApp. We aim to enable a company from any sector anywhere in the world to use its own digital wallet in the Alternatif application in as little as 1 hour.

It's a wrap!

As part of the Visa Innovation Program, both startups are actively meeting with potential partners and clients, participating in various workshops, further developing their products… and exciting things are coming up! Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Meet the Fintechs – Infin8 and Coriunder

Season 4 of the Visa Innovation Program is running full steam ahead even during the summer months! We also continue to meet the founders and present their startups in more detail. Today, we are excited to present two fintechs from the Greek cohort – Infin8 (from Greece) and Coriunder (from Israel). Continue reading to get to know them better!

At a glance:

The Problem

It is difficult for consumers and businesses to manage their finances holistically as typically they have multiple banking relationships and banking products, such as accounts and cards. Furthermore, they struggle with identifying the most cost-effective product or service based on their specific needs. On the other hand, for merchants it is hard and expensive to find intelligent leads for their products and services and conversion rates are low.

The Solution

Infin8 is an application, helping individuals and businesses manage their finances holistically. Transactions are automatically categorized so that users can see where they are spending their money and they can also initiate transfers to any account. Additionally, they get better priced products tailored for their specific needs and at the same time they get cashback.

For merchants, Infin8 offers intelligent lead generation based on transactional behavior from Open Banking data. These leads are intelligent and targeted with amazing conversion rates.

Why is this important?

Consumers and businesses have a powerful tool to manage their finances and get better priced products targeted to their specific needs, while earning cashback at the same time. Merchants target good prospects only and offer them products and services that cater to their specific needs. This improves significantly conversion rates, while bringing customers with high lifetime value.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Infin8’s founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Infin8?

Infin8 was initially founded to solve the problem that we had as individuals and as business owners to manage our finances and liquidity holistically. However, we evolved into something much greater. A way for individuals and businesses to get the best product at the best price, while earning cash, while generating intelligent leads of good prospects for merchants.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Infin8? 

The biggest challenge has been to gain the trust of the users. People are reluctant to connect their bank accounts and cards in an application that is not offered by a bank. We are happy to say that we have managed to address this issue by creating a great product. We are proud that at the time of writing we have a 4-star rating on Google Play. Participating in the Visa Innovation Program has helped us a lot in gaining the trust of potential users.

2. What is your next big milestone?

We have successfully run a proof of concept for intelligent lead generation with amazing results. Our next big milestone is to automate this process and scale up by forming commercial partnerships with key players in the following sectors: financial services, insurance, utilities and retail. We already have more than 1,000 users and we are looking forward to reaching 10,000 users.

4. What does success look like for Infin8?

We want to become a leading fintech company in the European Union. We are currently live in 6 countries, and we have very ambitious plans to expand throughout the EU. We aspire to be the #1 application for individuals and businesses for managing and improving their finances and the go-to choice for merchants for intelligent lead generation.

At a glance:

The Problem

The financial ecosystem is wide and complex. The number of service providers you need to incorporate in your onboarding and payment stack is growing on a daily basis. Coriunder takes the complexity away and streamlines your connectivity to all of your providers while maintaining your workflows to all providers.

The Solution

Coriunder provides a Payments-Oriented-User-Management platform allowing customers to build their product using a wide range of backend functionality. The company serves several verticals such as Acquiring, Banking, and Issuing. Its extensive number of providers and integrations, provides an Orchestration layer for any type of service from payment processing to KYC/KYB onboarding flows. Coriunder’s clients include Marketplaces, Fintech startups, Payment Service Providers (PSP), and Acquirers.

Why is this important?

Starting from scratch is never easy. Finding the right partners and deciding on which service provider to use for which use case takes a lot of time and money, which early-stage startups don’t always have. The same could be told about setting up a financial institution. The damage that institutions may face just because they choose the wrong partner or not implementing the right safeguards is significant. By working with Coriunder’s platform, the process of adding an additional provider is simple and requires only inputting the credentials and enabling the workflow. They handle the rest.

Founder Blitz

Meet Coriunder’s founders and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start Coriunder?

We have been operators in the Payments ecosystem for several years and saw firsthand the growth of big technology players like Stripe and Square. We are strong believers that the smaller players provide better support and a personal touch but the clients today need more. We enable just that, giving the smaller players a fighting chance against the big tech giants. It started with payment processing and grew to banking and issuing where the user management elements are similar.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Coriunder? 

The main challenge is keeping one step ahead of the market, always being on the lookout for additional providers, and making sure we remain compliant with the global regulation. Every challenge is an opportunity to help more clients with their workflows.

2. What is your next big milestone?

As we grow our verticals and now serve clients globally, our next milestone is reaching a million transactions a month and opening our US office.

4. What does success look like for Coriunder?

Our clients’ success is our success. If we keep providing the service they need and make sure they have everything they need to grow their business, our success will follow.

It's a wrap!

As part of the Visa Innovation Program, both startups are actively meeting with potential partners and clients, participating in various workshops, further developing their products… and exciting things are coming up! Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Meet the Fintechs – Skipit and MonoPayments

The fourth season of the Visa Innovation Program is running full steam ahead. The participants are actively working on their innovative solutions, and we continue to present them in more detail. In part 3 of our “Meet the fintechs” series we are happy to present two promising startups – Skipit from Denmark and the Turkish MonoPayments. Continue reading and get to know them better!

At a glance:

The Problem

Each city in Europe has its own rules, regulations, and infrastructure when it comes to paying for public transport. Trying to understand and navigate these different systems is not easy. Especially if you are a newcomer.

The Solution

Skipit is a fintech startup combining urban mobility and leisure activities to reimagine the way to visit another city – Skipit’s universal digital public transport card empowers visitors to skip the hassle of moving around. The consolidated planning and payment of multiple public transport networks into one centralised interface and mobile application, allows users to pay in local currency and avoid international transaction fees. 

Why is this important?

Skipit’s team believes in the importance to tackle climate change and nudge travellers to choose greener modes of transport. They feel it is their responsibility to make sustainable transportation more accessible and a preferred choice for getting around.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn more intriguing insights, our team met with Skipit’s founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Skipit?

We have a strong passion for sustainability in the team. After witnessing and experiencing first hand the pain of using public transport in another city, we decided we wanted to do something about it. Ultimately, by nudging people towards more sustainable transport, we help create greener cities in the process.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Skipit? 

Our biggest challenge no doubt has been the pandemic. People stopped travelling overnight and our market ceased to exist. However, instead of quitting and closing down, we dedicated our time to building a network with public transport providers across Europe, a product that is ready to scale, and a partnership ecosystem of hotel groups, local, and international partners.

2. What is your next big milestone?

Our next big milestone will be the closing of our investment round and expansion into the major cities of Europe.

4. What does success look like for Skipit?

To be in multiple cities across Europe, empowering travellers to pay for public transport easily, and making sustainable transport the best choice for the traveller and the planet.

At a glance:

The Problem

Complex processes for electronic money and payment institutions, holdings, start-ups and neobanks, using too many tools for different transactions.

  • Software and hardware costs are high;
  • Difficult to find and train a qualified workforce;
  • Keeping digital assets up-to-date requires both experience and costs;
  • Long integration processes cause disruptions at every stage;
  • Processes and legislation are changing faster.

The Solution

MonoPayments is an all in one NO CODE white label digital fintech platform suited for fintechs, especially e-commerce, e-money institutions, payment facilitators, and digital banks. It provides modular and adaptable solutions for different business models:

  • Digital wallets (Close & Open Loop, Half-Open and Shared Wallet);
  • Acquiring Solutions and Payment Gateways; 
  • Digital Banking and Open Banking;
  • Money Transfer (Domestic and International);
  • Billing as a Service for any business end to end.

Why is this important?

The initial set up cost for MonoPayment’s infrastructure and go to market time are minimum so that clients have enough time to act about business and marketing. Nowadays, the ecosystem focuses more on their business with MonoPayments’ ‘’No-Code’’ solutions.    

Founder Blitz

Meet MonoPayments’ founders and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start MonoPayments?

Before we jumped into the fintech train, we were a software house. We’ve repeatedly built payment gateways for big companies and startups, and at this stage, the product turned into MonoPayments. Our vision and mission switched from development company to product company. After converting our happy customers to our product subscribers, our company became the de facto interface for fintechs in Turkey.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established MonoPayments? 

Recent global inflationary pressure and rising recession expectations will be challenging over the coming period. However, we know very well that every crisis is a new opportunity.

2. What is your next big milestone?

We have a good presence in our country on both the ecosystem and regulatory sides. So our first action item is global expansion. We’re close to the European market and the United States to reach out to our vertical.

4. What does success look like for MonoPayments?

Our dream is to be known as the de facto platform for any scale fintech to start business around the world.

It's a wrap!

As part of the Visa Innovation Program, both startups are actively meeting with potential partners and clients, participating in various workshops, further developing their products… and exciting things are coming up! Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Meet the Fintechs – AFI and ComeTogether

The fourth season of the Visa Innovation Program is steadily moving ahead and all participants are vigorously working on their solutions even during the summer months!  We also continue to meet the founders and present their startups in more detail.

Today, we introduce two promising fintechs from Greece. The first one is AFI – a microfinance not-for-profit company providing access to financing though microcredits to those who have a business idea or project but are not able to find access to the necessary funds. The second startup is ComeTogether, which introduces a new form of digital ticket based on blockchain to unlock new revenues from secondary markets & NFTs, while improving attendee experience.

At a glance:

The Problem

AFI’s team believes that every person, regardless of their origin, income, social situation, gender or education, has an undeniable right to economic initiative that allows them to take their destiny in their own hands. However, the most vulnerable are always the most excluded from accessibility to the tools to exercise this right. AFI aims to support the creation and growth of businesses by under-represented groups (e.g. women, youth, migrants and seniors) and the unemployed by providing access to finance to the unbankable, aimed at the creation or growth of their own business, as a means to self-employment.

The Solution

AFI provides access to funding in the form of a microloan of up to 12,500 euros. The funding is aimed at those who have a business idea or an existing business but cannot find the necessary funds either through traditional banking or any other way. The  microloan has a (working capital or investment) maturity of 6-48 months and a grace period of up to 6 months. At the same time, AFI supports these companies with free training and guidance before, during and after the establishment of their business, in order to ensure their viability and development.

Why is this important?

AFI’s mission is to make a real impact in the fight against financial and social exclusion in Greece by helping unemployed people and people on welfare create their own jobs and existing businesses further grow through access to funding. It helps low-income households to stabilize their business and consequently their income flows, and save for future needs. In good times, microfinance helps excluded and unbankable families and small businesses to prosper, while at times of crisis, it can help them cope and rebuild. This has a multiplier effect on the whole economy and society as a whole.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with AFI’s founders for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start AFI?

The creation of AFI was the consequence of two like-minded organizations meeting and we can say that it is the very definition of synergy. On the one hand, ActionAid Hellas was looking for ways to support vulnerable people in Greece, and on the other hand ADIE (French microfinance organization with 30+ years of experience) was looking for partners to collaborate with, in order to introduce microfinance in Greece. 

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established AFI? 

Being the pioneers in our field in Greece has been no walk in the park. Like all firstcomers, we have had to deal with all the problems that come with it, be it the lack of trust from public authorities or the general public, establishing strong relationships with the banks, and at many times, just surviving. However, the biggest challenge has been getting the word about microfinance out there, reaching the ones most in need. 

2. What is your next big milestone?

In light of the recently voted microfinance law, AFI envisions becoming the pioneering non-banking microfinance institution in Greece covering 90% of the country’s mainland population. 

We dream of the day when AFI will be, in every Greek’s perception, synonymous to “solution to the problem of access to finance for business creation for the underserved”.

4. What does success look like for AFI?

Success for AFI is being:

  • The first and leading microfinance institution in Greece to service 90% of the population of the country between 25 and 64 years old with innovative and market-driven microfinance and business development services;
  • The point of reference of 890,000 unemployed people, not serviced by mainstream banking, to create their own businesses and job positions;
  • The country’s core channel for job creation for vulnerable segments of the population, of equal opportunity to employment and of better economic and social outreach of financial and non-financial products and services.

At a glance:

The Problem

Live events of all types suffer from fraudulent ticketing activities – NFT ticketing introduces a new form of ticket preventing fraud and scalping.

Artists, Sports Clubs, and live event organizers, are looking for ways to increase fan engagement, reward loyal fans, and monetize their fan base – NFTs can solve these challenges.

The Solution

ComeTogether introduces a new form of digital ticket based on blockchain, through their innovative ticket delivery via a dynamic QR code that changes every 30 seconds. This leads to fraud and scalping prevention, unlocking of new secondary market revenue for organizers, and better audience insights.

ComeTogether provides NFTs with utilities, both physical and digital. NFTs enable event organizers to develop new revenue streams, increase fan engagement, expand geographic markets for events beyond their initial location, reward loyal fans, and create an ongoing royalty revenue stream long after the event has taken place.

Why is this important?

When you think of NFTs, usually the first thought is that this is purely a digital concept. ComeTogether is promoting the combination of both physical and digital NFT utilities. The combination of these ideas allow the provider of the NFTs to reach a wider target audience and engage with them on multiple levels.

Founder Blitz

Meet ComeTogether’s founders and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start ComeTogether?

All of us are (music and sports) event enthusiasts and have had disappointing experiences due to ticket scalping and high prices. We take this problem personally. What’s more, we have a strong network in the music events industry. This has allowed us to reach potential customers and get feedback early on as we developed our ideas to understand how they want to interact with their customer base.

3. What does success look like for ComeTogether?

Additional expansion through partner networks to increase customers (type, geography and size) and allow for a full development of our portfolio. These are only short-term goals. In the long term, we hope to become a market leader with our innovative solutions for live events of all kinds.

2. What is your next big milestone?

Expansion of our music industry customer base outside of Greece and our first live sporting event customers.

4. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established ComeTogether? 

The pandemic caused a 100% shut down for our current and potential client base. Although we already had some early success in the music industry, everything stopped. A lot of organizations in our market ceased to exist during this time. We did a short term pivot to meet the needs of our event customers during this time related to Covid certificates and took the time to develop our NFT solution – UniqTogether to be ready to launch a new and improved overall offering – NFT ticketing (ComeTogether) and NFT collectibles/memberships (UniqTogether) when the markets reopened.

It's a wrap!

As part of the Visa Innovation Program, both startups are actively meeting with potential partners and clients, participating in various workshops, further developing their products… and exciting things are coming up! Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!

Stay tuned!

Meet the Fintechs – Flow and Identyum

The fourth season of the Visa Innovation Program is steadily moving ahead and all participants are vigorously working on their innovative solutions. Now that Borderless Day is behind us, it is time to present in more detail the new additions to the Visa Innovation Program family. In case you missed it, Borderless Day brought together startups, banks, financial institutions, investors, and other supporters from Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey and was the big day for the fintechs’ founders, who presented their innovative solutions. Today, we are excited to present two of the startups – Flow and Identyum.

Flow is a Dutch company, which lets you automate payments between your bank accounts and wallets. The second company we are excited to introduce is the Croatian Identyum – your digital ID wallet. Continue reading and get to know them better!

At a glance:

The Problem

Although enjoying independence, freelancers have to deal with tasks that are traditionally handled by employers – invoicing, balancing cash flows, bookkeeping, paying taxes, arranging insurance, etc. The average time estimated for doing these administrative tasks is 43 hours per week for Europe. Staying on top of their personal finances and dedicating time for money management is critical for the success of the freelancers’ business. However, they often lack the time and overview to manage their financial future properly. 

The Solution

Flow is a money management app  that automatically distributes incoming money flows across budgets, savings accounts, and investments based on “triggers” that users set themselves. It helps them manage their money by using smart rules to set up a money system that automatically budgets and prioritizes income. This way, money flows directly into “jars” or different accounts, so that users have an overview of their income and expenditure.

Why is this important?

Globally, there is a growing population of freelancers, gig-workers, and self-employed that represent the evolving concept of the future of work and are viewed as the power users of fintech. More and more people are seeing freelancing as a long-term career path and the field is expected to continue to grow as a younger generation enters the workforce. A research commissioned by Upwork found that in 2020, freelancers represented 36% of the US workforce, adding approx. $1 trillion to the economy. In Europe, over 22 million workers are classified as self-employed.

Founder Blitz

In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Flow’s founders, Daan, Niels, and Danny, for a  quick “founder blitz”. 

1. What inspired you to start Flow?

After university, Niels and I joined forces and became a product duo (after being “rivals in our design education). Business plans and dreams were made during the carpool rides to Amsterdam. What can we still make, what do we want to do ourselves? There was one missing category in the App store, for which we had never made an app before: the financial category.

To gain experience at a financial firm, we went freelancing at a bank. During our freelance period, we met many freelancers who were earning really well, but had no idea how they were doing financially. During a hackathon weekend, we pitched Flow – after two sleepless nights, the result was there: a name, an iOS app, a website, a logo, and a brand. Then things went fast.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Flow? 

Our biggest challenge is the PSD2 license / Open Banking. It’s both a blessing and a curse. With the licenses we obtained, we can create our product: a bank-agnostic cashflow automation platform. At the same time we have to invest a lot in KYC, KYB, AML, while keeping it all user-friendly.

2. What is your next big milestone?

We аre paving the way for Self Driving Money at Flow. Fully autonomous decision making about paying bills, investing, making down payments on loans. This will let customers focus on their lives, while their money grows. Our next version of Flow will include AI profiling. This way we can optimize, giving our users the right tools to build a sustainable financial future. Flow will be able to profile users per business type, their revenue and their personal context, i.e. homeowners, young family. Flow will automatically detect income and predict bills. AI-driven Flows will support our users in reaching their savings goals and a financially sustainable future. We’re on a mission to build the Self Driving Money App!

4. What does success look like for Flow?

For many people, money is messy. People live from paycheck to paycheck, have debts, cannot save and feel like their money disappears as the month progresses. It’s the number one reason for stress in the world. We want to change this. We aim to show the world how money can be an enabler in achieving goals. If we can reduce financial stress for a significant part of the world, we are successful.

At a glance:

The Problem

Mutual trust in identity is an essential precondition for achieving a quality relationship between two parties, especially in the age of Internet fraud, misuse, and theft of other people’s personal data, as well as frequent hacker attacks. Without a credible identity, there is no trust. Identyum is helping companies to transform their businesses into the new digital era by providing the platform for frictionless and legally compliant customer digital onboarding, authentication, data sharing and document signing.

The Solution

IDENTYUM solves the needs for frictionless customer identification, authentication, onboarding, basic and financial data sharing & legally valid document signing – all based on cutting-edge web and mobile components and backend platform.

Why is this important?

The ID wallet includes everything needed for a person to get a service quickly.  On the other side companies can onboard new customers really fast and without friction since users do not have to go through the KYC process all over again each time. Also B2B personal data exchange is possible among different legal entities with explicit consent of the data owner. 

All this can greatly improve speed and customer journey experience with significantly lower cost than if a company would try to do it by themselves.

Founder Blitz

Meet Identyum’s co-founder, Tomislav Bosnjakovic, and learn more about the vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.

1. What inspired you to start Identyum?

From our previous experience at a company we worked for, we learned that organizations are spending  a lot of time and resources on KYC and digital transformation in general. We thought that there must be other more simple way for companies identify persons online, while on the other side, people should not be forced to go through complex onboarding process again and again each time they want some service. A person should have one identity under his control.

3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Identyum? 

Transforming society. Most of the people in our part of Europe are used to doing things the old (traditional) way. Both government and businesses are partially digitally transformed, however, a lot of processes are still manual. For a startup to reach to the right people, to start paradigm shift in the way we are doing business, is a big challenge.

2. What is your next big milestone?

To become EU recognized ID Wallet compliant with eIDAS2.0.

4. What does success look like for Identyum?

Seeing organic growth of our ID Wallet usage among people. Seeing more and more companies integrated with Identyum. Accepting e-signing in society as preferred way of signing documents. Building Identyum as brand that can be trusted for its security and data protection.

It's a wrap!

Our fintechs grow together with the program! The startups are now on the acceleration journey, meeting potential investors & partners and planning their next steps for their fintech revolution. Follow our Blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn channels to stay up-to-date!